Excuses, Excuses. What’s Stopping Your Declutter?

Excuses, Excuses. What’s Stopping Your Declutter?

Most of us can recognise when our homes are overdue a good declutter.

Yet, getting it done is another matter.

Short of hiring a “clutter fairy” or another such tidying guru to help us get our heads together, it’s up to us our and our finite supplies of self-discipline to remedy the disorganisation.

So what are the key factors impeding our declutter success?

I can’t see the wood for the trees

When books are falling off shelves, and there’s more square footage of boxes covering your room than visible carpet, and you’ve taken to rebuying items you already have at home, the task has become too daunting. Where to begin?

Apart from breaking down the tasks room by room, section by section, crate by crate or drawer by drawer, there are methods you can adopt to get going, such as enlisting the support of a clutter buddy or using a reward system. Why not find out our eight decluttering tips?

I feel a moral obligation to keep everything

Clutter magnets come in all varieties. Whether it’s for sentimental reasons, or a person we still haven’t got over after death or love, an art project that makes us remember being our better self, a feeling of duty to not transfer your clutter to landfill or thinking something is still useful, we are bombarded by emotional challenges to decluttering. Whatever the situation, it can be a tough one to tackle in one sitting, rather like trying to eat an elephant.

But you have to remember that the clutter may be doing you more harm than good, so think of the life you could be living, free of emotional investment in things and reward yourself for each new positive step. If it helps, develop an image in your mind that represents the life you want to be living, and with time, your emotional attachment to this image may overtake that towards your things.

 

I simply don’t know what to do with the things I’m trying to get rid of

This one is tricky and is the final hurdle in decluttering. This third excuse is the one that leads to a graveyard of unwanted junk in your spare room or garage.

These are the items you have emotionally abandoned, yet haven’t physically dealt with other than to move them out to the junk room.

The only way to overcome this is to remove your items from the house at the time of the clear out. Don’t tell yourself you’ll deal with it all later, because later will come around too late. Throw it in a skip if it’s no longer usable or recyclable or otherwise take it away to a recycling centre or a charity.

My stuff is in storage… How will I ever get it out?

So what happens when you’re belongings have spent years in storage and it’s finally time to face up to the items you haven’t seen in a while?

Perhaps you’ve replaced a fair few items by now, so you don’t need the old ones anymore. Maybe your partner has a lot of duplicates of the things you already own.

When going through your storage unit, you are in a good place to deal with unwanted sofas, dining furniture, beds and books, because at Rent A Space, we donate to charities who will find a new home for these things. You don’t have to worry about filling up landfill. Even if it’s a fridge, we know people who will take it away and put it to good use. We also have recycling bins on hand to take care of paper and plastic waste.

For anything else, you can deal with the sorting process over a few visits and we’ll be here with a cup of tea. Worst case scenario? We can point you in the direction of our favourite declutter experts. And remember, it’s not always a bad thing to hang on to some stuff.

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