Enjoy what’s important to you — with less stuff
I did a little digging around online to see what the top new year’s resolutions were for 2018, since it’s time to address 2019. I’ve done this pretty much every year and “get organized” used to make the top-10 list. But it doesn’t appear on any of the 2018 lists I found.
I assume that either means you’ve all given up on getting organized or everyone has mastered that one and moved onto something else. Which begs the question, what does being organized really mean? And why on earth would you even bother?
Being organized is a multifaceted pursuit. As I’ve said many times before, the easiest route to organization is to have less stuff. That doesn’t just mean letting go of all of that clutter and excess so you have less to take care of, it also means pursing a more minimalist existence. Once you’ve let go of the burden of managing all your stuff, you need to bring a lot less into your life. Therein lies a lot of the difficulty with trying to be more organized.
I’ve had so many clients tell me that they’ve gone through their belongings, cleaned out closets and garages, donated a bunch of stuff and then months later it’s back to the messy state it started in. A lot of the reason for that is that you don’t let go of enough and you continue to bring stuff into your life. The other reason is that you don’t fine tune your storage and designate a home for absolutely everything.
Imagine if you let go of what you don’t need and use — and then let go of more, and perhaps even more. Your goal is to have empty shelves and cupboards. Stop and think about your need to fill the empty space. Why do you want to do that? Is it really a bad thing to have some breathing room in your home?
Once you’ve done this you need to designate a logical location for what’s left, label it, contain it, whatever you need to do to make it easy to put things away. Then you must train yourself to question every purchase you make. Ask yourself why you’re buying it, where you will put it, and what would happen if you didn’t buy it today? Try putting things back on the store shelf or deleting items from your online shopping cart. Maybe it will begin to feel good to say no.
Now we come to the why bother part of the question. Being more organized by keeping and buying less will help you to achieve some of those new year’s resolutions I found. The top ones include: eat better, exercise more, spend less money, self-care, read more books, learn a new skill, get a new job, make new friends and so on down the list. In order to achieve most of those, you need to have more money and more time.
Perhaps that’s why so many of you fail to accomplish your resolution. You don’t think about what you have to change in order to be successful with something that has previously eluded you. I hope that in 2019 you will enjoy what’s important to you with less stuff in a space that feels like you want to be there. Here’s to an awesome 2019!
With Streamline Your Stuff by Jane Veldhoven readers will find the latest tips, tricks and tools to downsize, organize and declutter.