If you feel overwhelmed because your home is disorganized, it can be hard to know where to start!

The good news: You don’t have to take an entire weekend or buy the perfect product to organize your room or home. And it is possible to declutter and organize without succumbing to stress and overwhelm. Being mindful (of your feelings, your time, and your energy) can reduce the stress and overwhelm that some experience when organizing and decluttering and can help you to make the best choices in every moment.

The reality: Organizing your home will take time and commitment, as well as a willingness to adopt new habits. However, mindful organizing will NOT take any more time than mindless organizing and may even save you time!

As Maria tells the children in the iconic movie The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. When you read you begin with A-B-C ….”

How to Get Organized At Home

Let’s begin with the ABCs of mindful organizing:

• Assess your situation honestly and with deep compassion
• Break overwhelming tasks down into manageable steps
• Celebrate small successes along the way

We want you to travel your own personal organizing journey feeling good about yourself and the choices that you make about your belongings and time. But the secret sauce that will make your organizing experience more meaningful and long-lasting is mindfulness.

Many organizing gurus make it seem as if you can organize a lifetime of possessions in a month or in a year. Let’s get real!

We know that you each have personal goals and commitments that exist alongside your desire to be more organized. Though being organized can support many of your personal goals, we don’t expect you to organize your home full-time! We recommend that you organize at your own pace and in your own way.

Wondering how long it will take so you can plan accordingly? Check out:

https://blog.clutterfreenow.com/blog/time-awareness-tips/how-long-does-it-take-to-organize-a-home/

If you start and find your energy flagging, be gentle with yourself. Decluttering and organizing are hard work! Learn how to keep the momentum going here.

Be Kind to Yourself When Decluttering and Organizing

Remain nonjudgmental and resist comparing your progress to that of others.

What feels like progress to you might be very different from what you expect progress to “look” like. Emily Nunn, in The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart, illustrates this in a humorous and touching way:

“After she’d finished a doctorate in naturopathic medicine in Arizona, she’d told me, she got a master’s in acupuncture. While she was living in Durham, practicing at an alternative medicine center, she lectured at Duke University School of Medicine and the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine. During this same time, I had some pants hemmed, as my younger sister liked to say, in response to the dazzling achievements of others.”

Your organizing and decluttering progress does not need to match up to “the dazzling achievements of others.” It needs only to move you forward step by step towards the achievement of your own personal organizing goals. 

You might record your progress in a notebook or an electronic note on your smartphone so that you can be reminded of your accomplishments. Be sure to celebrate your accomplishments (#3 on the list above!) with a cup of tea, a glass of wine, or a high-five. It can also be helpful to take “before” pictures of a particular area before you begin decluttering and organizing, so that you can see and share your success when a project is completed.

Feel free to share your decluttering and organizing successes and challenges with us and others on our Facebook Page.

Discover more ways to mindfully organize your room or home here >> 

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