Declutter Motivation (Don't Wait Start Now)

join me today for a decluttering motivation video compilation I started decluttering quite a while ago and I jumped right into the process I really wanted to downsize the items we had but not only just to declutter and simplify everything but also to become more minimal [Music] I like to declutter slowly and one area at a time so right here we're going through my boys toys and I'm just deciding what we can live without and here's the pile that we ended up donating please where we used to live this front closet stored all of our supplies for doing projects and some of my tools and I found that I was storing a whole bunch of things that I just didn't need and was probably never going to use I was left with all these extra bins and this bag of things is what I decided to let go of this is my closet after I have already done a lot of decluttering but as you can see there are still things that I need to go through like these bags and I can always find a few items each season that I haven't worn and once I did that initial declutter then I just picked items that I knew I wasn't wearing to declutter each season [Music] as I watched this a few years after this initial towel declutter I am so surprised at how many towels I had I find it almost shocking now but here I am just going through everything and picking out the towels that I am no longer needing or that are super worn out and I found that you can declutter towels to animal shelters if you can't donate them to your local donation location [Music] thank you this large file cabinet always bothered me in my bedroom I just couldn't believe we needed that much paper so as I started to go through this file cabinet I realized we were storing so many out of date items that we just didn't need things that could be found online so I decluttered and recycled this paper and then I was actually able to get rid of this file cabinet oh this was a really fun challenge that I did I have a full video on this challenge it's Gathering 60 items in 60 minutes to see if you can quickly declutter going through your house and finding what you can [Music] foreign this is a large bin of photos and yearbooks that I decided to go through and see what I could get rid of and then I ended up going to my parents house where I had a bunch of things stored from when I was a child and a teenager and I had left everything there when I moved to New Zealand so I thought it was about time to go through see what I could declutter and downsize [Music] it was funny and surprising to see how many random items were left here at my parents house and how much I used to keep as a child and a teenager after going through all of this stuff I ended up decluttering most of it and only saving a few mementos for my sentimental item box [Music] those were donated and decluttered [Music] here I'm just going through my makeup and some of my bathroom supplies and trying to downsize all the items that I no longer need [Music] I decided to declutter these items because they were either almost empty or I just know I'm never going to use them what you see here are all my bathroom supplies and all my makeup and that's pretty minimal compared to what I used to have foreign [Music] these are all of our backup supplies and items that I had probably purchased and then realized I didn't actually like so I'm just going through these products and seeing what we can use up and then what we will never use and should get rid of foreign [Music] one tip I learned since becoming more minimal is I no longer buy things for the future and I normally don't stockpile items I have the few things that I know I like and I stick to those items that I know I will use [Music] thank you [Music] now I'm just narrowing down our towels I ended up keeping two towels per person in our family plus some beach towels so this is what it looked like before and it's much more organized now and looks so much better [Music] I'm folding these towels with the konmari folding style and I really like the way that keeps the towels organized and they're easier to grab out and not have the whole pile fall over [Music] foreign sometimes it can be hard to get into the mood to declutter so I'm going to show you all different clips of me helping my friends and family declutter as well as a bunch of decluttering projects that I have done throughout the past few years to keep our home nice and clutter free my first tip is to read some books on decluttering simple living and minimalism there are a ton of books out there and they're pretty easy to find one I love is the art of Swedish death cleaning I will link that down below and I have a video on that as well but those type of books can really get you into the decluttering mindset and they also have a ton of tips and tricks in them on how to get through the decluttering process you can actually read this whole blog post that I will also link below on all of these decluttering tips which might give you some more motivation and ideas my second tip is to watch someone declutter there are so many videos on YouTube with people decluttering it can be very motivating to see a before and after clip of someone decluttering or to see a before and after picture of a home that has been decluttered another great reason to watch a motivational decluttering video is it may give you a few tips on different ways to declutter because I find most people declutter in their own unique way and that gives me a lot of ideas and when they're done decluttering a lot of the time they will organize their home and sometimes I get some new ideas on how to organize different areas of my house I like to just jot down a list of how I want to feel and how I want my space to function and this can really help to to be a motivating factor when it comes to letting go of the items that may be holding you back and cluttering up your life just start and I think this is kind of hard for some people but start small get the ball rolling once you get going it is easier to carry on decluttering more and more I like to just pick a small easy area in my home one drawer or just pick up a few items that I know have been bothering me that I don't want anymore put them in a bag and take them out to your car or wherever you hold your stuff that you're waiting to donate and go through what you can when you have the time and this really does work everything in little bite size pieces is easier than trying to think of decluttering your whole home as one large project so as you can see here we were decluttering my mom's garage and this was something that we had started way back she had been decluttering things for months and then we finally decided to go for it and finish the rest of the project and if we hadn't done all those little decluttering projects leading up to this we would have never had this huge transformation in this decluttering clip I was at my parents house and we decided to go through and declutter this little shelving unit that is in their garage my mom had not gone through any of this for years I would say 20 maybe 30 years of stuff here that had just been pushed to the back so by pulling everything out we could see everything that she used all the time and then the items that were expired or stuff that she didn't ever use and didn't really want to keep anymore and then we just sorted through all of these items putting them into piles of to get rid of and to keep and since she had so much we decided to start putting back the stuff she wanted to keep just to get it out of the way and we weren't really organizing at this point we were just setting it all back on the shelves and we made sure that all the things that she did decide to get rid of we put down into a box so she could go through and drop off at one of those collection places for chemicals and we did that a few weeks later she was able to fit so many things on here that she had previously stashed other places so it still looked full but it was very organized here I am helping another one of my friends declutter and if you've never decluttered with a friend I would definitely recommend it it's not only motivating but it is so much fun you can laugh through things that might have been irritating if you were decluttering by yourself and the process does go by faster because you have someone to pull things out and to bounce ideas off of and talk through problem areas or things that you're unsure of so definitely decluttering with someone else is a huge way to get motivated our goal with her room was to get all of the shoes off the floor and up into the closet and we were able to do it at the end of this decluttering project which took a few hours we had her whole room completely organized with nothing left out on the floor it was a big shock to see how much my friend was decluttering here and how awesome her room looked once we were completely finished and had everything organized and put away when we moved into our current home of course when you're moving into a new space it is hard to figure out where you're going to store things until you've lived there for a little while so when we first moved in we just threw everything that we thought made sense into different closets and this was about after maybe six months of living here I decided I wanted to pull everything out see what I could declutter and reorganize everything into a way that made a lot of sense because of course we had things that were in different locations that could have been better used in a different location and we were also starting to do a lot of work on our home for instance this closet that you can see behind me here we ended up taking that whole closet out and making an entertainment unit and then with the extra space that was left over from that closet when you head down that Hall there was enough space for a cabinet to be added so of course I think once you get used to a home that you're living in it's way easier to organize and declutter as you're living there but this was just a really great time to pull everything out after about six months of living here and reorganize it and see where it could be moved to I always find the hardest part with decluttering is number one getting started finding the motivation which I hope you're getting motivated by watching this video but also just taking the time to pull everything out and start the Sorting process sometimes pulling the items out can be the most time consuming part of the decluttering process because because it just takes a while to get everything out once it's out it's kind of easy to see what you don't need anymore and what could be going into a different location but just pulling it all out can be a little bit of a deterrent to decluttering so I always say just start small this was kind of a large project but you could always just start with one closet I decided to do all three at once because there were items that should have been in one closet altogether and there were too many things mixed into different closets so it just made sense to pull everything out and at the time we were keeping this closet for a short time so we decided to make it into the kids closet but that was very short-lived because not long after that we actually did away with that closet and then this is where we decided to store all the Linens and we have the rule of trying to stick with one towel per person plus we have some beach towels and some junk towel as well and then the main closet which is our biggest closet in our house which looks great now that it's organized and you can see we have some extra space here this is where we keep our extra toiletries and backup supplies every season I like to go through my boys room either with them or without them and I just pull out all the toys that I notice that they are no longer playing with or that are really just junky things that maybe came to us through a birthday bag or stuff that they just don't need and this is the way I do it I just dump it out look through it pull out the items and get rid of them and a lot of the time they're involved but I was able to find this big pile from just 10 minutes of going through stuff when it comes to shoes I like to think about what I'm actually wearing and what I think I will wear what is comfortable and that allowed me to get rid of quite a few pairs of shoes in this decluttering session I had kept these boots and dress shoes for a long time even though some of them were deteriorating and I was just not wearing these so I was able to find quite a few pairs of shoes with that way of thinking and all of these were decluttered when it came to my office I had put everything into this closet when we first moved here and as you can see we didn't have any shelves or any way to really organize anything so it was all shoved in there and to be honest I had a lot of bins of craft supplies and art supplies that I thought I would use in the future and I just found myself year after year not using these supplies I had gone through them when we first decided to declutter and become more minimal but I really thought thought I would use them and then over time I realized I hadn't been and this was the perfect time to pull everything out look through and get really serious with myself on what I was gonna possibly use and what I would never use and I'm even looking at this now a few years later and I can see a big tub of glitter and things that I still haven't used so it's probably about time to go through this again but what I do in general when I'm thinking about going through this type of stuff is will I actually use it in the next year or maybe two years that's a little bit long but if I'm not going to then I need to get rid of it because in all honesty I probably will never use it and so that's what I was doing here and there were a lot of supplies that pens and markers that actually were junk they had dried out so I was able to declutter quite a lot out of these boxes and bins and it even allowed me to empty out a few of them and now looking at this I think I'm inspiring myself to go through this again here we have old electronics just things you end up saving and not thinking about but my biggest goal with this was to get enough stuff decluttered so I could organize it better and then my husband being a carpenter actually built a shelf for me so I could get everything organized and put into its space that made sense and really just keep the things that I use all the time and I know I will want to use for future craft and art projects another thing I was focusing on was taking anything out of the bins that had been stored up in the top of the closet and putting it into my drawers that I use all the time so I could go through these things and use them and not just store them away like I tend to do if I don't have it in a drawer where I get to it all the time if it's up put away I will never see it I will never use it so that's another reason why I'm trying not to store too many backup supplies anymore because if I have it put away and I just forget about it and then I don't use it in time or I just end up buying more because I didn't even know I had it now that I've have these shelves in here it is so easy to stay organized and keep everything in its perfect place so I can find it easily grab things out and actually work on art projects and get to my cameras and everything so quick and easy with the shelves so I do have to say that having some organizational systems in place really helps I like to declutter my clothes seasonally so anytime the season changes drastically from winter to the warmer months spring summer that is when I like to go through and just re-evaluate everything in my wardrobe see if it still fits at this moment when I was going through everything I was pregnant so a lot of the items weren't going to fit but I could still ask questions like did I wear this item in the last year or how did I feel when I wore it when it did fit and so by asking all those questions I was able to declutter quite a few items but going through my wardrobe seasonally really helps me to stay clutter free and I'm also trying to only buy things when I'm replacing an item so if I decide some things worn out or I just don't like it anymore that's when I will replace it if needed and a lot of the time I find that I don't even need to replace the item and I can just declutter it and have more space in my closet and keep the things I truly love to wear out of this pile I'm letting go of all of these items I can't actually believe that I've been able to fill a whole entire laundry basket here I just got an idea I think it might be interesting to count all these items so one two three four five pairs of shoes one two three four five six seven [Applause] eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen Seventeen oh my gosh 18 19 20 21. 22 23 24. 24 items of clothing that I'm letting go of time to head back to the second hand store drop all this off towards the end of every year and every season I like to go through my home and see what I can declutter and what we are no longer using seven items right there going eyelash curler and then this is some sort of old foot scraper that I'm gonna get rid of these two he had told me before that I could declutter some of the extra belts I'm also throwing everything into this box right here and I'm going to decide what I'm gonna do with it later I don't think we need this anymore I'm also going to get rid of this giant mirror during this particular decluttering session I was just going around my house room to room opening up closets and seeing what I could pull out and get rid of if there was anything that jumped out at me I wasn't necessarily decluttering the whole room and pulling everything out of the closet which I know is great if you really want to do a huge declutter session but I also find it can be just as productive to do this type of decluttering where you just go around open a drawer see if you can find a few items maybe five items or however many jump out at you pull them out and throw them straight into a box to be decluttered and gone through it's super quick and easy and I love to do this at the end of every single year because I always find so much I had set this box aside about six months months prior to this declutter session and it was just full of my kids toys that I noticed that they weren't playing with anymore and things that had just been sitting on a shelf and I guess you could call this the wait and see box but opening it six months later we didn't really need anything that was in there now I stopped by my mom's house to help her go through some of her cupboards and we were able to find so many extra junk towels that she didn't need and so we decluttered those to an animal shelter during this session I headed back another time and we were trying to see if we could declutter her office in about 30 minutes this was a really fun decluttering session and I have a whole blog post on how to declutter a room fast and within 30 minutes we started by just Gathering all the items that didn't belong in her office because her office can tend to be somewhat of a drop zone and things collect in there that don't actually belong in there so we were going around with their basket collecting all those items that needed to go into their proper place somewhere else in her home and getting them out of this room once we had gone through and gathered all of those things then we could dig a little bit deeper and get into the actual decluttering process and there were a few times I know when my mom said oh don't worry about that or we'll just do this another time and I said no let's just do it now and see what we can how far we can get within the 30 minutes and so we dug under her table here and we found a lot of things that she wanted to sell on eBay or find the proper place for them to go to they were handed down to her through my grandpa and so she just had all these extra items that took a little bit longer to deal with so what we decided to do was Market with um some tape of what it was and then actually put it in the garage so it wasn't cluttering up her office since she didn't have time to sell it at this moment in time and so that really helped to clear everything out and then we started digging in and found this to declutter but as you can see here's the before and here is going to be the after of how big of a difference this made just to make some quick decisions on what actually belonged in here and what we could get rid of I'm always surprised when ever I decide to declutter either my home or with my mom at her house it's always so surprising because we've been doing it for so long that we can still find items to declutter half the time my mom will say oh I don't have any more to declutter but you can come over and we can look around and see what there is and we always find so much that she's changed her mind about that she now wants to get rid of and it's the same in my home as time goes on I revisit different areas and I always tend to find more things that I'm just not using or I don't need and so here we went through her kitchen and we were able to find so many things all of this on the couch here she decided she didn't need because she wasn't using it and then I headed back not too long after that kitchen declutter and we decided to go through some of her cabinets and drawers just to see if there was anything and again my mom had said I just went through here so there's probably not going to be much and we found so many things that were either expired extremely old had been in there 30 years and never been used and we just found so much so whenever you think that you already decluttered sometimes it can help just to glance in again and see if there are any items that are now catching your eye that you haven't used in the last few years and maybe are expired or just something that you don't need anymore and now we're heading to my garage if you follow along with my channel you might have seen these videos but I wanted to just show it again really quickly I started with the No Mess decluttering system by Dana K white and this really got the ball rolling for me what it is is you just try to find the trash first and then you take each item if it belongs to different area straight to that place where it belongs and it really just helped to get the ball rolling for this garage declutter we were inspired after that and then we headed straight into going through everything else the garage was somewhat of a disaster area but we got shelves to get it organized and we decluttered so much we got rid of all the extra wood that we were never gonna use or had been sitting there for years we found a lot of tools that were either broken or my husband wasn't using anymore that could go and we found a lot of items that we had used on previous projects on our house that we were now done with using and we didn't need anymore so all of those could go and this definitely took a lot of time and energy but it was about four days of going through everything setting up the shelves and organizing it all to make makes such a huge transformation so if you have a little bit of time I definitely would encourage you to just take that time to go through and look at what could be decluttered and what you could possibly organize differently to make your home more functional this made our garage so functional and every time I walk into my garage now I have a huge smile on my face with how organized it is and how easily we can get in and out of the garage and start on a project when we want to I hope you were able to declutter along with me and you can click right here to continue watching more videos thanks for watching bye

Channel: Shannon Torrens

Views: 33,868

Keywords: Declutter Motivation (Don't Wait Start Now), decluttering motivation, declutter motivation, shannon torrens, swedish death cleaning

Id: NVG39Hr3NOY

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023