Motivating Mum UK

Following my earlier blog where I made a commitment to declutter my home, I can now report that Project Declutter is well underway.  I am determined to organise my life, and I have to say that so far the line is holding, and we can start to see basic improvements.

That is not to say that my house is anywhere near tidy yet – it’s better, but there is still a long way to go.  What is different this time is that I have finally accepted that it is going to take a monumental effort and a whole shift in attitude to get my house free from clutter and keep it that way. A clutter free house is an aspiration – which I need to keep working towards every day – not something that I can achieve in one go, then forget about.

This means that instead of doing a huge clutter clearing exercise over one weekend then getting fed up and  paying no more attention to it, this time I am tackling it slowly, productively and doing things a step at a time.

So what have I done this time which has made the difference?  Well I started with a plan.  I went into each room of the house in turn, (plus the attic and the garden) and I listed all the cluttered locations.  I did this in great detail, treating each drawer, cupboard, shelf or surface as a separate location.

To my horror, in my house I was able to list over ninety cluttered locations. No wonder I wasn’t able to declutter the house in one mass frenzy of tidying. This is a long term project and needs to be tackled piece by piece, slowly but surely.

It’s very similar to weight loss really. You can lose weight fast, but if you don’t adopt a very careful maintenance plan when you reach your goal, then the surplus will come back just as fast, and then some.  Or, you can lose weight slowly and carefully using a combination approach. For weight loss that is diet, exercise and mindset, for your house it is decluttering, savvy shopping and organisation.

So Part 1, decluttering.  I have put my hubby on notice this time that it is not all going to happen overnight. Instead I have vowed to visit each one of my cluttered spots over the next ninety days. My target is to declutter one area per day – some days I manage more than this and some days I don’t quite get there – but I am several weeks into my challenge now and the line is still holding.

Some of the decluttering is hard work – like 2  weekends ago when I did the three wardrobes and filled four bin bags full of stuff for Bag2school. How satisfying though, when I unloaded my car onto the pile at school, and when I look at the clean and tidy wardrobes.  Other days I just declutter a single drawer and only chuck one or two bits. Sometimes there is nothing to throw away at all – it just needs a bit of careful organisation.

Once I have decluttered each area the idea is that it is going to stay decluttered until the whole house is tidy and clear, but I am realistic about this – I know that sometimes it doesn’t quite work like that.  There are one or two spots in my house (flylady calls them hotspots) where the clutter accumulates – as a family we have a habit of dumping stuff there. While I am still on Phase 1 the major decluttering phase, I have told myself not to worry too much about this.  I have scheduled those areas to be decluttered several times during my 90 day decluttering marathon, and noted that in step 2 of these prices we are going to have to develop some new habits in this area.

So that’s it, phase 1 of my decluttering plan. In a nutshell:

• List all the cluttered areas
• Tackle them one at a time over a 90 day period
• Note the spots where clutter returns, tackle them several times during this first phase.

I hope that what I am discovering will be helpful to other people too and would love to hear your comments