Episode 103 – Decluttering – Spoonie-style

Hello loves,

I am sure you’re already aware of the benefits of decluttering.  An uncluttered home and life promotes mental clarity, and less stuff through choice means less likely to spend money on things you don’t need.  Less stuff also means less mess can be created so less mess to be tidied up. Which is an absolute win for spoonies, because it means less work and less feeling like we’re not getting anything done.  But, as with all things, it can be overwhelming to get started, so here’s my top 5 areas in life to declutter and how to do so spoonie-style.

First, relationships.

This is all about who drains you, and who sustains you, and adjusting time spent with them accordingly.  If you’re an introvert like me, make sure you make time that’s just for you too.  Some of the people that drain you are not easy to escape.  Maybe because you live with them.  Maybe because you need them to help take care of things for you.  So when it comes to these people, it’s your attitude towards them.  For everything that annoys you, find something or more that you like about the person. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but an attitude of gratitude will be better for you in the long run.

Next, digital clutter.

Clear out your emails, the photos on your phone.  Turn off notifications.  Log out of apps that you find distracting or make you feel bad about yourself.  Delete texts.  Get rid of everything and anything that makes you feel negative.  Deal with anything that you need to do to stop having mental clutter of what you need to do in your head.

After digital, comes financial.

Cancel any subscriptions you no longer want, and especially the ones you don’t use.  Set up direct debits instead of having to remember to make payments and creating more mental clutter.  If you saved some money by switching providers or cancelling unused subscriptions, could you use that money for a cleaner instead?  Personally, I don’t have one.    I’ll explain my cleaning in the next area, and I don’t want someone coming into my house if I’m not feeling well.  But some people love having a cleaner and if you’re one of them, seriously consider it.

So the next area is time.  Put time blocks into your diary for not-to-dos.  To literally do nothing, but have your own space.  Take a break from social media.  Make no your default.  My episode called a not-to-do list will give more tips on this.  Episode 101.  I’ll link to it in the shownotes.  I mentioned cleaning earlier.  I decided what’s important to keep clean, and how often.  I used to clean the whole house every week, and now I wonder how I ever found the time!  Now I have the house in zones.  One week it’s the bedroom.  The next the living room, and so-on.  The kitchen and bathroom are daily super-quick swipes.  Nothing more than a few minutes a day.  I vacuum a couple of times a week.  Any rooms that are high-traffic get more love.  The spare room is probably considered every couple of months if it’s lucky.  It just doesn’t get dusty in there.

Lastly, physical clutter.

All the stuff we own.  Knock it back to just the essentials if you want to.  I do operate on the one in and one out rule.  And if for any reason I get a bit slack on this (it’s been known for me to take stuff upstairs and tell myself I’ll do it later) I get rid of two items per one new one instead.  I choose quality over quantity.  When it comes to clothes I choose how they need to be cared for, ie if it’s going to need ironing then I just don’t buy it in the first place.  If you can’t find a home for all your stuff, you usually have too much stuff.  One more pretty basket isn’t going to make you tidy.  A few minutes a day, or five items a day, every day, will get you through a declutter more effectively than trying to do chunks of time that’ll wear you out.  Grab a chair so you can sit down if you need to.  My dustbins alternate with one week being recycling, and the other being general household waste.  So I plan my decluttering around this.  I regularly get those charity bags through the door for clothes and bric-a-brac so I don’t even need to take it to a charity shop.

Physical declutter is really the only one that requires movement to it.  The rest can be done from your sofa.  Tying in with Marie Kondo, if it brings you joy, keep it.  If it brings you dread, do it or ditch it.

And that’s it for this week.  I hope you found this useful.  You don’t need to do all five at once.  Pick one and go from there.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Life in Align podcast. If you liked what you heard please subscribe and share, so that we can get this out to others who are also wanting to take back the life a chronic illness stole from them.

And remember – you are worth it, and you get to choose.

Have a lovely day.