5 Mistakes You're Making When Decluttering and How To Avoid Them!

Foreign. Hi there, I'm Nicole. Thanks for joining me on my channel. I know decluttering can really be a drag sometimes, but if you can avoid these five mistakes, it'll make your life so much easier. Let's go. Okay, I'm not going to be popular for this first one, but this is the biggest mistake that people make and it's buying product before you're done decluttering. And I get it. Bins are on sale, sale. The cute baskets are calling you. Trust me, they call me too. And I love to go and buy product and shop for it and find all sorts of cool solutions and new things that I can do and gadgets I can put in my closets. I get it, trust me. But you don't want to do that. You want to wait and think of buying product as the prize that you get after you're done decluttering. Because if you buy product before, you're going to end up buying a bunch of stuff that you're going to have to return or it won't fit properly inside the space that you're working, working in and you won't have a good sense for what you really need. And the worst part is, is people will do that. They'll buy product, they don't use it. It builds up in their garage or storage areas and it ends up turning into clutter because they couldn't use it for their project. So definitely avoid this one. Again, think of organizing and shopping for all the beautiful products as the prize after you declutter. When you're decluttering, you need to make sure that you focus on decluttering and not on organizing. Decluttering is the process that comes before organiz going to get rid of things that you no longer need that are maybe worn and torn, they are out of date, the, the dates expired, they're no longer good. If you were talking about medicines or food, things you don't wear, you don't need, things that are redundant, any of those type of things. That's what you do when you're decluttering. When you're organizing, you're preparing things for use for your day to day use and you're figuring out how to store them, you're dedicating storage space to them. And it's really the fun part of this whole process. So you need to make sure you keep the two separate. You don't focus on organizing right now, it'll slow you down and it won't be as effective. So make sure what you do instead is you group like Things together. You make decisions based on the whole group. You have everything you need together. And like, if you're making a decision on a bunch of vases, you have all of them. You've collected them from your house, you've got them all together. You make a decluttering decisions based on that whole set of them. Or if you are decluttering clothing, you've got all your laundry done put away, and you're looking at all of your sweaters as a combined unit, and you're making a decision on how to declutter them. So grouping is okay, but you don't want to worry about organizing and getting a final preparation, labeling all that good stuff. That'll come later. Again, that's the prize. After you're done decluttering. When I declutter, I often make a giant mess. And, you know, there's different ways of decluttering. You can pull out an entire storage closet. I just did this with a client recently. We took. We tore two storage closets apart because she basically wanted to flip flop the contents of the two. We took everything out. We made a disaster in her house. And I've done this many times in my own home. I get it. You want to make sure when you're organizing, you stick to one space at a time. You don't want to be doing this in a linen closet. Have another decluttering project going on in your master bedroom and one going on in your kitchen. Your family's going to revolt. You're going to get frustrated because you've got stuff all over. Because decluttering is inherently messy. You've got to get everything out together. The best thing to do is do it space by space and make sure that you're not trying to take on too much at once so that you can move your way through the process. Definitely do that. The other thing I recommend is if pulling it all out at once is too much. Another way that I've done it in the past, and I did in my pantry, in my kitchen, is I did it one shelf at a time. I would take everything out, I would declutter it, and then I would put it back. You know, I'm probably putting back two thirds of what I took out, a third of it probably left. Then I'll do the next shelf, shelf, and then I'll do the next shelf and next shelf. And then by the time I'm done, I'll do a holistic look through the whole thing and see, is there anything else I need to get rid of. Then I move on to the prize, which is the organization part. Sticking to one space at a time and even chunking it up one bit at a time really helps and makes you more effective in your decluttering process. Multitasking and doing a whole bunch of areas at once is not efficient, and it's just too messy. If you're getting any value out of this video, please hit the like button. It really helps my channel. Okay, next tip. One thing that I'm definitely guilty of and I really have to focus on is making sure I don't clean while I'm decluttering. And it's so easy to do, but you don't want to get lost on it. When you're decluttering, you want to make sure you get everything out and you're working on it. You're focused on that task at hand, not doing cleaning. I just recently decluttered my dining room, and it would have been so easy for me to get distracted and start cleaning all the glassware, cleaning the glass shelves, and doing all of that instead of focusing on what I was doing, which was decluttering everything in the space. So I'm so glad that I didn't do that. And I'll still circle back and do all the cleaning, but make sure you resist that urge and just make a commitment to yourself that you'll circle back and you'll clean before you start organizing. Okay, for this tip, I want you to think a little bit differently. What I want you to do is if you're going and you're working on decluttering some clothing, and you're looking at a whole bunch of sweaters, and you're looking at, oh, my gosh, which one am I going to get rid of? That's a hard task. It's really hard to do do right. It's an emotional thing. Nobody wants to get rid of anything. You think, wow, it's still in good shape, I should keep it. Or, I like that color. But instead, what I really strongly suggest you do is think of the things that you want to keep. Those. What are the must have things and which ones which you just could not live without. Start from that perspective. An example would be, is if you had 10 sweaters and you're looking at them all. Which ones do you have to have and you will quickly grab. Let's say you wanted these three, right? You're like, this is my favorite sweater. I love this one with my pair of pants, and I love to wear this one to work. I can't live without these. It makes the Job so much easier. You're now left with the remaining items and you can go through another pass and say, which ones of these that I have I can't live without? Grab the next set of three and then I bet you you can live without the ones that remain. It's an easy, quick way for you to get through this process. You don't have to agonize over which one am I going to get rid of instead of think of which ones do I want to keep. It invokes this passion inside and it's so much easier if you just flip it around. If I was going to try to declutter some of my puzzles, I have, I kind of collect puzzles. They're wooden puzzles or particular set and I absolutely love them. I love these puzzles. Sometimes I do them. I do a lot of them. Sometimes I don't even touch them for six months. I admit to it, right? But I love them and I store them. I have dedicated storage for them. But if I ever had to cut my stash of puzzles from, say, where it is and cut it in half, it would be heart wrenching for me. It would be so, so hard to do. If I was to flip the. The way that I thought about it instead of saying, okay, which ones am I going to get rid of? And if I instead said, which ones do I have to have, which ones would be the first ones I'd keep. It's going to evoke that motion and it's going to be so easy for me to say that one, that one, that one, and that one. Hands down, best way to go through making those kind of decisions. And I honestly hope I never have to get rid of any of my puzzles, but if I did, that's the way I would approach it. Okay. I talked a lot about mistakes that people make. Here's one helpful tip for you that should help you if you have a hard time decluttering. I know it's an emotional process and sometimes it can be really tough and just draining. If you have some items and you're looking at it going, I just don't know if I'll want this or maybe somebody else might want it. Down the road, the situation changes and you're worried. You don't want to let it go, but you feel like you kind of have an urge to do it. So you're kind of on the fence. Make a box and on that box, put everything inside the box that you're on the fence on, tape it shut and put a thing that says save until and then put date six months from now. So right now it's January of 2023. So say June of 2023. And if it gets to that date and you have not opened that box and you haven't needed anything in it, make a commitment to yourself that you'll take that straight to the donation center and donate whatever's in there. That way you have a risk free way of getting rid of some things that you think you you'd be okay, but you're just not 100 on. This works flawlessly. I do this with clients and it really helps them. I've done it with myself and it just makes the process move more quickly. And you have a little bit of an insurance policy just in case you really did have to have something. Okay. I hope all those help you. I wish you all the luck in your decluttering processes and comment below and let me know which one of those five mistakes you make on a regular basis. What? Or if you make all of them. Or maybe you're a superstar and you don't make any. So anyhow, see you next time. Bye.