This is a guest post from Rachelle Crawford of Abundant Life With Less.
I love to travel. Whether it’s a weekend up north, road trip across the country or transcontinental adventure, when given the opportunity to take a trip… I’m in. A few years back, we headed up north with a group of friends to spend the weekend at a family cottage.
With my friend working remotely from the passenger’s seat and my husband in the backseat doing the same, I was in charge of getting us there. I had the steering wheel in one hand and Cheez-Its in the other; life was good.
Well over an hour into our trip, my husband glanced up from his phone and abruptly said, “69 East? Why are we on 69 East? We were supposed to get on 127 North.”
While we were headed to Lake Michigan on the west coast, I managed to land us within minutes of the Canadian border on the East coast. Now, the Canadians I know are quite delightful, however, that’s not where we were headed. When it was all said and done, I had turned a two-and-a-half-hour road trip into almost six hours of travel!
I was so eager to get us where we were going, that I didn’t take the time to assess the path I was headed on.
We tend to do the same thing when decluttering our homes. We find minimalism and set out in hot pursuit of “less is more” without first establishing a doable route and the firm foundation to help hold it all together.
Believe me, I get it. Five years ago, I went minimalist on a whim, headed directly home and gutted my closet. I couldn’t get that stuff out of my home fast enough. There was no time to pause and reflect because I was on a mission to take back my home from the infestation of stuff.
However, as the dust settled, I found myself ill-equipped to maintain what I’d worked so hard to create. Preoccupied with anticipation and hope, I’d missed some important first steps. Steps that when taken, make the rest of the journey just a little easier.
Here are 5 Steps to Take Prior to Decluttering Your Home:
1. Set Realistic Expectations
When I first went minimalist, I set high, unattainable expectations for myself and my home. I tend to be more of a messy, disorganized individual who birthed three children cut from the same cloth. How I thought minimalism was going to turn me into Marie Kondo overnight is beyond me, but I did.
Long story short, it did not. Instead, I simply traded the suffocating overwhelm of too much stuff for the impossible task of maintaining a picture-perfect minimalist home.
Becoming a minimalist isn’t a charge to become someone else altogether. It’s the practice of unearthing who it is you were made to be beneath the mounds of clutter and call to keep up.
The items you declutter, the pace at which you move, and how your home looks in the end, should be unique to you. Acknowledge the season of life you’re in and give yourself the grace to declutter at a pace that fits.
2. Initiate a Spending Freeze
Oftentimes, we’re so eager to start getting rid of stuff that we don’t pause and evaluate how it all got there in the first place. You can declutter and declutter and declutter, but you’ll never create a clutter free home if you don’t change the way you’re bringing stuff in.
I highly recommend beginning with a spending freeze.
As you work to declutter your home, halt any and all unnecessary purchases. Not forever, but long enough to clear the slate and create new spending habits going forward. To avoid decluttering again and again, you’ve got to stop allowing unnecessary items into your home from the start.
3. Choose a Donation Location That Aligns with Your Heart
A couple years ago, my sister’s friend’s home caught fire. Thankfully everyone exited safely, but all of their belongings were lost. My sister called me to share a list of items the family needed replaced.
Immediately, I sprang into action, wandering around my home grabbing everything I could spare. I didn’t hem and haw about whether I would one day need this item because I knew of someone who needed it today.
When decluttering our homes, it’s far easier to let go when you know someone or some place that could use your excess stuff. It could be a refugee center, homeless shelter, school, library, church, domestic violence safe haven, pregnancy service center or simply your neighbor who just had a baby.
Harness the power of generosity to let go of even more, by choosing donation locations that align with your heart.
4. Adopt a Minimalist Mindset
We can approach decluttering our homes one of two ways: As a short-term fix or a lifelong behavior change. You can either use it as a means to reorganize your stuff, or you can let it lead to a permanent change in your relationship with material possessions.
A minimalist mindset involves becoming a more conscious consumer, emphasizing quality over quantity, and experiences over things. With it we can shake off the shackles of comparison, keeping up with the Jones’ and staying on trend. Not in exchange for a dull life, but a purposeful one.
5. Find a Decluttering Comrade
Everything is easier with a friend by your side. Just as you should never swim without someone keeping an eye out for you, neither should you wade through your clutter without a comrade to keep you company.
Now, not everyone is lucky enough to have a lifelong friend turn minimalist with them. Many of my local friends still think I’m nuts. Most of my closest “minimalist” friends came from the internet. Kids don’t try this at home.
If you’re able to get a local friend to join you on this journey, fantastic. But if not, take heart. There are Facebook communities and Instagram accounts packed with people headed in the same direction as you.
Can you declutter your home without a solid plan and firm foundation? Sure. You can certainly take the scenic route and still get where you’re going. That’s exactly what I did.
However, my hope is that my detour will help you avoid your own, so you don’t unwittingly find yourself face-to-face with border patrol.
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Rachelle Crawford is the author of Messy Minimalism: Realistic Strategies for the Rest of Us, available today. It is witty and wise. She also blogs at Abundant Life With Less where she documents and shares their major course change as a family into minimalism. You’ll love following her on Instagram.
It’s very validating reading “acknowledge the season of life that you are in”. We also have three young children and trying to force minimalism on the household is not making me any friends.
For me I’ve come to see the home as an economy that needs movement. Things flow in via buying stuff, receiving gifts, redeeming stuff etc, but many of us do not (or did not before we discovered decluttering) have enough mechanisms for things to leave the household.
So nowadays I try to make sure to keep the economy flowing. If someone in the household is a big buyer then I need to be a big donator.
Regular trips to charity shops and the tip help keep our stuff at a healthy equilibrium.
What I like about this article is that it’s very direct and gets right to the point. This really put things into perspective and it really helped. So thank you! :)
Love this article. The key points were very helpful.
Great comment Rachelle! I loved the five points you listed because they hit the root of the problem.
For me, minimalism has been a slow steady burn at first forced by necessity and now it’s driven by my dreams and goals.
The thing that has helped me to simplify my life the most is developing gratitude and by proxy contentment. The more I focus on what I have the less I want.
I loved this article! I am set to retire the end of this month and one of my first priorities is to begin de-cluttering! These tips will certainly help to keep me sane and on task! Thank you!
For me minimalism meant choosing to only wear neutral colors from the waist down. It makes getting dressed much easier.
I decluttered my kitchen, by only keeping small appliances that are multi-purpose. The two exceptions are my coffee maker and toaster. I was able to purge three crockpots and a tiny waffle iron with a cute design. My instant pot has a slow cooker setting.
I loved the part about the oops how are we getting to where we want to go. There is something about that start with a plan which is hitting me hard today.
Not bringing more in –
Covid really changed our book buying because we weren’t going monthly to favorite used book stores after a dinner out. It made it easier to look more realistically at the stacks of unread books piled up – will I read this or should I just pass it on NOW instead of stacking just bought books on top of the priors in hopes I will get to them soon.
And, I started using the library much more to get a suggested book, read it and then decide if I “needed” my own copy or did I get everything I wanted from their copy. This really lowered the amount of books stacking up.
Thanks. This has helped me reflect that there are some things which I am doing which are helping me move forward even though it may not feel like I am.
How can I buy your book.
I am in Britain.
Mimi.
I suspect minimalism will look different for each of us, because we value different things. It’s never a competition or effort to show others how together we are. It’s a desire to simplify our lives, so that the things that matter take precedence over the superfluous. Thanks for your helpful article, Rachelle.
I really enjoyed reading this. Today I started decorating for Christmas. I unpacked a few items that make me happy but when I saw all the piles that remained I felt overwhelmed. Instead of closing the containers I forged ahead working on a donation pile. I’m glad I read your posting first thing this morning. It inspired me! Looking forward to the New Year and more donating.
Thanks! I am about to start the 30 day game and this is an excellent mindset to start with! I’m also going to start a blog at your recommendation without any great expectations but with the feeling it will be good for me!
Great article. I really appreciate the comment about the spending freeze. Thanks