The Joyful Lessons Along Your Decluttering Journey

By Shannon Smith

      When I first began writing blog articles about simplifying and decluttering personal spaces, an advisor told me to write quick “tips” articles such as “Five Quick Tips to Declutter Your Home,” and similarly titled articles, and while I can definitely provide advice for decluttering with minimal daily time commitments, the truth is that it takes longer periods of time and focused effort to achieve true, meaningful, long-lasting goals. There are, however, joyful lessons along this decluttering journey that begin to spread past the clutter and into all aspects of living life in a peaceful space.

     Joy number one – finding my authenticity.  With an honest evaluation of every little thing I own, I get closer to authentically representing me in my space.  My space can be my office, my hobby space, my home, my car -wherever it is that I spend time.  The more items I kept for inauthentic reasons the more I betray myself and create an environment in which I don’t function at my highest level. As I coach clients through exercises creating a higher level of criteria on what to keep and what to toss, they begin to see themselves surface and feel a sense of excitement which generates the energy to continue, and this creates the joy of authenticity.

     Joy number two – I learn how to love and care for myself at a higher level.  When we sit down to declutter, we learn to take the time with ourselves to study who we really are.  By taking the time to sit down and declutter my stuff, I find that I am decluttering my life.  My priorities and values start to emerge from the mess, and as a result, I can see them more clearly than I ever could before.  What do I value?  I value quality craftsmanship.  I value quality materials.  I value objects I find beautiful.  I value having the right things for me, so I don’t chase so many things.  I buy quality the first time, so I don’t buy short term patches over and over. As these values surface, they also become a benchmark for other areas of our lives such as our jobs, our relationships, our to-do lists and more.  Loving yourself means understanding what you truly value and adding more of that to daily living.

     Joy number three—a better sense of curating objects back into my space.  There are far more little joys experienced by decluttering and moving through the process, but this third one I will share today is developing a keen sense of what you need to bring into your space making you a much smarter shopper when faced with temptations. When you create criteria for everything you bring into your space, you no longer wander mindlessly through stores.  Something that will fit will stand out to you, and everything else will fade away with little to no consideration.  When I coach a client, we work on their criteria, and I teach them tools to take into the stores to help curb the craving to buy something not needed.

     So, the moral of this story is to avoid getting bogged down into timelines.  There is joy in the lessons along this decluttering journey, and it is sooooo worth it!  If you feel like you cannot make headway alone, reach out!  I would love to help!