Episode 1 – Pre New Year Refresh
This is such a great time of year to declutter so that you can be ready for anything coming in from the upcoming holidays.
I am literally sitting in my closet about to record ep 1 of my new podcast Organize your closet and your life will follow, and I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but this episode is not at all about organizing your closet. I will be doing a series on that subject, but realize that the first episode should really be about organizing, minimizing and decluttering on more general broad terms.
I am going to declare right her and right now that minimalism honestly helps you live your best life. Mostly in the areas of time, money and your physical spaces. Minimalism is being surrounded by things you love and that includes humans and pets. Life should be about love, about family, about food and about adventures, small ones and big ones. Life is about experiences not things. What are the experiences that you absolutely love doing? With whom, when and where. Think about this and start your own “Fun things” to-do list. What brings you the most joy? Think about this and start capturing it on a piece of paper. The power of putting pen or pencil to paper and the neurons that fire in your brain while doing this is ten-fold. The manifesting magic is working on the inside – I promise! Once these joyful things have been captured on paper, please start doing them. Start making these things a priority.
I want to help you cultivate more joy, so let’s talk about this a little more. Think about 3 things that you would like to spend more time doing. Do you want to cook more? Maybe go on nature walks or hikes? Learn a new skill, something you’ve been wanting to do forever like photography, watercolor art, play guitar, or learn about wood working. Maybe you want to learn a new language so next time you are able to travel, you won’t seem so much like a tourist or have that language barrier that can cause a damper on your visit. Doing things that bring joy can reshape the neurons in your brain and train them to seek more joy as time goes on. Imagine that. Let joy begin.
Now let’s talk about the excess stuff in your space. What are you holding onto? Do they hold value for you? What is most important to you? An easy way for me to grade my items is to ask myself if the items is beautiful to me or functional in my life. If the item is both beautiful and functional, then it’s a total winner. If it’s beautiful or functional and I love it then I will keep it! What value have you given all of your stuff and how much do you actually use them or how much energy do you spend on not using them? I know odd question right, but really think about that for a minute. These items can actually be a subconscious burden on your life. It could be these things that are holding you back. I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve seen too many small miracles come about after I have helped someone declutter there home. Losing 50 pounds, Leaving a toxic relationship, Leaving a job that was not aligned with their values, Finding true love, Finding your dream job, taking classes for self-growth, becoming a mentor, getting out of the house and volunteering and caring for others. I have been lucky enough to be witness to all of this and more.
Here are some easy ways to move towards minimalism. Let’s use a mindful approach as well so we are part of the solution (of climate change and pollution) and not part of the problem. Becoming a conscious consumer and changing your shopping habits and going through some no-buy months will really help reduce your carbon footprint. Start shopping second hand if you can or look for companies that focus on quality and not quantity. These companies might cost more, but they can help you live more sustainably and live lighter, no fast fashion here please. These companies use fair-trade practices and recyclable packaging to help you eliminate your use of plastic as well.
This is such a great time of year to declutter so that you can be ready for anything coming in from the upcoming holidays. I’m going to list off about 30 ways you can start living lighter immediately in the next 30 days! Don’t’ confuse this 30-day declutter with the 30-day minimalism challenge. That is much harder and we can talk about that a little later. These are all really easy to do and I guarantee when you are done you will become addicted to letting go and your muscle for releasing items will grow stronger and stronger! You can make a game out of this and start on any day that is convenient for you, or on the first day of any month that you can dedicate to eliminating and releasing items in your home. It is at this time that you will be ready for more challenging decluttering challenges:
1. Remove 10 items from your wardrobe. These would be part of the 80% you never wear!
2. Empty out your purse or wallet and do a quick clean up. Get rid of all the extra tissues, paper stubs, receipts, lint and try to make this a regular habit.
3. Do you have a junk drawer? Let’s de-junk it today and go through it. See if you can find proper homes for most of the items and let the rest go.
4. Socks and underwear. Please go through your unmentionables drawer and remove anything with holes in it or anything that is worn. I usually relegate these items to the garage rags bin. Use them up to the best of your ability before they become trash.
5. Go through your phone and stored media items. Take time to go through your pictures and delete all of those extras. Media clutter makes your phone slow down and makes it harder for you to locate what pictures you might be looking for. If you don’t want to do this all in one day, I totally understand. You can start today and spread out the work. I did about 10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks until I was happy with the percentage of storage being used.
6. Clear one surface in your home and make it totally clean and tidy. This will make cleaning so much easier. As you get used to seeing more of your surfaces this way you will want to repeat this feeling throughout your home wherever possible.
7. Remove paper and work on digitizing many items. Go through your receipts, bills and documents and only keep the absolutely necessary documents.
8. Go through any office supplies and stationery you might have and eliminate items that might have too many duplicates. Did you buy a box of 100 hanging file folders? Once I do my Personal Paper Podcast you will realize you only need to keep about 15-25 of them. Donate the rest please. Do you have a batch of pens being held together by a giant rubber band. If they are in working condition and you just don’t need to have 60 pens on hand, please donate them. Of course, anything not working is just trash.
9. Do you have too much furniture, side tables or chairs in your space? Try to remove one or two pieces that are extraneous and enjoy the extra floor space. This makes it easier to vacuum as well. Is any of your furniture broken? Do you plan on fixing it? If not, let it go.
10. Go through your refrigerator and freezer. Clear out all of your old, unused or expired items. Clean the shelves with your natural cleaning spray and put everything back nicely. Challenge yourself to not go grocery shopping until you eat everything that is in your fridge and freezer. If you need the staples that’s fine, but really try to hold out as long as you can. Then you can replenish, knowing everything coming in is fresh.
11. Go through your pantry and eliminate all unused or expired items. If you want to go one step further you could organize your remaining items into glass jars and make nice labels for them. Also, make sure you are going through your pantry and eating the items, not just holding onto them for someday in the future. A fun game I like to play once in a while is to not buy any pantry items for a month or two to see how much of it I can get through before I really need something. Once you have completely used something up, you can go buy it!
12. Spend some time today unsubscribing from unwanted emails. Put your inbox in alpha order and go through them one by one. It takes time, but you’ll be happy you did it. Create folders for everything and try to keep your inbox at 25 emails or less. Once you are done with this gargantuan task, just spend a few minutes everyday dropping the emails you want to keep into their respective folders and deleting the rest. If you are drowning in email-clutter, consider just changing your email address and starting fresh. People who really need to find you, will.
13. Find 5 pairs of shoes that are uncomfortable or don’t fit correctly. Go ahead and finally let those go. Today is the day your feet will thank you.
14. Minimize your beauty routine and go through all of your products to get rid of items you aren’t using. Like broken hair appliances, broken hair ties, old make-up or lotions and old nail polish.
15. Go through your jewelry and let go of any broken or solo items missing their mate. If you are keeping something that needs repair, set up a reminder to take it to the jeweler in the next day or so.
16. Unwanted gifts or hand-me-downs you didn’t ask for. We all have these. Just know that the giver of the gift, even if they don’t really know you at all and got you something you’d never want and you’d never use lol lol, just know that their joy in giving the gift already happened for them. Their part in the exchange is done. As the receiver, it’s now your responsibility to determine how you will use the gift and if it is even useful to you. If it isn’t, you can bravely ask for the receipt and say you need a different size or color etc. I’ve done this before and ended up returning items and getting something totally different that I truly loved and would use and cherish for years to come. I would go back to the person and tell them that what they bought me in the exchange is much appreciated. If you don’t want to do that, just know that it is also okay to just donate the item out, or re-gift to someone you know would love it! Don’t worry, Seinfeld wont come after you.
17. Find 10 old/outdated or unused electronics or electronic cords that have no mate. Please recycle these responsibly and bring to your local recycling center. They should have a bin for corded items.
18. Think about letting go of any physical magazine subscriptions or the newspaper, or articles you might be holding onto for reference. Remember that everything can be found online. For articles you are holding onto where you took the time to clip them, take a picture and then recycle the paper.
19. Do you have multiple linens? Go through and see what you truly use and what you can let go of. Linens take up a lot of space and you really only need a few sets per bed. And maybe 3 -4 towels per person. If you have too many old towels, turn them into garage towels and move them there, or cut them up to use as rags, or donate a batch of old towels and rugs to your local animal shelter. They will love you for it!
20. Let’s get rid of unused and chemical cleaning products and try to move towards using more natural items to clean your home. I love using vinegar and distilled water with essential oils as an all-purpose spray. I also use baking soda and lemon for items that are stained. This works for clothing and in the kitchen for things like a stained teapot or a pan with baked on food waste.
21. Physical photos with duplicates. Batch them up for the people that might want them and do a mass mailing out to people. In the least, they will get a kick out of seeing hard-copy photos and enjoy the memory.
22. Art Supplies that are broken, dried up or past their prime. Go through all of your kids stuff too. Go ahead and trash what you can, donate what you can and recycle the paints responsibly.
23. Sports equipment that is broken and beyond repair. They do take up lots of space so why keep it?
24. Holiday décor is something I go through yearly and try to continue to whittle it down more every year. I am now down to 5 blue bins of Christmas décor that I absolutely love. The tree is in a separate tree duffel bag.
25. Go through all of your plastics or Tupperware and get rid of extras or badly stained items. Better yet, slowly upgrade to glass Tupperware and only keep a few of the plastics for when you offer leftovers to a guest. You can tell them to keep it!
26. Clean your car trunk and eliminate all the extraneous items that found their way in and, of course, all the trash that seems to accumulate. I keep my car virtually empty except for a car organizer that I love which stays in the trunk.
27. CDs, DVDs and Books. Go through each one and see if it is still meaningful to you. If not, you can probably let it go.
28. Phone apps. Let’s delete apps that are never used. Your phone can tell you what your most used apps are.
29. Sentimental items that you’ve been holding on to. This can be a tough one, but I urge you to take a picture and keep the item as a digital memory. Per Ryan and Josh, we don’t let go of the memories when we let go of the stuff. For children’s beloved artwork, take pictures of the ones you want to keep, frame the ones you love and want to highlight. Then you can make a digital book of your child’s artwork and share it with them as well when they leave the nest!
30. Today is just for you to relax and revel in your lighter space. Lighten your mind today by giving yourself permission to just relax and veg out or do something fun for yourself! You deserve it!