The Secret Laws of Decluttering

decluttering your home is a lot like this tomato sometimes it's less about knowing what to do and more about doing what you know I might know that a tomato is a fruit but that doesn't mean that I should put it in a fruit salad knowledge only becomes powerful when we are able to appropriately act upon it and that's why today I wanted to share a few laws of decluttering and how to make those laws work for you to help you speed up your decluttering progress so that you can reach your goal of a clutter-free home faster and easier than ever before number one Parkinson's law Parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion what that means is that tasks will often take longer to complete if more time is given to them I know that when I was back in high school and even college no matter how far in advance I was assigned to homework or a project I would always wait until the last minute to tackle it and then I'd be frantically trying to get it done right the day before the same thing goes for decluttering and if you don't set clear deadlines for your decluttering projects you're likely to procrastinate on starting or end up with bags of clutter sitting around in the trunk of your car for weeks or even months at a time because you never get around to donating them so how can you use Parkinson's law to your advantage well like I said before one way is to set clear deadlines map out where you want to declutter and give yourself a realistic amount of time that it should take you to declutter that space and another idea is to set a day of the week that is your designated day to get the Clutter out of your home setting timers can also help keep you focused on the task at hand if you're someone who tends to get distracted and go off on what I like to call side quests like starting to do the dishes when you should be decluttering your kitchen however even the clearest deadlines and the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and this brings me to Murphy's Law which is a humorous law of nature that states anything that can go wrong will go wrong I can't even tell you how many times I had something go wrong when I was trying to declutter my home like for example the time that I was trying to drive to the donation center to get rid of some of my unwanted stuff only to find out that there was road construction and the route was closed or the days when I was feeling super motivated about a project that I plan to tackle while my kids are at school that day only to wake up and realize they were sick and I would need to keep them home instead I know that it can be frustrating when things go wrong but getting upset about it and giving up is not the way to go instead have contingency plans so that when things do go wrong which they inevitably will at some point at least you have a backup plan for how to respond in that situation in my case I knew other donation centers and Charities that I could drive to instead to get rid of my stuff and I still tackled the decluttering projects while my kids were home sick I just had them either lay in the bed next to me if I was in the bedroom or I had them lay on the couch if I was in the living room wherever I was decluttering I kept them there and cozy with me and that ended up being a win-win situation because not only was I getting my own to-do list done I was also teaching my kids at the same time and speaking of Murphy's Law I was supposed to shoot this video my son tells me that he's not feeling so good well wakes up this morning and guess what he's got a temperature and on top of that my other son has a dentist appointment and that's why my kitchen currently looks like this Murphy's Law in action number three on this list is the Paradox of choice and in Psychology this Paradox observes that when people are given too many options to choose from instead of being happy and feeling like they're getting what they want what happens is it increases their stress levels and problematizes decision making think about how tired you feel after a decluttering session and how physically exhausting it is to pull out sort through get rid of and put back the things that you want to keep but then on top of that all of these choices that we have to make about whether to keep something or let it go can lead to something called decision fatigue which makes us feel mentally and emotionally drained and the thing about humans is when we are drained and exhausted we are less capable about making good decisions to the point that sometimes we get so overwhelmed by all the choices that we just give up and avoid making any decisions at all to combat these challenges it can be helpful to break your decluttering projects down into small more manageable chunks so that you're not so physically emotionally and mentally fatigued by all of the choices that you need to make in one go and in many cases decluttering can be made easier by reducing the number of options that you have available to you consider this quote from the book essentialism in which the author argues that in many cases we can learn to make one-time decisions that will help make thousands of future decisions so that we don't get exhausted asking the same things over and over again one example of this might be if you're decluttering your clothes that you choose only to keep the clothes that fit you right now therefore if you find a dress that is too large or the genes that you've been holding on since high school are too small for you to wear that saves you time running through a list of all of these other questions that you might ask yourself because they didn't pass that very first filter number four is the law of least effort which is the principle that humans will prefer to carry out simple tasks that give immediate satisfaction to avoid stress or inconvenience have you ever found yourself putting off a task you were dreading in order to do something more enjoyable like instead of folding the laundry you decide to sit on the couch and scroll on Instagram for two hours essentially that's because people have a natural tendency to procrastinate on tasks that they see as difficult or too complicated the problem with this is that the more you push these things off the more they pile up and the harder it becomes to complete all of those tasks later one of the best techniques to stop procrastinating and start doing is called eating the Frog which involves tackling the most challenging or unpleasant task first thing in the morning to boost productivity and reduce procrastination as Mark Twain said if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning there's nothing worse that will happen to you than the rest of the day to use the eat the Frog concept for decluttering consider tackling your tough decluttering projects at the beginning of the day because once you get those frogs out of the way the rest of the day is going to feel like Smooth Sailing number five is the law of inertia which is also known as Newton's first law of motion and this states that a body at rest will remain at rest and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force it takes a lot more effort to start a task versus maintain it once you've started it therefore to overcome the initial inertia of decluttering start by identifying a small area like a desk or a drawer and commit to spending just five minutes decluttering it once you get past that initial hurdle of getting started then the momentum will build and you're going to find it easier to continue decluttering in other areas also if you find it hard to get up and get going you can use the five second rule which is a technique that I learned from Mel Robbins to use this rule the next time you want to start decluttering but then you feel yourself start to hesitate begin to count down five four three two one go and use that as the impetus to get yourself up get moving and get the ball rolling number six is the law of attraction which is the belief that positive or negative thoughts and feelings can bring correspondingly positive or negative experiences into our lives if you think about it everything in the universe is made up of two basic components matter and energy and so all of that on one to clutter that's piled up in your home isn't just taking up space but it's also a form of stuck energy and that's why it can feel so good to clear out the physical clutter because you're not just getting rid of the stuff but all of the unmade decisions and wasted time and all the other negative energy that's wrapped up in them and once all that stuff is cleared out not only will you feel lighter but you might also find that you've created more space for good and positive things to flow into your life also setting clear your intentions for your home and each room is a powerful way to create change from the inside out I actually talked about this in my video about how ninety percent of people are decluttering backwards so I will make sure to link that video up here for you if you're interested to know more about the power of setting intentions before you start decluttering and finally that brings us to the law of the vital few also known as the 80 20 rule also known as pareto's principle which is a statistical principle that states 80 percent of the results come from 20 of the causes like if you think about your wardrobe statistically speaking you're probably wearing only 20 of your wardrobe 80 of the time and eighty percent of the time when you're cooking in your kitchen you're using 20 of the kitchen appliances to cook the same meals over and over so ask yourself what are those vital few things that are providing the most value to you those are your 20 and once you've identified those essential things it's going to make letting go of the bulk of that eighty percent of the stuff that you don't use a whole lot easier I consider the Pareto Principle to be one of the best ways to achieve faster decluttering results and if you want to know all of my best tips on how you can declutter your home up to eighty percent faster make sure to go check out this video or I'll see you next week until then take care bye bye foreign

Channel: A to Zen Life

Views: 184,359

Keywords: declutter, decluttering, how to declutter, how to declutter fast, declutter fast, declutter rules, decluttering rules, rules for decluttering, home declutter, decluttering minimalism, decluttering and organizing, declutter your home, how to declutter clothes, how to declutter your house, how to declutter your life, minimalism, minimalist, minimalist mom, a to zen life

Id: w_mzNsa4cCM

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023