Happy New Year Saskatoon! Do you look around and wonder where all the ‘things’ in your home came from and how it amassed to infringe upon how you function day-to-day? Maybe, you constantly find yourself searching through a lot of useless things to find what you’re looking for in your home? It’s called clutter, and the solution can sometimes feel just as overwhelming as the problem. Breaking decluttering down into a few simple steps will make this task so more mentally and physically friendly.
Step One: Don’t Be Afraid Of The Terminology
Fear is often the snaggletoothed liar preventing you from trying new ways and things that could be good for you. Begin your journey by removing the fear of doing new things new ways. It starts with mindset.
How do you view clutter? Clutter often isn’t junk per se, but it does junk up your life. In most cases, that clutter represents an attachment, investment, or future intention. So, drop your defensiveness about the items. Instead of viewing it as trash verses treasure, think of your possessions as useful verses hindering.
Now, what do you think of when you hear the word “minimalism?” Many think of living with only the bare essentials in a very small space. Fact is that minimalism isn’t a frightening word. It’s about lifestyle choices, not hard numbers. And, the focus is making consumption decisions that are useful verses a hinderance. Sound familiar?
The idea here is to remove the excess stressors in your life so that you can find freedom, clarity, direction, and satisfaction in your day-to-day being. That’s not so frightening, right?
With fear aside, you can move on to the next step.
Step Two: Determine The Reasoning Behind Your Decluttering Efforts
The why is an an important part of the process. Doing anything aimlessly is a certain path to forfeiting your journey when things get frustrating or difficult. Keep your motivation by knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing.
For some, the reasoning may be a purge from an old life to make room for a new life. Old memories and the items associated with them may need to go, or certain things may be taking up valuable space that’s more useful to entertain, get physically fit, or work from home. Would certain items that are memorabilia or designed for the future be better fitted for a storage unit verses your living space?
The objective here is to assess your life, space, and possessions. Write out a list of your goals and motivators by defining what you want to accomplish and why. A goal chart will help direct your decluttering plan, mitigate obstacles like where to start, and help clarify keep verses toss decisions.
Step Three: Prescribe Small Doses
Decluttering to a minimal lifestyle is best served in small doses. Ease yourself into the process. Realize that new habits don’t form easily nor overnight.
Pick one area or category of items. Remove the items that aren’t useful, productive to your current way of life. If, for example, your hair care area has a plethora of products, tools, and accessories that make finding what you do use or need daily a challenge, then box away all but your top picks. After a couple of days, you’ll likely feel and see the ease to your daily routine and mental stress. If so, you know you can then move on to deciding if said box is storage worthy, re-home material, or throw away. Now, move forward to your next conquest.
It sounds simple, but you’ll be shocked at how such small acts quickly roll into big changes in your living space. Divide and conquer by doing a little each day toward your larger goals and sub-goals.
Step Four: Think Seasonal
A lot of the big items taking up room in your living space will likely be seasonal-use items. This is your wardrobe, decorations, recreational equipment, and so forth. Do you detangle the Christmas light strand from around your picnic basket? Do you shuffle bathing suits out of the way to get to mittens and hats?
If the above sounds familiar, then your first step is to inventory and categorize your items by season. If room allows, use plastic bins and labels to organize like items together so they can be pushed aside until they’re needed. Otherwise, you may consider a self-storage unit to home out of season items, out of your living space.
Of course, you can follow through with this approach for your work, play, and personal and household to-do lists. Organize by priority, preparation, evaluation, and production. What do you need, when do you need it, and where do you need it? These questions hold the keys to a minimalist approach to all you do.
Step Five: Create Limits For The New
By this step, your home and life is thriving under the guidance of order. It’s imperative not to inject chaos back into it with unnecessary purchases and tasks. This will just restart the decluttering process.
Being a society of “yes” is why we work jobs we aren’t fulfilled by, do tasks that aren’t productive, have partners not suited to us, and are surrounded by possessions we don’t even like or need. So, instead of saying “yes” immediately. Make your default answer be “no.” This will force you to stop making excuses as to why you can’t say “no” and justify why you should or shouldn’t say “yes.” Remember, if it doesn’t have a lasting usefulness to you, then you shouldn’t include it in your life.
In closing, these steps make decluttering to a minimalist lifestyle so much more manageable. As you go through them, it won’t always be easy, but, as you see and feel the results, you’ll certainly know it’s worth the continual effort. With practice, you’ll be able to judge what’s worthy of being in your space and time slots. The end result? A freedom and relief that will help you be the best version of yourself.
At Passion Safe Self Storage in Saskatoon, we can help you get a handle on your space with the storage unit you need, in a size you can manage, at a rate you can afford. Be the first to rent these new, secure storage units!
