12 Secrets To Reducing Clutter Stress

Have you planned your spring cleaning yet? The weekend where you, your partner, and your kids go through all of your belonging and identify what stays and what goes or gets donated?

This is so popular we have an entire season devoted to it: Spring.

But we would not necessarily need to spring clean if we were managing our clutter all year long.

Clutter, or having a lot of items that pile up in our homes, workplaces, vehicles, and other environments, can have an effect on our stress levels and well-being.

This is why it is best to manage our clutter throughout the year However, it is not always that simple – we have busy lives and so have to make intentional steps to reduce clutter stress.

Let’s look at 12 ways that we can intentionally reduce clutter and the stress connected to it.

Commit To Reducing Stress

When you are committed to yourself you are more likely to follow through with the steps to get there.

So first, you need to decide and commit to reducing your stress and commit to creating a life that feels good to live.

Having a home you feel comfortable in will aid in this process.

Therefore you must first commit to living a lifestyle free of clutter and the stress that it brings.

Plan To Create A Home That You Feel Proud Of

How many of those beautiful homes you have seen on Pinterest or on the television that you so wish you could replicate for yourself were full of clutter? Probably not many.

Identify a home that you feel inspired by and work towards creating a home like it that you can be proud of. This could involve a long-term plan to redecorate – but in order to do so, you may need to start with a mostly clean slate.

Start Reading About Decluttering Or Minimalism

Reading about decluttering and applying the principles and practices that you learn will be very helpful.

There are many different strategies and practices that could aid in your plan to declutter, which is why reading about the experiences of others and seeing before and after photos may be motivating to you in your planning process.

Ask Yourself: Is This Item Serving Me?

The first question you should ask yourself when you are in your home and are feeling stressed by all the clutter is to identify the items taking space and ask yourself if that specific item is serving you.

If it is serving you, identify how it is and make sure there is not another item that has the same function.

And if it is not serving you, it may be helpful to throw it out or donate that specific item.

This is a good start to making sure that you only have items that you really care about. The rest of the items are making clutter for you.

Tackle One Room At A Time

Attempting to clean your entire house, especially if it is a multiple level home, will take days. This in itself will be stress-inducing.

It may therefore be helpful to develop a plan for yourself where you tackle only one room at a time. For example:

• Start with the kitchen, move to the living room, then the bedrooms, then the bathrooms.
• Do one room a week.
• Write your plan down and post it somewhere where you can reference it often (e..g on the fridge door), because that way, you will be more inclined to follow it.

Ask Yourself What The Function Of Your Purchases Are

Much like you ask yourself what the function of the items in your home are and if they are serving you, ask yourself the same questions when you are shopping.

As you reduce your clutter, resist the inclination to purchase more items that will create yet more clutter.

Develop A Cleaning Schedule And Adhere To It

Set a weekly list of chores that need to be done in your household and follow it.

This will help you to manage the upkeep of cleaning and decluttering that will need to be done to ensure it is maintained well.

Ask Your Family To Help

Your children and partner are equally as responsible for managing the clutter in your home as you are.

Asking your children especially to manage their clutter will be helpful.

If they are young, make sure that they pick up their toys and put them away, instead of leaving them all over the floor.

And if they are teenagers, ensure that they do their laundry instead of allowing it to pile up.

Develop Systems Of Organization

Installing shelves and other systems (e.g. under-bed storage containers, shoe racks) to organize your items will be helpful in making sure they are put away and not out in the eye’s view.

If you have young kids, make sure that there are shelves and bins, which they can safely reach, to have their items and toys placed in.

If you have a reader in your home, a bookshelf will be helpful in making sure that books do not pile up creating clutter.

Regularly Declutter

Much like having a cleaning schedule for your home, you should also develop a plan for a monthly decluttering session where you go through and identify if things serve you or do not, with the intention of reducing clutter and donating or tossing the things that are creating clutter stress.

It is interesting how quickly clutter can re-pile. Having a plan to prevent this will be helpful.

Plan To Reward Yourself After You Have A Successful Time Decluttering

Incentives or rewards are a successful intervention for accomplishing a desired task.

I wouldn’t recommend rewarding yourself by purchasing more items, but you could set yourself a reward that you are really looking forward to. This will make you more likely to actually declutter.

You could decide to have a spa day to reward yourself or go to a sports game or a movie.

Whatever makes you feel more inclined to declutter will be a helpful reward, with the exception or purchasing additional items that could create more clutter in your new and clean space, of course.

Plan To Celebrate And Invite People Over To Share In Your New Space

It can be easy to feel shame around having a cluttered home, even though we shouldn’t feel shame because it is counter-productive to effectively making changes. Because of this, we could be avoiding having people over.

So another incentive in completing the decluttering could be to ask your friends and family over to enjoy the space. You should feel proud and want to show off your home.

Your friends do not necessarily need to know that you are celebrating decluttering. You could throw any kind of party that you are excited for. Host a sports game or a reading club or whatever excites you!

Bonus Secret

My (second) wife was an even bigger hoarder than I am, so since she died shortly before writing this guide, I have tried to get rid of all the excess stuff and clutter.

It’s a mammoth task – far too large to contemplate as a single project – so I therefore try to get rid of something, however small, every single day – because I’m working on the basis that any progress is better than no progress.

There’s no real plan to this. For example, if I’m in a room and see something that is no longer required (or is past its expiration date), I pick it up and take it out, where I either dump it or put it in the donation pile.

Of course this is easier for me because I’m living by myself – I don’t need to discuss what to keep and what to throw out with anybody else, which can really eat up your time, even though it can be necessary. I remember once throwing something out without discussing it with my first wife, and I was never allowed to forget it!

Conclusion

Good luck on your path to decluttering and creating a home that you love, and you and your family want to come home to at the end of a long day.

Remember that planning to consistently clean and declutter will be helpful in ensuring the maintenance of your clean and organized home.

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Books About Decluttering
2. Creative Storage Solutions