When we feel discontentment in our home, we’re conditioned to think that something is missing and we need to buy something new to freshen things up. But often the answer to our dissatisfaction isn’t found in buying more, but in decluttering our way to less. The answer to our discontentment, overwhelm, and frustration is not more stuff, but a more simplified home.

More stuff is not the answer

When we look around our house and we’re dissatisfied, we go shopping to try to fix whatever seems to be bothering us about our home. We buy a new picture frame to set on our dresser, a pretty lamp for the side table, a colorful throw blanket for the bed, a coffee mug to celebrate the new season, and a cute fake plant for our kitchen counter.

But that rarely solves our discontent, or at least not for very long. Most of the time, the new things just complicate the problems in our home …. because our problem usually isn’t that we don’t have enough, it’s often that we have too much. And now we’ve added new things to dust, wash, and store; making our home even harder to manage.

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Benefits of a simplified home

A simplified home is easier to clean and keep in order because there are less things to dust, wipe down, pick up, put away, and organize. When you have less stuff to manage, you will have more time and energy to spend on other things that are more important to you. And without excess clutter, your home will naturally feel more peaceful and calm. (More about those benefits here.)

Clear the clutter

The next time you feel frustrated or dissatisfied with your home, ask yourself what is really bothering you about your home. Are you truly in need of something new or is everything you own cluttering your space so much that you can’t appreciate any of it?

You might have a beautiful buffet, but if it’s covered in bills, school papers, and miscellaneous objects, you probably aren’t able to enjoy it. All the clutter sitting on top of the buffet is visually distracting you from enjoying its simple beauty. In this situation, you don’t need to go out and buy a pretty new vase to sit on the buffet, you need to clear the clutter sitting on top to reveal the beauty that’s already there.

So instead of complicating the problem by going shopping, try clearing the clutter. Spend that time that you would have spent shopping decluttering a surface, drawer, bin, or closet that’s been bothering you. Afterwards, you’ll feel proud of your accomplishment and you’ll be one step closer to a more simplified home.

Pacific Natural Book / Still : The Slow Home / Wicker Laundry Basket

Decide and commit

You can’t keep a lot of unnecessary things (in your home or life) and have simplicity. You have to decide what is truly important to you. If having a simplified home is important to you, then you have to be committed to the process of decluttering the things that aren’t adding any value to your life. Those things are complicating your life by stealing your time and attention and you have to do the work to remove them. Decluttering can often feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

-Hans Hofmann

5 STEPS TO DECLUTTER ANY SPACE IN YOUR HOME

1. Remove Everything

Whether you’re decluttering a drawer, cabinet, closet, or basket, the first step is always to remove everything. Take it all out so you can see exactly what you have and how much. This also challenges you to look at and question each object before making a decision about whether to keep it or let it go. If you just shuffle things around while looking for things to purge, you’ll likely keep things that you don’t need to keep just because it’s easier to push it out of the way than to take the time to think about each item. So don’t skip this step. Pull it all out of the closet, dump it all out of the basket, spread it all out on a table or bed before moving to the next step. You’ll probably be surprised to find some things that you thought you lost or random things you didn’t even realize you were still keeping.

2. Sort your Items

Next, you need to gather and sort your items, putting like items together. If you’re decluttering a junk drawer, gather all the pens together, the tape, the paper clips, the sharpies, the scissors, etc.. If it’s a entry closet, gather and sort flashlights, umbrellas, charging cords, hats, gloves, and sunglasses. If you know you have these same items in another area of your house, it’s a good idea to add them to the pile. It’s important to see how many you actually own and are storing in your home. You’ll probably start finding things like you have 20 pens, 6 chapsticks, 13 charging cables, or 5 pair of similar black sunglasses. Most of the time, we don’t realize how many multiples we have and it’s eye-opening once we start sorting our belongings into piles.

Gathering every item in one place is essential to this process because it gives you an accurate grasp of how much you have. – Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

3. Purge the Junk

Now that you can see everything you have and it’s sorted, it’s time to purge all the broken, old, ugly, unused, worn-out, or useless items. Purging these things should be pretty simple and shouldn’t take a lot of thought. Many of these items belong in the trash, not taking up valuable space in your home. Some things to purge are broken electronics (phones, ipads, watches), clothes with stains or holes, mystery keys, extra parts/pieces, old receipts, unused accessories, broken umbrellas…. you get the idea!

4. Reduce the Multiples

Next, reduce the amount of repeated household items. Things like pens, pencils, markers, paper clips, charging cables, towels, plastic grocery bags, glue sticks, flashlights, clothespins, hangers, and scissors can be easily reduced. These are just household items that you need to have on hand, but you don’t need to hold on to all of them. It seems obvious, but start eliminating the ones that are in the worst shape or don’t work properly, then keep reducing until you have just what you need/use and fits in the allotted space. You may need to push yourself a little bit in this area, so that you don’t convince yourself to hold on to things, “just in case”. Be extremely honest with yourself about how much you actually need and will use. Most of the time, we can easily get by with a lot less than we think.

5. Edit Your Essentials

And finally, now you can edit your personal belongings down to your favorites. So if you have 7 pairs of jeans, but you only wear 4 of them, get rid of the ones you don’t wear. The same goes for sweaters, jewelry, workout clothes, hats, jackets, coffee mugs, etc… You probably have favorites that you regularly choose over other items, so why hold on to all the extras that you don’t even like to use or wear?

Work to curate a simplified home filled with things you love and use, but without the excess that takes up so much of your time and energy. When you edit down to your favorites, you find more value and enjoyment in your life because you’ve purposefully surrounded yourself with the things you love. Using one favorite coffee cup every day brings more joy into your life than owning a cabinet full of coffee cups that you don’t love or use. Owning more of something doesn’t necessarily multiply the joy. The simple act of using and appreciating the things you love is what fills your every day life with little moments of joy.

You can find success in creating a simplified home if you consistently focus your time and energy on following these 5 steps to declutter one drawer, one closet, one basket, or one cabinet at a time. Don’t give up, it will be worth it!