There's the old way to clear your clutter. And then there's the new way. Today, we're breaking down the new way that is all about making de cluttering work for you, your preferences, your lifestyle, and the amount of time that you have available. So if you have ever felt like de cluttering is too hard, too overwhelming, too messy, or too time consuming, then this new way of decluttering is definitely for you.
Hey there, I'm Nicole from The Maximizing Momma, and I am obsessed with creating a home that gives me more peace of mind, more time to myself and more time with my kids. I teach you the tried and true secrets to clearing your clutter, getting organized, and managing your household in a realistic and sustainable way.
This show is where we talk about things like motherhood, decluttering, organizing, creating routines, mindset, energy, and everything in between. Our homes are the foundation for the rest of our lives, and it's so important to have a calm, relaxing household so you can have the time, the peace of mind, and the freedom to truly enjoy motherhood.
So sit back and get ready to take charge of your home.
There are dozens of different decluttering strategies and methods that you can use when clearing the clutter from your home. And for years, the focus has been on Marie Kondo in her method, the KonMari method. She's pretty much what put decluttering on the map and made it so popular. It's where you focus on decluttering one entire category at a time in a specific order and you do it in one big session. Now there's a lot of controversy around her method because the truth is, whether you're a busy mom or you're suffering from a chronic illness, or even if you're just getting on in years and you don't have the energy, it's not always realistic. If you're at the beginning of your decluttering journey and feeling very overwhelmed at the thought of getting started or even completing the entire, the entire thing, or if you're overwhelmed, just thinking about decluttering in general... well, the KonMari method would not be helpful because it could be even more overwhelming to gather every single article of clothing in your entire house, dump them all on your bed in one big pile and then sort through them one at a time. Because the real problem comes in of what happens. If you get distracted, what if your kids need you? What if somebody knocks on the door or you run out of time or energy for the day? Then you're just left with this giant pile of stuff all over your bed that you have no idea what to do with.
And so because of this, we, as a society have really shifted away from her methods. But what has sort of sprung from her way of de cluttering is what I like to call marathon declutter sessions. They don't necessarily have to include Marie Kondo's teachings, but the main aspect is that it's just a big declutter session.
Where you're decluttering a room, a category, or a space for several hours on end. And I have found that this is what most people think de cluttering should look like. I certainly did when I first got started, I started in my garage that was. Literally stacked to the ceiling. And I thought that in order for me to declutter and get rid of excess stuff and create more space in our garage, I thought that I would have to go out there for an entire day, spend my entire Saturday sorting, digging, moving, shuffling, piling, making decisions, and letting go of things. So it would turn into this big project where I had a sitter for my kids. And plenty of music and pizza delivered. And I had to have my energy right. And I needed to make sure that my swollen legs weren't hurting and it was just like this big ordeal. So while I did make a lot of progress during those couple of marathon declutter sessions that I had in my garage, it was really few and far between because then after I wouldn't complete one, I wouldn't de clutter again for several months on end. A lot of it really came down to the mindset that I had about it because the entire process was so mentally and physically draining that I would talk myself out of doing it again for quite a while.
And those kinds of marathon sessions, they just didn't work for me because I have four kids and because I have swollen legs and because I just didn't have the time. And as I was saying, A lot of people think that this is the only way that you can declutter, which is why I call it the old way of decluttering, because it kind of precedes 2020.
That's certainly what happened to me. I thought that it was the only way I could declutter. And so when I would talk myself out of doing it for a couple of months, I just wouldn't de clutter at all. So, again, this is the old way of decluttering. Now, before we move on to the new way to declutter,
I do want to say that it's totally acceptable if you actually prefer these marathon declutter sessions. I have a client that prefers to declutter her home this way. And she actually works best whenever she is able to devote a couple of hours to really going in and transforming an entire room at once.
So when I say that this is the old way to declutter, I just mean that it dates back to, as I said, it just really sprung up from Marie Kondo, the KonMari method. Again, it's what put de cluttering on the map. And so for years, we thought that this was THE way, the only way. So the big marathon sessions, whether we're talking about the KonMari method or simply decluttering for a couple of hours, I call that the old way of decluttering. But the NEW way to declutter is by focusing on shorter sessions. This can be so much more realistic for many of us because it, it really leaves room for life to happen. And the difference lies in the time in which you spend de cluttering. It's not so much about the method or the specific frameworks that you use, but the time in which you spend decluttering your home. The new way to declutter is all about finding that sweet spot of time that works for you.
This could be just five minutes a day, if that's truly all that you have available. Or it could be 15 to 30 minutes, which is what I always recommend. You could start decluttering once per week for 15 to 30 minutes, while you listen to our weekly episodes on the Take Charge of Your Home Show. Hint, hint, this is a great time to declutter by the way.
Or you could even declutter your home for 45 minutes to an hour, one to two times a week or every other week. Or if you prefer, you could go de clutter for a few hours, a couple of times a month. What I really want you to take away from this is that the new way to declutter is not about following a specific strategy or a certain method, it's about finding what works for you and fitting it into your lifestyle. So once I realized that the marathon declutter sessions weren't working for me, I kind of, as I said, I stopped decluttering for a few months. I would go off the grid and not tackle my home at all. But since I started decluttering in our garage, the inside of our house was still filled to the brim with stuff and it was driving me crazy.
I was pissed off and frustrated all the time, snapping at my kids and retreating to my room to get lost on social media, because I was just so burdened by all of our stuff. I felt like I was always cleaning up after my kids. At the time, my youngest, my two youngest kids were four and two. So they were right at that age where they had toys all over the house, at all times.
And since I was raised in a clutter-free home, I couldn't stand it. I, it was driving me, as I said, it was driving me crazy. So I spent all my free time picking up after their childhoods. Well, one day, I was looking at the toys on the floor, ready to pick them up. And I remember noticing that it looked like my kids had pulled everything off of the cube shelf in our living room, because there was truly like a huge pile of toys.
And I remember noticing that they didn't play with any of them. Like every single toy that was piled up on the floor was not something that they had played with in quite a while. So I was thinking to myself like, Like, why are these, why am I keeping these toys? So I gathered them up and I put them in a box in our garage for toys that I wanted to donate.
And it was so easy. When I went back into the living room, I was amazed at how quickly I had created space, because all with all of those toys out of the way, we suddenly had room to store the toys that they did play with. And that was really, uh, a big revelation for me. So the next day I did it again.
I went in there. I found a couple of toys that I was willing to let go of. And then I added them to that box in our garage. And that was the beginning of me finding a new way to declutter that worked for me, my lifestyle, and the amount of time that I had to devote to decluttering each day. And that's what I want you to do too.
We have a brand new decluttering program opening in a couple of weeks where we're going to be decluttering our bedrooms together as a collective. And I'm going to be sharing some specific methods and strategies that you can use to demolish the clutter from different areas in your home. But I still want you to make this all work for you based on the amount of time that you have available to declutter your home.
This is so crucial because one of the most common roadblocks that come up that keeps people from finding success in their homes is a lack of time. So when you're able to make de cluttering work for you, based on the amount of time that you have available, the lack of time issue really becomes moot.
I always encourage my clients and students to aim for shorter declutter sessions that are doable because that's how we create small wins. These small clutter wins, as I like to call them, they strengthen your skills, increase your confidence and prove to yourself that you are, that you're fully capable.
Because when you know that you are fully capable of clearing and demolishing your clutter, nothing can hold you back. But on the other hand, trying to follow an old, outdated decluttering method can feel kind of rigid and uneasy because you're so focused on trying to get it right. So the new way of decluttering is all about making it work for you, making de cluttering work for you.
And really taking bits and pieces of different methods to create a strategy that fits your preferences and your lifestyle.
So I'm going to quickly go over three of the most common strategies that you can use when you're decluttering your home. And then I will give you an example of how I made these work for me. So first you have the sorting method. This is what I call it. It's where you are sorting through all of the items in one space and adding them to a separate pile, keep donate, sell or trash.
You can do this in a large area or even for one small zone of stuff at a time. Or you can avoid sorting altogether by, well, you can really do this in a couple of ways. You can just focus on finding things that you want to get rid of. So you would choose an area to focus on. Visually scan through and then pick out some things that you're willing to let go of.
Then you can add all those things you want to get rid of, add them to a donation box or a trash bag. Alternatively, you can do the opposite where you identify what's most important to you in one area. So instead of visually identifying things that you want to get rid of, you can visually identify the items that are most important to you on one shelf, one box or in one drawer at a time.
Then once, you know which items are most important to you out of all the things in that one drawer. Once, you know, which items you really want to keep, then you'll make the decision to get rid of everything else that didn't make the cut.
So we could get a lot more strategic with specific decluttering methods. But as I said, I really want you to take what you like. Leave what you don't, and create your own method that works for you. This is the new way to declutter. Now that you have a brief idea of three different ways in which you can start clearing your clutter, you can choose bits and pieces of each one that you think will work best for you. And then you can determine that sweet spot of time.
Let me give you an example. I spent a couple of years finding things that I could get rid of from my house. Like the story I shared a little bit ago about how I just gathered up some toys that my kids didn't play with anymore. And then I added them to a donation box. That really worked for me for quite a while.
But then, once most of the clutter was gone from our house. I really shifted to focus just on maintenance, decluttering, and that's pretty much what I'm, what I'm doing now is a lot of maintenance, decluttering, where I'm making sure the clutter stays out of here and doesn't in, in really keeping it from coming back.
But considering the very short amount of time that I have available, I like to declutter in short chunks of time, 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there. And so when I have free time, I will choose one very small area in my home and go all in on that area. Personally, I don't like sorting my clutter into piles for a couple of reasons. It creates too much of a mess. But also because it's not really feasible when I only have a couple of minutes. So I will, depending on the area that I'm decluttering, I will either find items that I want to get rid of. Or I will identify what is most important to me. And then choose to get rid of everything else.
So to give you a more specific example of identifying what's most important to me. We had this dining room shelf in our dining room. That had become a catch off shelf. Years ago, I bought it to store our swimming pool supplies, swimsuits, things like that. And, um, I even had coat hooks mounted to the wall to hang my kids wet swimsuits because when we first moved into this house and I was still in the process of decluttering, we bought a pool and we didn't have any room to store the floaties and the sunscreen and the goggles and all that stuff. We didn't have room to store any of that in our garage.
And my kids were leaving the wet swimsuits all over our carpet. And I didn't like having them hung over the bathtub. So I made a space right in our dining room. Well, then as the years went by and I created space in our garage, we were able to shift to storing all of that stuff in our garage and therefore the shelf in our dining room, kind of became a catchall shelf and as time went on, It was just used to store a bunch of random stuff. So while the clutter was pretty much gone from my house,
It's really easy for it to pile up in certain areas if you're not staying on top of it, which is what I was just saying about maintenance decluttering. But anyway, so when I was ready to tackle this dining room shelf and get rid of all this stuff,
I used the method of identifying what was most important to me. And the reason this method worked so well is because there was such a plethora of stuff on the shelf. We had board games. I had all my journals and notebooks and then on the bottom of the shelf where some baskets with different categories of items, like all my video supplies, you know, like ring lights and things like that. And then one for chargers and electronics. And so there was just, it was just a bunch of random stuff on the shelf.
And so the thing is, I really, we needed to keep most of it. Like there was not really a lot of stuff on that shelf that I was willing to get rid of. Every time I walked up to it, there was this one specific board game called pop the pig where you have this pig and you're like feeding it, these pieces of food. And then his belly gets so big that he eventually explodes. It's kind of a derogatory game now that I say it out loud. But anyway, the thing is with that pop the pig game, the pieces were in random places all over our house. I would find them on the floor and I would pick them up and put them on my dresser to put away later. But every time I thought about getting rid of that game, it brought me back to my kids toddler years and reminded me that their toddler years were over.
And that was such a bittersweet time for me, that I could not bring myself to get rid of that pop the pig game. So when I was using my typical method of finding things to get rid of, that did not work when I was trying to declutter that dining room shelf, there was not a whole lot of stuff that I was willing to get rid of. And even though there were quite a few things that I could have got rid of, I could not bring myself to actually make that decision.
So instead I shifted to focus on identifying what was most important to me out of all of that stuff on that shelf. I did that for all of the board games I identified, which board games were the most important, which ones I absolutely wanted to keep. And not pop the pig game didn't make the cut. So then, it was very easy for, for me to make the decision to get rid of it because it kind of shifts you into an abundance mindset where you're focusing on all the things that you're keeping, as opposed to trying to find items, to get rid of. So kind of going off topic here. The point of this story is that as I said, depending on what area I'm decluttering and whether or not I have been successful with a certain type of item in my home, I will shift my decluttering methods when needed. If I'm noticing that I'm having a hard time getting rid of certain items. Then I will usually shift to identifying items that are most important to me.
I've also taken bits from other decluttering methods, like the box method is where you set up a couple of different boxes so you can easily sort all of your clutter in to boxes or piles to make it easy to handle everything when you're done. But as I said, I don't like sorting my clutter. But I love having some boxes for my unwanted items. So I've adapted that and made it my own by creating a declutter station. It's a space in my garage where I have some boxes set up for all the places that I want to donate to.
So this is the new way to declutter. It comes down to throwing out what you think decluttering should look like. And instead finding a way to make it all work for you. We tend to view things in black and white. As if de cluttering is this big project, and if you can't commit to a big project, then you can't declutter.
When in reality, it's actually very gray. There's so many different nuances and different aspects to decluttering. So it's important to let go of that all or nothing mindset, and instead commit to a new way, a way that fits your lifestyle.
So before we wrap up, I do want to acknowledge that sometimes you just kind of want to know what to do. And I totally get it. I'm a very detail oriented person. I love a good plan. And plus, if you feel overwhelmed by all the clutter, the antidote is to actually have a specific plan of action. Which is why we have some free trainings, workshops, and a brand new program coming in the next few weeks to give you that specific plan of action so you know exactly what to do in your home.
First up, next week, I'm releasing a free training to help you beat the overwhelm and hit the ground running. This is for you if you're ready to start ditching your clutter, but you feel so overwhelmed that you can't physically bring yourself to get started. I'm going to be sending out the free training through email. So you're gonna want to be on the list.
Which brings me to my next point. On February 28th, we have a free three-day workshop where we're going to be ditching the mess and demolishing the clutter to give you more breathing room in your home. Make sure to save your seat at the maximizingmomma dot com forward slash breathing room. When you register, you will be on the email list so that way you're notified when the beat the overwhelm training is released on Tuesday, February 21st.
I will share the link in the show notes so you can go save your spot for the Breathing Room Challenge because you're going to be learning the biggest mistakes that people make with decluttering and what you need to do to take charge of your home for good.
Now I still haven't decided on the topic for our next episode. But I will say that it will have to do with clearing your clutter. So make sure to subscribe to the Take Charge of Your Home Show, and I will chat with you soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Take Charge of Your Home Show. Go ahead and take a few moments to celebrate yourself for being here, doing this work, and really learning how to create a calm, relaxing home. Don't forget to check out the show notes and feel free to leave a rating and a review so I can know what you want to hear more about because you and your journey are what make this a reality. I'll see you next time.
