Decluttering can feel defeating.
Many of my clients admit to feeling defeated when they try to declutter their homes. By the time they call me, they have failed to successfully downsize their stuff by themselves, often several times. It is not an ideal starting point.
But here’s the good news:
Clutter is not a character flaw or a moral failing. Feeling overwhelmed by clutter, and not knowing where to start is not your fault, and you are not alone in that emotion. The most important thing is not to beat yourself up about it. That won’t solve anything.
You are not broken!
What you are is busy.
Think about how much you have going on in your life on a daily basis. You have your job, taking care of your children, being a caring partner, trying to eke out some personal care for yourself, keeping your house and yard clean, grocery shopping and cooking. As you know, the list is endless!
All of that means little time to declutter and straighten your house.
What’s more, you are a product of consumerism that has been forced on us for decades. The latest and greatest gadgets must be ours because in one way or another we all just want things that improve our lives.
And in our pursuit of having an easier and more glamorous life, we purchase gadgets and garments galore. Eventually most of it gets abandoned, but not completely discarded. They sit in closets and cupboards and drawers, long forgotten.
Perhaps you are someone who hates to waste money. You hate to throw things out, especially if you paid a lot for it. You hang onto that sweater because you spent so much on it, but it is just not your color.
Now, multiply that by every other person in your household because, of course, your spouse and kids all have stuff of their own scattered throughout the house. All of a sudden, you’ve got a clutter problem that is just too much for you to handle on your own.
And let’s face it, no one wants to spend their precious weekends rifling through their stuff and doing drop-offs at Goodwill!
But really, when we get to the heart of it, what makes downsizing such a challenge for people?
Here are 5 reasons why most people have a hard time successfully decluttering their own homes, saying goodbye to their own possessions, and how a professional organizer can help with each:
∙ Overwhelm: Simply the sheer volume of stuff can be so daunting. It’s hard to know where to start.
The years of our lives often pile up in very physical and tangible ways. If you do not purge these things frequently – and by frequently, I mean monthly in most cases -- they will all accumulate quickly, making the task of decluttering tremendously daunting.
No matter where you start, those first few minutes of decision-making and sorting seem like they will never result in an entirely downsized and orderly home. You want to see big changes fast, and that is not often the way it is with decluttering . . . Unless you have a system.
👉As a professional organizer, I have an abundance of tips and tricks to make decluttering efforts immediately impactful. You’ll feel good about the work you are doing to declutter and reorganize your home, which will keep you on the right track throughout the whole project.
∙ Emotional Attachment: Psychologists have discovered something called “the endowment effect,” where people place more value on something they own just because they own it. But otherwise the items would not be something they valued. In other words, they only love it because it is theirs to own.
For instance, think about the punch bowl you received as a wedding gift from your aunt. You probably have never used it, and it sits collecting dust in the storage room in your basement. You feel you should keep it because your aunt, now passed on, put a lot of thought into that gift from the heart.
But would you buy that today? Is it serving you by taking up room in the basement? How is it less offensive to your aunt to keep it, gathering dust, rather than giving it away to someone who might actually use it?
👉Going through each of these items is a lot to process so having a professional organizer with you can help you move through all these questions and emotions. Moreover, a professional organizer can help you find solutions for preserving some of your precious memorabilia.
∙ Focus and dedication: If you have a lot of clutter, decluttering your whole home will take some serious dedication. The amount of attention it takes might really stretch your abilities. From my years of experience in decluttering homes, it takes about four hours for people to grow weary of decluttering. Even the first few minutes can be tiring, especially when the sheer volume of work appears monumental.
👉A professional organizer will keep you focused and dedicated to the task at hand. In particular, a professional organizer breaks up the job into manageable sessions, and keeps you in the loop about the next steps.
∙ Energy: Sorting through your belongings is draining and exhausting because making decisions is taxing. Having a professional organizer there to ask you leading questions can alleviate a lot of that self-doubt in your decision-making process.
👉An organizer will give you tasks that you can manage and cheer you on throughout the process, which will keep you motivated.
∙ Assistance: What do you do when others in your family are not helping? Whether they refuse to help, are contributing to the mess, want to keep too much, or distrust hiring someone to help, family members often can make the job harder. Decluttering an entire home is difficult enough, and when others in the house are putting up roadblocks, it adds another layer of challenges.
I have had many clients who were willing to get help decluttering, but couldn’t get the support from their spouse to help out themselves or hire someone. For a few clients it was important enough that they paid for my services in cash and we worked in the home while their spouse was at work so it appeared they did it all themselves.
I have also had clients whose husbands were very worried an organizer would throw out all of his stuff. Sound familiar? Fortunately, those husbands were converted to believers after just one session.
👉As such, hiring a professional organizer alleviates all of these issues. As your organizer, I will break down the scope of the work into manageable tasks, walk you through decisions, reimagine customized systems and storage solutions that simplify your life, and be the emotional cheerleader for you until the job is finished.
At the end of each session, you will see the massive progress we made each day as I haul away all the trash and donations.
If you resonate with any of these top 5 reasons and you are hopelessly fed up with the mess, check out my blog post 👉HERE on my proven methods to declutter your home, and give me a call. Let’s see what we can accomplish together!
