Practical Steps When Decluttering Your Home Seems Impossible

We all want a clutter-free and organized home. However, it’s not always easy to accomplish, in fact, there are times when decluttering your home seems impossible.

I remember when I first started on my journey to simplify my home. It came about during a time we were going through a temporary move. I had four months to pack and declutter.

The truth is I was excited to finally get rid of all the excess we’d acquired over the years. It was going to be awesome, the house would be easier to clean, we’d save money by getting rid of our storage unit and I’d have more time to focus on the things that mattered to me.

After all those months of decluttering, I couldn’t believe how much stuff we still had.

This is the middle or the mundane part of decluttering. You feel like your trying hard but not seeing results. At this point, we usually start being inconsistent with our decluttering efforts and soon we get frustrated, and decluttering your home seems impossible.

This is when decluttering is no longer fun, the newness has worn off and you want to give up— DON’T!

While yes, there’s no way around it, decluttering your home takes hard work and perseverance. BUT… it’s not impossible.  In fact, here are 5 practical steps you can take to finally get your home clutter-free!

1. When Decluttering Your Home Seems Impossible – Take One Baby Step at a Time

When it comes to decluttering our homes, we tend to have this mindset where we want it one and done. Because that’s an impossible standard to meet, our mindset shifts to this idea that decluttering our home is impossible.

However, the reality is that your house did not become cluttered all at once and you can’t expect it to change all at once.
I realize there are a ton of articles and blog posts promising ways to declutter your home on a weekend. Nevertheless, trying to declutter your entire home in a weekend, that’s crazy.

Decluttering your home takes time and work, but it’s not impossible. The reality is that you can read every decluttering tip ever written and it’s not going to help you if you don’t do the work. In fact, it’s when we do nothing that clutter builds up around us.

At the same time, I promise this does not mean you have to spend all of your spare moments decluttering your house to see success. It’s all about doing little things consistently! Small steps to amount to big things!

Do one little thing every day, whether it’s for 5, 10, or 15 minutes, if you continue to take baby steps in working on your home before you know it, you will be living clutter-free.

When it comes to decluttering your home there is only one way to get there and that is to stick with it! Taking consistent baby steps will help you do just that!

2. When Decluttering Your Home Seems Impossible – Give Up on Perfection

Decluttering your home is all about progress, not perfection.

You have to know, if you are trying to achieve a perfect clutter-free home it’s not going to happen. In fact, that goal is what makes decluttering your house seem impossible!

There are always going to be things that come into your home that will outgrow their usefulness.

For example, recently I was cleaning out a kitchen cupboard and decided to get rid of our ice cream maker. Let me tell you, we used the heck out of that thing. All summer long we made our own ice cream. My kids loved it. But they’re not really “kids” anymore. They’ve outgrown the idea of making ice cream and have their own full busy schedules. That once well-loved ice cream maker has outgrown its usefulness.

The point is that you’re never going to have a perfectly decluttered home where you can say I’ve reached decluttering perfection. Instead, look at the progress you have and are continually making.

As long as you’re doing something you need to acknowledge that. This is true even if every other area of your house is literally surrounded in clutter. You have one area, a bathroom medicine cabinet, a drawer, or a closet that’s clutter-free.

When you focus on progress over perfection, it becomes easy to see that decluttering is very possible!

3. When Decluttering Your Home Seems Impossible — Stop the Influx

Is stuff coming into your home faster than it’s going out? This happens when we work at decluttering but we don’t work on changing the habits that lead to the clutter in the first place.

Most of the time it comes down to purchasing habits. The bottom line is that you have to stop buying things you don’t need.

It’s not that you have to stop shopping altogether and become an uber minimalist. However, when you do make purchases stop and ask yourself whether you really need the item. This one little question can cut down tremendously on impulse purchases.

At those times you come across something you may not need, but just love, before you make that purchase let it sit for at least 24 hours. If it’s something you’re still thinking about and willing to make a trip back to the store for, it’s probably a safe purchase.

At the same time, look around your home and see if there is something else you can get rid of in exchange for that purchase. In other words, if you buy new throw pillows for the couch make sure you get rid of the old ones, DO NOT stick them in the closet somewhere.

All of this will help the clutter from coming into your home and will allow you to get a grip on eliminating the remaining clutter.

As we declutter and see all the stuff we accumulated that we no longer need, love, or is useful, it makes us more careful about future purchases. As you limit the incoming, decluttering your house will feel so much less overwhelming!

4. When Decluttering Your Home Seems Impossible— Do The Best You Can

Let me say it again, NO ONE has a perfectly clutter-free home, NO ONE.

Decluttering your home is not an easy job under the best of circumstances. Sometimes we’re just too hard on ourselves. We set these expectations that we would never expect another person to meet.

Another thing we tend to do is waste time comparing ourselves to someone else’s journey.

There’s a saying, and I can’t remember where it comes from, but basically, it’s:

“Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle”

That quote is so accurate. We all have different seasons of life and different stages of accumulation of clutter. If you’re a mom with 3 young kids at home, you may need more things and have less time and energy to devote to decluttering.

At the same time, the mom who recently became an empty nester may have a little more time or need fewer items, but she’s got a lifetime of stuff to go through and a husband who wants to hang on to it all.

The point is that we all have our own journey, know that if decluttering your home seems impossible right now, seasons of life change and it’s okay to just do what you can!

5. When Decluttering Your Home Seems Impossible — Aim for Consistency

In my personal decluttering journey, the times that I have been most frustrated or overwhelmed with the decluttering process were also the times when I was extra busy or short on time.

It just felt like I never had sufficient time to devote to the project. However, thankfully I learned by doing a little here and a little there I could make real progress. No, it wasn’t as fast as I would have liked it to be, but nevertheless, I was making progress.

I promise there are ways to declutter your home when you don’t have the time. If you remain diligent and consistent you will see results.

Our mindset is important in so many areas of our life and decluttering our homes is no exception! As you can see decluttering your home does take both hard work and perseverance.

BUT… it’s not impossible.

Start believing in yourself and know that YOU CAN have a clutter-free home.

Leave a comment and let me know what you’ll be decluttering, I’d love to cheer you on!