THE GREAT DECLUTTER SERIES
This is a 6-part decluttering series. Below are the links to the posts. If you want to read the whole thing in one post, head over to this page.
Overview | 5 Steps | 6 Options | Programs | Tools + Tips | Reminder
REMINDER
We are DECLUTTERING, not cleaning or organizing.
I’m NOT an expert on decluttering (notice the “work-in-progress” verbiage on the tagline of my site), but I’ve done it quite a few times and I’ve learned that it is not a one-and-done as Kathi Lipp has shared so many times. If you’re looking to clean or organize, there are lots of other challenges that make it a part of the process, but I find that most people get distracted (myself included!) if they/I start to clean or organize things while the unneeded stuff is still in my home. And essentially, we’re just cleaning and moving things we don’t even need or want in our home.
So I want to give a reminder if you’re serious about tackling the piles, it may be a good idea to have a bigger focus on that instead of all of it at once. This is my opinion and experience from guiding others along BUT you know your home and your own work ethics and personality best, so make sure you design your declutter challenge for yourself and build in necessary breaks that work for you.
If you aren’t in one of my groups but have followed along with these ideas for preparing to declutter, I’d love to know how it worked out, if there’s any changes you made, and what the transformation has been like for you and your home.
Will you be decluttering some stuff this year? Let us know in the comments.
I share these mostly before photos in the posts because unless blogger do organizing or cleaning work for their actual jobs, most of the time, they have been at it long before their current blog posts about declutter and while they still have stuff to work on, it is usually minimal. Or oftentimes, blogging is their full time job which means they usually have a good amount of time to put into the decluttering process which is unlike the routine of homeschooling moms or empty nesters who watch their grandbabies during the week. We have to find pockets of time. The near-perfect photos can be a little discouraging since it doesn’t show a journey or transformation. Hopefully, once we get our stuff more orderly and it’s just maintenance, I can find someone else’s home as a project to show the process more…I have a few in mind already. I hope that makes sense.