How to Turn Over a New Leaf by Decluttering Your Life
There is too much stuff, too many things going on in our life/head/apartment.
This isn’t the life we were supposed to live. Not in such chaos, not with so many useless belongings.
We’ve become selfish and materialistic, a nation, focused more on things than relationships and love.
Every material object we own (or at least we think so, because how can we really own something… aren’t we just its temporary possessors?) takes our energy, provokes arguments and problems. We spend money on it, get angry when someone else uses it and sometimes spend more time with it than with our family.
We also think too much. What does it matter if someone doesn’t like us? It is not possible for a human being to please everyone simply because people just want to judge others no matter how chaotic their own life is?
Instead of generating peace and positivity, we fill our heads with meaningless worries, fears and stress that are slowly, but steadily destroying us. Instead of decluttering your life, you’re adding more clutter.
The world was created to be simple, so were love and relationships. But we did very well in making them a nightmare. Husbands and wives live together just because it is more expensive to get divorced. People choose their friends by the wealth, connections or popularity they’ve gained and don’t care if they are good or bad.
In this post I’ll be writing about the importance of throwing away, let’s say, one third of the stuff we have.
Organizing and setting things in order is also substantial, but is another issue.
Here it’s all about eliminating, deleting and removing things that are a hindrance in the way of achieving our potential.
Decluttering Your Life: How to Do It Right
Everything that makes you feel overburdened can be undone by cleaning up every aspect of your life. It’s another way of making it simpler by decluttering and embracing clarity and peace.
1. Decluttering your apartment.
- Throw away all the stuff you don’t need and have never used.
Explore every wardrobe, drawer, cupboard, cabinet and space in your home and set apart every object that you’ve never used, you don’t like, is needless and all the things that you are sure you will use “someday”.
You have to be very uncompromising and harsh.
Asking these 2 questions might help.
Many memories can come back to you but don’t let that distract you. Throw away everything that reminds you of an old lover, a person that is no longer in your life or of some tragic moment from the past. You don’t need any of that in your new, clean life.
Make space for better things.
- Your desk: Do you see too many pens and pencils on it? Are there any old magazines or newspapers in the drawers? Too many sheets? What about business cards, envelopes, files…?
Don’t think too much – just put everything in the bin. - The kitchen: Look for some spice, herbs, jars, snacks or cereals that are just staying there and which no one is going to eat.
Get rid of them.
Now is the time to visit the fridge for another reason. You will only benefit from throwing away all the junk food and things that have too many calories and no nutritive value.
Related: 40 Things to Live Without
2. Clearing your mind.
- Imagine there is a recycle bin icon in your mind. Now take all negative thoughts, worries and fears and drag them to it.
Do the same with the sad and unpleasant memories from the past.
This step may be the hardest to make because it requires more than just throwing away something material. It takes a lot of time and hard work. You can practice doing it in the evening before sleep.
Just think about how easier and happier your life will be without all the things that are engaging your mind most of the time.
Related: Letting Go of Past and Future
3. Organizing your computer.
- Desktop: delete all the icons you don’t need.
- Programs: Most people have so many useless programs and applications that are only slowing their work and covering space. Delete the games you used to play, dictionaries you don’t use anymore, programs for photo editing and planning and so on. Leave only the ones you use the most.
- Mailbox: Take a look at each email and delete the inessential ones. Do the decluttering once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and don’t think about your email while doing your most productive work.
4. Reconsidering the people in your life.
- Old acquaintances: There is no point in maintaining a relationship with someone you don’t have anything in common with, just because you were friends in high school or elsewhere. Just stop seeing them.
- Everyone has at least one person in his life that drives him crazy. He may be close to you, maybe you even have to live together, but the only communication you have with him is arguing, yelling at each other and getting annoyed.
This will be a brave and decisive action but you just have to take him out of your life or at least keep your meetings to a minimum. - Do the same with all negative people in your life.
Of course you should try to help them first, but when you realize they only have a bad influence on you and after seeing them you always feel worse and depressed, it is high time you stop gathering together. - Reconsider your To-do list. Remove the pointless tasks that are just wasting your time.
- Goals: Many people have too many goals, which is engaging their minds with a lot of things at the same time. In such cases, it’s much more likely to fail.
Keep your long-term goals up to 4-5 and as many as you can handle in the short term. After achieving them, you will be satisfied with yourself and very motivated to continue developing yourself.
Decluttering your life is a big step, which requires a lot of determination, effort and will. The good thing is that you have to do it just once and never think of it again.
It is a great therapy when moving on with your life and turning over a new leaf. Once you’ve done it, there will be no regret because you will have so much space for new and better things.
Since I did that decluttering, I’ve felt such freedom and regeneration that I started looking at things from a different point of view. Of course, I still keep some memories that are valuable to me, but it became a habit of mine to throw useless things away so that they find someone who needs them more and make room in my life.
Make these big changes and embrace the new people, things, moments and thoughts that the future has in store.
Which aspect of your life needs decluttering?