Excessive clutter is often a symptom and a cause of stress and can affect every facet of your life: from the time it takes you to do things to your finances and your overall enjoyment of life. Clutter can distract you, weigh you down and in general it invites chaos into your life.
Tackling the clutter can seem an insurmountable task if you don’t know where or how to start. By devoting a little of your time to getting rid of the clutter in your life and maintaining things relatively clutter-free, you’ll reap the rewards of pleasing living areas, reduced stress, and a more organized and productive existence.
The best way to declutter your home, your work space and your life is to take things one small step at a time. Combined, small steps will lead to big improvements that will be easier to maintain over the long-run.
Here is a blueprint of how to declutter your life and enjoy a less stressful life:
Table of Contents
How to Declutter Your Life
Decluttering your life is essential to mental peace and calmness, so it’s important not to neglect this area.
1. Reduce your commitments
Often times, our lives are too clutterd with all of the things that we need to do at home, work, school, in our religious or civic lives, with friends and family, with hobbies, and so on.
Take a look at each area of your life and write down all of your commitments. Seeing it all written down can be quite an eye-opening experience as well as overwhelming. From here, look at each one and decide whether it really brings you joy and value, and if it is worth the amount of time that you invest in it.
Another way to reduce your commitments is to identify a few that you truly love and get rid of the rest.
Learn how to say no and decline offers. If you eliminate the things that don’t bring you joy or value, you’ll have more time for the things that you love.
2. Reconsider your routines
Many of us do not have any set routines in our daily lives and simply tackle our obligations, chores and daily tasks haphazardly. Without structure, it can lead to chaotic days and a drop in productivity.
Batch tasks together. Instead of doing your laundry several times throughout the week, do it all on one day.
It’s helpful to write down all of your weekly and daily obligations, chores, and tasks, and then plan out daily and weekly routines. Hang it up where you can see it and try to follow it. You might find that having a routine brings a new sense of calm and order to your life.
In this video, Jade will share her routine that helps her live a less stressful life:
Also, here’re some routines you can learn from:
- Powerful Daily Routine Examples for a Healthy and High-Achieving You
- The Ultimate Morning Routine to Make You Happy And Productive All Day
- The Ultimate Night Routine Guide: Sleep Better and Wake Up Productive
3. Declutter your friendships
It may sound cruel but as you grow up, you’d realize some people are meant to stay in your life longer while others are not. While you should spend more time with positive people, people who help you grow and make you feel happy; you should get rid of toxic people who only drain your energy.
Take a look at this guide on how to declutter friends: The Harsh but Honest Truth About Friendship Decluttering
How to Declutter Your Work Area
If you want to be more productive and focused in your work, getting the clutter out of your work area is essential.
4. Start with your desk
Clear everything off the top of it and take everything out of the drawers.
Assemble the items in piles on the floor. Clean and wipe down your desk and marvel at how pretty and clean it looks.
Sort through all of the “stuff” that was both in and on your desk. Toss out as much as possible a relatively small amount.
Once you’ve weeded things out, it’s time to sort through the remains:
Set up a basic alphabetical filing system with a folder for each project or client. Keep your office supplies and other items in designated drawers.
If you need to, label things, but the main thing you should do is designate a spot for every item you decided to keep and make sure that it stays there, or goes back there when you’re done using it.
Keep flat surfaces clear, and have an inbox for all incoming papers. When the papers come in, sort them each day – toss, delegate, do immediately, or file simply file all documents, but whatever you do, DO NOT KEEP THEM ON TOP OF YOUR DESK.
All you want on the surface of your desk is your phone, computer, inbox, and maybe a special photo in addition to the documents you are working with at the moment.
5. Declutter your computer
Get rid of files and programs
on your computer that you don’t need.
Get rid of most or all of the icons on your desktop. They not only slow down your computer, but also create visual clutter. There are better ways of accessing your information.
Regularly purge old, unused files. If organization is not your thing, utilize a program such as Google Desktop to search for your files when you need them.
6. Then move on to information
In the digital world of today, there are so many different ways that information creeps into our lives.
Information in itself can become overwhelming when you have too much of it, and this is called information clutter. Instead of letting information take over your life, set limits.
Reduce the number of things that you read each day and get rid of things from your RSS feed. Chuck those magazine subscriptions and reduce your consumption of news and television.
I’m not suggesting that you cut yourself off from the world, just that setting some boundaries will help.
Instead of letting information, even the kind that friends share on Facebook, take over your life, control how and when you receive it by limiting what you read.
How to Declutter Your Home
Outside of work, home is where many of a bulk of our time. So it’s no wonder that a messy house can add to daily stress.
7. Simplify your rooms
If your rooms are too cluttered, you’ll want to simplify them.
Start by clearing off anything that is on the floors. Throw out or donate unused things.
After clearing the floor, move to flat surfaces such as countertops, shelves, tops of dressers, etc. Clear them as much as possible, and then move onto furniture.
Consider if you need everything. Sort things in piles – toss, donate, or keep.
Organize everything that you’ve decided to keep into drawers, cabinets, and closets, keeping them out of sight, but still neatly organized and uncluttered. Do this one room at a time.
8. Tackle the closets
Closets are a great place to store things that you don’t want out in the open, and can easily become a place where you shove things just to keep them out of view.
Go through your closets – take everything out, clean it, and toss, donate as much as you can. Decide a specific place to store anything you decide to keep. Keep only the things that you love and use frequently. As for your clothes, get rid of anything that you haven’t worn in six months.
9. Clean out your drawers
Drawers are prime place for things to get shoved into.
Empty out your drawers, and sorting them by whether you’re keeping, tossing, or donating them.
If you have difficulty deciding what to toss and what to keep, this One Question Can Help You Successfully Declutter Anything.
How to Maintain Order over the Long-Term
Once you’ve successfully decluttered, whether it be one area or all the areas mentioned above, clutter will inevitably begin to creep back into your life. You must be vigilant in weeding it out on a regular basis, or it will just take over your life again:
10. Set up a system to keep clutter in check.
Examine the way that you do things and how things make their way into your life, and consider whether you can put together a simple system for everything, from your laundry to work projects and email.
Write down your systems step-by-step and try to follow them as best as you can. Follow your systems and you’ll keep the clutter minimized.
11. Don’t slack off.
It’s easy to put things off for another day, but it’ll save you headaches in the long-run if you deal with things immediately.
Throw it out, donate it, or keep it and put it in a designated area.
The Bottom Line
When you stay consistent and stick to these decluttering tips closely, you will find yourself less stressful and a lot happier as you’re surrounded by a lot less clutter.
Start today and start small. Begin with cleaning up stuff on your work area and then move on to different aspects of your life and get organized!
More Articles About Decluttering
- How Clutter Drains Your Brain (and How to Declutter)
- How to Declutter Your Mind to Sharpen Your Brain and Fall Asleep Faster
- Less Is More: How to Adopt Simplicity and Become Productive with Less
Featured photo credit: Jeff Sheldon via unsplash.com
