5 Decluttering Mistakes to Avoid | How NOT to Declutter

Hello guys and welcome to abundantly minimalist. My name is Sarah and thank you very much for joining me in this video. I want to share the five biggest

declutter

ing pitfalls or basically

mistakes

I made over the last three years of my minimalist journey. I want to help you

avoid

, especially if you plan to

declutter

this year, most of these things come from what we think we should do or just habits that can be hard to break and I want us to be able to

avoid

these

mistakes

. To really help you simplify your life and live your best life with less this year, let's start with the first tip: Don't declutter just to declutter, especially when you're just starting out or maybe you've been on the journey for a while, it really feels good.

decluttering

, you'll be in a bit of a rush when you can simplify your space and it's a great way to feel like you're making progress, however, this progress is a really great thing, sometimes we can feel motivated to get rid of it. of something just to get rid of it just to continue feeling even better about living simply, but we might accidentally order something that we actually use sometimes and then have to replace it again in the future or you might start wishing, man, I wish I had .

I kept that now, of course, I don't want us to hold on to too many of our items because of this fear, but we want to make sure we're being intentional about it and not just getting rid of things for the sake of getting rid of things. Of those, I haven't really had many items like this, but it's definitely an important consideration to think about and not get caught up in the hype of getting rid of your stuff. My second piece of advice is not to take on too much at once I'm a very entrepreneurial type of person maybe some of you are and if I'm going to do something I want to do as much as possible but real life often gets in the way and can stop us. achieve our objectives.

Choose a specific spot in your space that you can start decluttering first so you don't have a lot of half-finished projects in your space that are actually stressing you out instead of making you feel better about working. in one small section at a time can be very helpful because often when you're simplifying at least the way I've done it, you pull everything out and try to figure out what you have, take inventory of it, figure out what it is. It's important where it's going to go and put it back into a good system for you, so the whole process can take a long time sometimes and especially when you're putting everything out for the first time, like for example if you're organizing your closet for me, it's been The most useful thing is to take everything out and turn it on in bed, then the bed is incredibly full of clothes, but you should only work on one piece at a time.

My next tip for decluttering and avoiding pitfalls, don't rely exclusively on guidance or opinions. From others, you may have seen a few different videos on how to order online. I know I've done enough on my channel to suggest a list of items to order. In the same way, maybe you have people in your life who have ordered certain things, but you can't imagine partying. With certain things, one thing we need to remember is that we are all different, we all live a different lifestyle, we have different interests and there is no one size fits all approach to minimalism.

You want to try to figure out what system is going to work for you, so if there's something that someone tells you to get rid of or recommends getting rid of and you don't want to keep it, there's no need to get rid of that item if you get value Outside of this, I don't get comments all the time and I see comments on some of these other videos, like how could you say get rid of books? I love my books, if you love your books, then don't get rid of them or anyone else. you could say well, don't get rid of it, you can use it for all these things, so if it works for you, then don't get rid of it and you can use it for all those things, when we actually get back to it.

On a personal level, you may know the ideal lifestyle for us. I think the goal of simplifying is for what you have in your life to add value or be useful. We want to eliminate those things that honestly don't make you. Happily, it only takes up space or financial resources and you don't even use it in a practical sense. We want to get rid of stuff like that because I know when we started we had a lot of stuff like that that we just had. but we don't really use or enjoy, there's a lot of inspiration out there and when people have those video lists like I know I've made four different items to sort, I always recommend using it like you already know, just a set of ideas and see if you can extract one or two new ideas from that that you can incorporate, so maybe they say a certain item and you think, oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that, but don't think, okay, let me use their exact list and go through each different section of my space and use it, since the rules do not depend only on the paths of others.

Create your own path of what works for you. My next tip is to not get too sentimental when we are decluttering. We may find ourselves feeling a lot of emotions with different elements and what I'm not saying is that you need to get rid of all your emotional or sentimental stuff, but it's important for us to stay level-headed when we're trying to sort things out and not build sentimental meaning or connection. emotional with the item that prevents us from getting rid of it, especially if it doesn't really have that sentimental purpose, it is very easy to create that sentimental bond with our items and if they are not sentimental items to start now, I am going to illustrate it with a couple of examples .

I asked Jake to select some random items from our space and with these items I am going to share some sentimental emotional story with them, but in the hope that you will see how silly it is when it is not your own things that you come up with these stories now these are the three things that I have no intention of getting rid of just because we don't have as many items anymore that are just waiting to be ordered, but I hope you still see how the example works, so one thing here is a dress of mine and It's a normal dress.

I like it a lot. I use it a lot when it's hot to go to school. I put it like a little jacket on top, but if I had to put together some kind of story about sentimental nosov, I could talk about it. Wow, you know? I wore this dress during really important moments of my first year of teaching or maybe it was a dress. I got like the first day of school or one of the last days of school, so you know, I really think about how special it was, you know, this is all garbage.

I'm doing them, but the idea that we could think of. of a certain item of clothing like oh wow, I wore that on this special day. I should keep it even if you use it more. I actually use this one, but you might have some pieces that say wow, you know, I wore that for this event, but if you don't wear it anymore and you don't plan on wearing it anymore, let's not get too excited, here's another random one, this is a toothbrush case. It's pretty hard to get excited about a toothbrush case, but I could say You know, I bought this for the first trip Jake and I took together for our late honeymoon that we took in 2015.

I could talk about that, but in general and not That's how I really feel, except for something as basic as a toothbrush case which I still use. I'm not getting rid of him. I could create a story. Here's a random pencil again. I will still continue using it. School supplies are very important when you are a teacher and you don't want to waste anything except with I came up with a story about this pencil, do you know how I got it, it was like a gift from a game, you could be too sentimental about the time I got it you received, about the color, oh, this symbolic color that we can become.

It's a little crazy when we try to justify the things we have, so stay level-headed, don't get too sentimental about the things we have, at the end of the day they're just things and lastly, don't let the items you've ordered remain. in your space for too long. Sometimes we start to have doubts. If we keep them in our space, we keep a container to organize in our closet, which is really convenient because we can add it at any time. Usually about once a month it will go to the donation centers, but know yourself and depending on what you're decluttering or how much you're decluttering, the sooner you can get that stuff out of your space, the better it will trend. which sometimes happens.

Let's say you were feeling really good, you got rid of a lot of things and you put them in a box or wherever and you actually don't manage to donate them or get rid of them in a short period of time and in a short time. you think hmm, I'm going to reach in there and take that back and put it back in my space and you might think that holding on to that allows you to make more decisions, but it could be problematic, I know that for myself for the most part. Part of it is that I haven't regretted the things I've ordered, so while it may be tempting, well, what if I set it aside?

Will I really use it? You might think that having it there in your space will allow you to do this, but sometimes it leads us to go back to our old habits and incorporate those elements back into our lives, which is not the point of decluttering, we are trying to eliminate that excess of things that do not clearly add value. If you thought it wasn't adding value when you were getting rid of it, it probably won't add value later, so here's a summary of the five decluttering mistakes, but if you want to have a really successful year of decluttering, I recommend you try do it. make it as fun as possible and be really goal-oriented about what you hope to accomplish in your space or in your life.

Those have also been really positive things that have helped me, as well as avoiding the pitfalls I mentioned earlier in this article. That said, if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, you can do so here. I post a new minimalism related video every week and have plenty of other decluttering videos that you can check out here if you're into it. Interested in learning more. I can't wait to see you in the next video. Bye bye.