DECIDE ONCE to Declutter Faster (much faster!)

Well, when it comes to

declutter

ing, there's one thing that stops almost everyone, so today let's talk about how you can overcome indecision and

decide

once

,

decide

once

on every item in your home and never have to deal with it or doubt it again. yourself again and me too. I want to remind you that tomorrow we will start our fall guest series with Cass from Clutterbug, so I have a fun game planned that she doesn't know about, so I think it will be fun, I think we will laugh a lot, but it will take place on our page Facebook, it will be a Facebook Live, don't worry if you don't have Facebook, we will repost the videos on our blog afterwards, we will share the link here so you can still.

You'll be able to view it, but you can also submit questions in advance. There's a link below and we have lots of other fun guests lined up as well as Joshua Becker, Natalie Bennett, Dr. Paul from Live On Purpose in a Bear House with Simple Families. and Whitney from Be The Village, so we hope to see you on Facebook tomorrow. Well hello, I'm Dawn from The Minimal Mom and we love being able to help you

declutter

quickly because I know how crippling it can be sometimes and always. What strikes me most is that we are all more similar than different, our clutter, all our clutter is very similar and we obsess over the same things, we go to tidy up and then we start to question ourselves, we feel indecisive and really We worry about making the wrong decision, so today let's talk about how we can quickly and easily get to a point where we can decide once where each item is that we hold trying to decide if we should keep it or quickly tidy it up. and easily decide once and get it over with so that we can enjoy the benefits of simple living and not just think about it or try to do it, but actually simplify our home and enjoy it, so I have two tips that I believe. make the biggest difference when it comes to the ability to decide once and get it over with, the first thing is to establish rules for decluttering so that it is not so subjective and then the other thing is to always have a trash bag and a donation box So let's talk about this first, how do we gain self-confidence and take some of the guesswork out of ordering?

So I know that a lot of us, when we go to order, we get to the first thing and pick it up and everything. We suddenly start to doubt ourselves and what this really boils down to very often is our self-confidence. Do we have the confidence in ourselves to make the right decision? Often the fear is that I will make the wrong decision, children. They will come home and wonder where the sleeping queens went even though they haven't played with them in two years and I decided to order them. My fear is that they'll suddenly wonder where it is or we're going to We have a family game night and there are no games to play or something, so the fear is that we're going to make the wrong decision and it's hard, though. , is that these decisions actually become very subjective or very dependent on the state of mind we are in.

We are in the state of our mind and well-being right now, so what one day could be a very easy and clear decision, the next can seem difficult and difficult and like a really big decision to make correctly, anything that feel? This happens to many of us, so what I suggest is that we set rules around our ordering so that it is no longer subjective but very objective, so many of these rules will sound familiar to us as the one year rule if No I've used it in a year, so it's time to let it go and why?

Because we only use 20 of the things in our house, 80 of them are never used, so if this item has fallen into that 80, never used last year, never used it, then chances are it's almost guaranteed which won't be used next year either, so this one year rule is actually very reliable and you can really rely on it, so I would even suggest What I'm doing is having a way to keep it in front of you because again we're trying to make it objective and not subjective so you can write it on a post-it note. I have a printable below where you can print it out, but Literally, right now you could take a post-it note and write a year and now wherever I go home, I'm going to take this with me and stick it on the wall in front of wherever I'm working and then when I get to an item I'm not sure about, I look at the post-it note and say no, I'm just following the rules of ordering a year.

Have I used it last year? No, I haven't, so I'll let it go. Another rule that I think is really useful is that if you've forgotten it, then you have to use it or lose it, so again I can just write down here use it or don't I have super cute handwriting, lose it use it or lose it because if we've forgotten it in the past it's we will almost certainly forget it again and we will be able to. Not using an item we've forgotten has no value to us, so that's another great really reliable rule: if I've forgotten it, I have to use it or I'll lose it, as long as you have your post-it notes.

Another thing that can be helpful is to put here one main reason why you are decluttering: to spend more time with your loved ones. You want to be a better father. You want to make your house easier to keep clean. You want to make your home easier to keep clean. To make the house more peaceful, it can also be helpful to put that here. I have too

much

inventory. I want the house to be peaceful. So again, when we make some of these decisions that we have to make, we can say, "Okay." I want to keep this, maintain it and add it to my inventory or is it more important to me right now that I have a quiet home, so it depends on what is more motivating for you, but sometimes keep the end goal right in front of you.

It can also be very useful. The next tip so that we can get into the habit of deciding once and being able to tidy up very quickly is to always have a trash bag and a donation box with you, so we talk a lot about this in our video on how to tidy up without making a big mess and these two items are so key to that a trash bag preferably black but we used all of ours when we were tidying up the girls dorm um but a black trash bag and a donation box and always Have this with you and why it is because we want to make it really easy to get rid of things, so if I have a donation box here and I come across this storage container again that I haven't used for the past year, I even forgot about it. it was here I want it to be really easy to part with it so if I have a donation box here with me I can literally put this in there I'm not making a ton but then I have to take it to my car later no I have my box of donations right here and I'm just going to paste this and the good thing about this is I think you'll find if you trust me on this and you'll have a donation box and a trash bag with you, you'll find that it's often easier to put it in one of those two containers to donate it or throw it away than to completely deal with the item or find a permanent home, so if I find myself like this I play that it's actually one of our favorites and I would highly recommend it as a Christmas gift, especially I'm trying, I don't know what are the ages, from eight to adults, yes, if your children are eight and up, even Corbin. involve your sixes and sevens they like it too.

I highly recommend it, but let's say I find a game in my linen closet and we haven't played it in years. No, no one will miss it? It's

much

easier to just put it on. the domination box than taking it to the play closet instead of getting up, stopping what I'm doing and putting it away, it's a lot easier to just put it in the donation box so we want to remove any barriers to success so if I have to carry something to the trunk of your car where the donations go, that can be a barrier, if my donation box is here, I throw it in and continue to work my way through the space that I'm tidying up and so this is huge and I know that some of these things are like well, yeah, that makes sense.

I ask you to trust me if you ever feel indecisive when it comes to decluttering or worried about making mistakes. Try it. Take these out and follow them completely and I think you will find them very useful. The last and last thing is to use short periods of time, so the problem with ordering is that we get fatigued very quickly from decision fatigue because each item We are holding on to Do I need it? I used it last year. Did I forget I was here? It's almost guaranteed. I will use it in the future if I keep it and so, article after article, it is actually very.

By testing our emotional energy, you might wake up feeling completely energized and full of physical energy, but this is a different type of energy that we are using and therefore it is very fatiguing, so if we set the timer for five minutes , 10 minutes, we have our our sticky notes with our rules we have our donation box and our trash bag so we are fully prepared we go to an area that we wanted to mess up we set the timer for five minutes you will feel very prepared and equipped and I am ready to making these decisions and knowing that it's only for a short period of time, I know for myself if I'm okay, I only have five minutes, I want to move quickly and get as many things done as I can in those five minutes. and then I can finish if I want to continue, I can, but if I'm okay, that was enough, I put the box, the trash bag in the trash can and then I give myself permission to finish during that period of time. but you will find that by doing it for short periods of time you are not overloading your brain, you are not feeling overwhelmed or tired by the process by doing this even once a day, but you will probably find yourself doing it more frequently.

Because it feels more manageable, you start to gain momentum and you gain confidence in yourself because, as we said at the beginning, that's usually what's missing when we find ourselves very indecisive and worried about making the wrong decision, is confidence. on ourselves and what's great is that this grows over time and we gain self-confidence over time even when we just finished the girls' bedroom so I took the comforters from their beds because we got the bedding from Betty, which we are very grateful for. So I had her old quilts and I thought, "Well, we should keep them for foster care, but ideally for that I'd want something that's gender neutral, I mean, these are very feminine, they're pink, you know?", so I thought, "You know." What I'm going to donate them to is because I want them to get used to them, I don't want them to sit in storage or save them for someday as we just don't keep things like that so I decided to donate them.

And it was a pretty easy decision because I knew I couldn't guarantee that we were going to use it in the future and now I have the confidence built up over years of doing this that we just won't miss out on these things, if at all. What I appreciate most is having less inventory to manage, not having to remember it's there or not having this burden every time I see it and then in storage I feel like oh, I have to remember to use it, oh, I need to use that, oh, what a bummer. it's still in storage, oh I thought we would have used it by now, so we don't even realize how these things are hanging over our heads, so I'd rather just pass it on, get this over with for now and not have to think. about this again and I hope this is helpful.

I'd love to know if there have been other similar tips or tricks that have helped you overcome indecision or the fear of making the wrong decision. If you can share it below, it is very helpful. You might also want to go back and visit last week's video. We talked about how minimalism can lead to greater happiness by not having to maintain so much stuff and getting stuck at that main level of Maxwell's hierarchy of needs, so I think my mom is like that. Wow, you're getting very scientific on me. I think it was actually pretty manageable, but I hope this helps and I hope last week's video was helpful too, but you can find a link to that below or just let us know.

I also like things that hang on you especially and then we can have conversations about that just in the comments too, so thank you very much for watching if you haven't already, we hope you'll subscribe so we can spend more time. together, a thumbs up is the best compliment you can give us and we definitely hope to see you again soon.