i MASTERED decluttering once I learned this!

only a few short months ago my decluttering journey was nonexistent because your girl had a lot of things packed away in pretty bins that honestly felt a little bit overwhelming to deal with but once I figured out why it was so overwhelming it really helped me to master the process and today I'm sharing it with you welcome back my friends or welcome if you're new here my name is christe and I make content censored around realizing that no matter where we are in life no matter our age we are just on time to live the life of our dreams and I realiz realized a few months ago that the life of my dreams included getting rid of all of the stuff that no longer aligned with the person that I am now and that meant decluttering I started partially because I was getting ready to move in fact I am recording this the day before the movers come and this background is mad fake I mean it's real it's my home but it's completely staged because what it actually looks like is this this is it Yep this is what we're actually working with mhm wait keep turning keep turning but anyway I knew I had a lot of just foolishness tucked away that I was not willing to bring into our new home that just didn't serve any purpose for me for my marriage for the new space that we were going into so it had to go but it can be an overwhelming process and I have seen a lot of you in the comments talking about how you're on the same Journey or you're starting the journey and some of you are feeling like wow I feel like a failure or I feel like I can't get a handle on it and I don't understand why that is one of the biggest things that I realize about decluttering is that it is a layered process and depending on where you are what layer you're in will determine how easy it is for you to let a particular item go so today we're going to talk about what those layers are and how to deal with them so that no matter where you are in your decluttering journey you can also Master the process so the first thing is to find your layer now what does that mean for me I found that declutter in is like trying to get into the White House like you're not going to just roll up into the Oval Office because the closer you get the harder it is to be able to get through knowing exactly what layer you're in will help you to understand like why sometimes you feel super successful when you're decluttering and why other times you feel like you're a failure we have four of the layers and the first one I am calling out of sight out of mind these are things that we don't care about and we don't always know what it is sometimes we've HED on to these things because we've just had them for so long or we don't know what to do with them we've packed them and carried them from place to place and just haven't dealt with them for me this was stuff like mail OMG the male like me and male just do not have a good relationship with each other because they will just stack up and I'm not always sure exactly what to do with it I don't always go through it but I didn't have a shredder or I would be maybe just a little bit too lazy to try to hand shred those things and so they would just pile up whatever you're out of sight out of mind items are these are the things that are easiest to let go because we don't have any kind of emotional attachment to them the next layer I like to call happy memories these things remind us of Joyful times or they make us go a but we are not super attached or connected to them things like birthday cards children's artwork maybe gifts that we receive that we didn't really like um and they are nice but we're not really connected to them and we could let them go but for some reason we feel a little bit bad about without parting with them so we keep them the third layer is my ideal self someone commented this in a previous video and I was like girl you are so right this layer is where it starts to get hard for us to let things go because these are things that are attached to a previous version of our self or self where we felt like we were most confident we think at some point we may come back to this but they don't actually fit our lives anymore these are things like clothes that don't fit or that are way past our style or things that we have decided to save for later but that later never actually came this is also the level where we buy stuff things that we don't actually need but they call to us for some reason and we think maybe we're going to use them but what happens instead is that it just clutters up our house and waste our money and then the last layer which is the hardest level I am calling it it's so hard to say goodbye this is the heart layer and the hardest layer of letting things go and I think the easiest way for me to describe this is to use my S as an example my parents passed away when I was in my mid to late 20s and my family was always still is always like just my everything I have a whole storage that I pay for every single month full of stuff that is theirs because it felt like having those items in some way made me feel like I still had them I'm 43 now and it has taken me years to be like all right it's time to start getting rid of this stuff I don't know how many thousands of dollars I could calculate it for you but I really don't want want to thousands of dollars that I have spent holding on to these things that don't fit anywhere in my home the difficulty in this layer is trying to determine what are the things you want to keep what are the things that you value most and why and then what just you know what are the things that you just need to let go of you can be in any of these layers all in the same span of time while you're decluttering and how easy or how difficult it is to let an item go depends on what layer that item Falls in and when I realized this I started having this ongoing checklist of questions that I asked myself um in my head as I am sorting through different items that I'm going to share with you these are some things that I want you to consider and some questions that I want you to ask yourself as you are going through the decluttering process in each layer for layer one babe you have just got to put on your big girl or big boy pants and toss it that's all I got for you on that one if it's a lot of stuff break it up so that you're not doing it all at once because it can be all consuming if you let it so set it timer for a specific amount of time and just start throwing things away you have to realize that one is going to take a little bit of time so don't feel like you have to do it all at once break that task up into smaller bite-sized chunks while you're either watching TV or listening to music and make it something that is a little bit fun if you're like me and mail is one of your problems for mail and papers and sensitive info a lot of communities will have like shredding days where you can shred for either really cheap or for free and that is one option of being able to do it of course you can always take it to a place like Office Depot and Office Max they have shredders as well but just get rid of that stuff for your items that fall in Layer Two I want you to ask yourself do I want this item it is a very simple question and if the answer to it is no toss it sometimes I like to take a picture of it if it is like a memory so take a picture of a birthday card and it is somewhere that I can house digitally and it's not cluttering up space in my home but the actual thing of it has to go if you do want it or you're feeling on the fence about it then organize it and put in a place that you can easily see and that you can go back to and commit to from time to time actually going back to it and re-evaluating whether or not you still want that for layer three we are now getting into the things that matter to us so we're going to go through a series of questioning strategies and these questions will help you get to the root of why you feel like you need these things so I'm going to first go through what the questions are and then give an example of how you might answer these questions so here are my questions why do I want this I am actively working to use this by does this item make me feel good about myself and if the answer is no you're going to follow it up with I've kept this because right now where I am in my life would I buy this thing again so let's go through an example of what it would look like to answer these questions and we're going to do that with clothes for the first question of why do I want this you may say something like I want this because I want to wear it when I lose 20 lbs so your answer to that second question could be I am actively working to use this by cleaning up my diet and working out every day or your answer might be I am actively working to use this by actually I'm not actively working to use this I just want it and so the answer to that third question might be uh no this doesn't make me feel good about myself but I've kept it because I thought that I was going to get into it or maybe it's a yes I do feel good about myself when I look at it because I'm really expired expired inspired to lose this 20 lbs and then that last question of where I am in my life would I buy this if the answer to that is no you can get rid of that because it no longer fits who it is that you are anymore but if the answer to that is yes then you keep it these are just questions that as you go through them it will force you to either like put up or shut up if I'm really going to work to lose this 20 lbs so I can get to this outfit then great I'm going to do it but if I after going through these questions realize that I'm just keeping it because I just want it and I don't have any really good answers to that then those are things that you have to start letting go for layer four of those things that are in that heart layer of it's so hard to say goodbye I do want to encourage you that sometimes you do need a little bit of time I don't know exactly how much time that is especially if a like a loss is fresh the timing of that could look different sometimes you might need to just rip the bandage off and other times you may need to sit with it for a little bit longer it really depends on where you are but at some point maybe even early on in that loss you do have to address it and when you're ready to address it you ask yourself these questions when I see this I feel blank how does that thing actually make you feel I want to keep this because blank and then finally I I will make sure this is not cluttered by blank even if we have things that are hard to let go because we have some sentimental attachment to them we still have to make sure that they are organized and that they are not setting us back in our home they're not setting us back in our finances I have not been the greatest example of that like I said I have a storage back in Dallas that we still need to deal with and so now it's just a we just need to go down there and spend some time actually getting rid of that stuff but it's been way past time for me to deal with it and now it's just time I say this a lot but I feel like it is so important to have a really strong why connected to when we are doing something new or doing something that we know is going to impact our lives for the better because there will come a time when it gets really hard and we're not motivated for it anymore and we have to have that why to come back to in those times when it gets hard and these questions are intended to help us to start answering why we feel so connected to things things and to start coming to terms with being okay getting rid of things that no longer serve us I still work through these layers and as much as I have already decluttered there is a whole round of stuff that I need to go through again because now that I'm in different space my answers to those questions look a little bit different but I have found that this method has helped me to master my own decluttering so that is all I have for you I hope you enjoyed it if you did please give it a big thumbs up and in the comments let me know if there is a specific layer that you feel like you are working through also if you're not subscribed what are you doing I'm going to need you to jump on that all righty my friends I love you happy decluttering and I will see you in my [Music] [Music] next

Channel: KristiDoingThings

Views: 512,263

Keywords: how to declutter, decluttering tips, declutter with me 2024, life reset 2024, how to start decluttering, declutter your whole life, extreme decluttering minimalism, cleaning motivation 2024, things i wish I knew, i wish i knew, starting to declutter, decluttering my entire life, extreme decluttering and organizing, decluttering and organizing bedroom, how to master decluttering, master decluttering, i mastered decluttering, how i mastered decluttering

Id: 2kYzcZ6J8eQ

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024