Heather Aardema explains how curiosity can unlock motivation to declutter. Try writing a letter from your clutter's perspective to uncover why it exists, often rooted in past experiences. One client stopped decluttering to learn pickleball instead, showing how curiosity redirects energy.
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I'm not motivated, and I don't feel like decluttering. Okay, here's the good news. You don't have to declutter. You don't have to do it. So only do it because you want to do it because you want the results. Now, motivation, or a lack of motivation, I'm not surprised. Of course you're not feeling motivated. You're surrounded by clutter. Here's the thing. The motivation will come, and it will come if you can get curious. Instead of trying to get motivated around your clutter, get curious about your clutter. Where's this clutter coming from? Why do I have it? What would life be like if I started to let go of some things? What if I started to focus over here? What if I let go of one thing? If you can get curious about your clutter, you will start to take some small steps. Your motivation will come, and before you know it, you might even be having fun. Now, I want to tell you a short story about someone who came to me, and she said the same thing. I'm not motivated, and yet I have this office full of file cabinets and papers and papers and papers from my career. She's retired or pretty close to retirement. Now she is retired, and. And she wants a lighter office. She's tired of the mess. In fact, she doesn't even like to go into the office. It's a home office. So I said, okay, have you spent any time getting curious? Well, what do you mean? What do you mean getting curious? Have you spent any time thinking about decluttering and thinking about what your strategy or approach will be? Whatever approach feels best and lightest to you? And she said, no, I haven't thought about it at all. I said, well, what have you been thinking about? And she said, pickleball. Pickleball. It was a new sport to her. She had never played before. A friend brought it up. They went and took a lesson, and she was having so much fun learning about pickleball. Well, she comes to me a few months later, and she's like, heather, I'm not making any progress on my study. What's wrong? And I said, well, how's the pickleball coming along? And she's like, oh, I'm so good. She's athletic. And she. She said, you know, the more I play, the better I get. And I said, okay, how much time are you putting towards pickleball? Couple hours a week. And so I said, how much time are you putting towards decluttering? Well, I'm not. Not doing any decluttering have you gotten curious about clutter? Your clutter? No, I don't even want to think about it. Well, here's the thing. If we choose not to think about it, nothing will happen. And again, that's okay. Nothing needs to happen. We only declutter because we want to. We don't have to. And so if you're looking around and if things feel heavy, ask yourself, have I gotten curious about my clutter? Have I gotten some clarity on it? When we keep things vague, we don't make progress. And so give yourself a gift, carve out some time and get curious about your clutter. If you like, you can write yourself a letter from clutter and it goes like this, Dear self or Dear Heather, and actually insert your name. So, dear Heather, I am clutter, and this is what I want you to know. And then you let your heart pour out onto that paper. And when you're done, you sign it, Love, clutter, or sincerely Clutter. Now, this exercise might sound a little silly or goofy. I promise you, though it is transformative. It is so powerful. Often I hear from my clients that they write three, four, five pages and they get to the root of their clutter. They finally understand, after having clutter for decades and decades why they've struggled so much in letting it go. And they understand why they have clutter in the first place. Clutter is a symptom, and it often relates back to some kind of childhood trauma that we've experienced. And so when we get curious, that is when we start to make progress. That is when we start to create that motivation. And that is when we start to create the lighter lives that we all want. So ask yourself. Not feeling motivated? That's okay. No problem there. Have you gotten curious? That's what you want to do. Get curious and see what happens. Before you know it, your house will be lighter. And maybe your pickleball game won't be as good as it is. Or maybe it actually will be. Frankly, with a lighter home, a decluttered home, you'll have more energy and probably more time and more space to go out and play more pickleball if you want to.
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