Did you start decluttering your home and then somewhere along the way begin to lose motivation? You are not alone! The truth is it can be difficult to maintain your motivation to declutter and organize your home.
Often, when we first start the decluttering process it is new and exciting. We are fully motivated to tackle that clutter. However, it’s not long before we start feeling overwhelmed or that’s it is just too much work and we don’t have the time to complete the tasks. We may even feel like it’s pointless because our spouse or family is not on board.
Honestly, I felt every one of these at one point or another.
Maintain Your Motivation to Declutter
The thing that got me past those feeling was having a clear vision of why eliminating the clutter and simplifying my life was important in helping me achieve the life I was dreaming of.
Knowing my why was my driving motivation when I came across obstacles or found my motivation waning. In fact, remembering my why was often the key to propelling me to move forward during the time I wanted to quit.
What is Your Goal For Decluttering
To succeed at decluttering and have it remain a lasting change you need to have a goal. What are you trying to achieve in decluttering your home? Is it:
- to have less
- to own only what you actually use
- to downsize
- to make cleaning easier
- to have more time
- to improve finances
For me, it was about having more time to focus on things that were important to me instead of constantly dealing with cleaning and maintaining all this stuff I didn’t need or even use.
Once I knew what my goal was, I needed to ask WHY.
Why is this your decluttering goal?
How will decluttering your home simplify your lifestyle or improve your overall life?
If you’re not sure how decluttering your home and simplifying your life can move you closer to the life you dream of, here are 9 benefits… perhaps one of these will fit into YOUR WHY and allow you to maintain the motivation to declutter your home and simplify your life.
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1. Having a More Organized Home
1. Having a More Organized HomeI have a dear friend, whom I adore, however, whenever I’m hanging out at her house and ask her for something such as scissors or tape she literally has to search through several drawers before she can actually find what she is looking for.
I love the girl, but there is no organization of any kind in her home. She just tosses stuff in random drawers. The result is drawers filled with clutter and broken useless items.
I admit this drives me a little crazy and I’ve spent time cleaning out and organizing her drawers. She is always so happy to have this done, but in a short time, it’s right back to where it started.
The simple reason she can’t stay organized is she has too much stuff! The more stuff you have the harder it is to keep your home organized. The good news is the opposite is also true; the less stuff you accumulate the easier it is to keep an organized home.
When you want to maintain your motivation to declutter, remember the benefit of decluttering your home is that it’s so much easier to keep organized.
2. You Spend Less Time Cleaning
Our natural inclination is to take the path of less resistance. What this means is that the more clothes you have the more you are able to let the laundry pile up. In turn, this means more laundry you have to do. This is because it’s easier to grab something clean from the closet then to do a load of laundry. But in the end, you have much more laundry you must wash.
The same is true with dishes. The more dishes you own the more you will use. It’s much easier to grab a clean cup from the cupboard than to wash the one in the sink. But, again, in the end, all this does is create more dishes you will eventually be washing.
Think about it, the more knick-knacks you have around your home the more time you will spend dusting. This principle applies to pretty much everything in your home.
While maintaining a cleaning routine certain can help, decluttering and simplifying is the best way to ensure you’re not spending half your days cleaning (or walking over piles of stuff).
We really don’t need a fraction of the stuff we have, yet by eliminating the unnecessary we spend a fraction of the time cleaning our home. For me, that is a great motivation to declutter.
3. You Will Enjoy Your Home More
3. You Will Enjoy Your Home MoreLet’s be real here, it’s next to impossible to truly enjoy our homes when they’re stuffed with clutter and a big mess. Personally, I tend to feel stressed out, overwhelmed, and find it impossible to relax when everywhere I look all I see is what needs to be done, ugh!
On the other hand, when I think of my perfect day at home, the house is clean and tidy, and it feels calm and peaceful.
Living with less enables us to truly enjoy our homes, not for the possessions they are filled with but the atmosphere we create and the memories we build with the people we care about.
As we already discussed, by living with less your home is cleaner and more organized and you have more free time. Now you have the time to spend on the things that truly matter to you.
4. You Are More Productive
Filling our life with unnecessary stuff also divides our focus. We must devote a certain amount of time, energy, and focus on our stuff which takes away our ability to fully focus on our dreams and goals.
We all dream of having more time and energy to really focus on our goals and the things that matter most to us. I promise, decluttering and simplifying is a surefire way to receive it.
Study after study has shown that multitasking is one of the biggest killers to productivity. Learning to live with less will eliminate or at least lessen divided focus. In turn, you will increase your productivity allowing you to manage your time better so that you really can spend time on the things that matter most.
5. Increase Your Financial Standing
It’s pretty much a given that if you buy less stuff, you spend less money. The only way to live clutter-free is to buy less stuff. The less money you spend the more you increase your financial stability. There you have it, pretty simple.
The best part is that this freed up money is going to allow you to pay down any accumulated debt further increasing your financial standing. In addition, this extra money can now be used to increase your savings.
If you are really looking for ways to increase your finances, most of the stuff you declutter can be sold at yard sales, Facebook groups, or even on eBay.
6. You Create Greater Contentment
6. You Create Greater ContentmentI find it interesting that whenever my home is cluttered or messy I get this overwhelming sense of discontentment. Honestly, it’s in those moments that all I want to do is go out and get new stuff to redecorate. If you’ve ever felt this same way it’s because clutter and excess create discontentment.
My guess is that when your home is freshly clean and everything is put away, you are able to sit and enjoy it. You have a sense of contentment during these times.
You see because an organized and tidy home creates a sense of contentment, we no longer desire all of the newest and latest items the media is telling us we need. When our homes are clutter-free we no longer grumble and complain about all the mess and clutter. As your dissatisfaction decreases your contentment increases.
This is such a great motivation to declutter and maintain a clutter-free and organized home.
7. It Increases Gratitude
Much like the way decluttering your home creates a greater sense of contentment, it also increases our gratitude.
There is a greater thankfulness for all that is in your home because it’s only filled with the things you truly love.
Wanting more leads our focus to all the things we don’t have.
On the other hand, we desire less when we commit to limit the clutter in our home. Desiring less leads our focus to gratitude for what we do have.
8. Better Health
8. Better HealthAn unexpected benefit of simplifying your home and life is discovering how much of an impact excess stuff can have on your general health. Here is a very partial list of how decluttering can positively impact health.
- Cleaner Home = fewer germs and sickness
- Less Stress = Stress has a huge impact on our health.
- More sleep = Extra time spent caring for unnecessary stuff is now available. No longer do you need to stay up late at night dealing with all that stuff. You can get to sleep at a decent hour.
- Eat healthier foods. = With less stuff to deal with you have more time to meal plan. Since you have less stuff cluttering up your kitchen, you now have more time to cook from scratch with fresh ingredients.
- Okay, this may just be a coincidence but honestly, as I simplified my home, my water intake greatly increased. Before my choices were almost exclusively caffeinated beverages with coffee and diet coke sustaining me. Now don’t get me wrong here, I still drink plenty of coffee. But I do because I genuinely love coffee. But it is no longer my primary drink. If I were to guess I think it’s because overall my life is much calmer by eliminating excess clutter.
9. Better Relationships
A driving purpose for decluttering and simplifying is that by having less stuff in your life you create more purpose in your life.
What brings the most purpose to our life, is our relationships. Instead of filling your life with more stuff, you can fill it with more experiences. This, in turn, is what creates deeper relationships.
We all know it can be difficult getting and maintaining the motivation to declutter and organize your home, but by focusing on these 9 benefits of decluttering and simplifying your life, you can move closer to the life you dream of.
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