A new season and new growth.
It's been a long year that has brought many changes: not all of them good.
As we’ve spent a year living through the pandemic, a lot of people are taking a moment to take a step back and looking at other parts of their life . Spring cleaning, not just our houses but our habits too! Tech experts at Google said searches have shown people’s top priorities right now are: organization, sleep, exercise, and screen time.
Spring is a great time to hit the refresh button on our daily routines, including taking a closer look at your organizational habits.
It’s much easier to give your home a good spring clean if you’ve decluttered first. Below are 3 tips on where to get started and what to prioritize.
Tip1: Start Small
Instead of putting tons of pressure on yourself to get your entire house organized, choose just one little part of a room or a category- like your shoes, junk drawer, purse. Spending just 5 minute a day will have an impact and will be sustainable. You will also feel better about your space. Related article - Decluttering Projects You Can Easily Tackle in Less Than 30 Minutes.
If you are not using it, get rid of it.
If it doesn’t fit into your current lifestyle, yes current lifestyle release it.
Find another home for anything that no longer serves you.
Tip 2: Ban Boredom Buying
With the limiting social engagements, leisure activities and travel, the pandemic has forced many people to live a more muted life, without the normal deviations from daily monotony.
Desperate for some stimulation, people have turned to Amazon, where you can get things delivered within a few hours. In fact, 43% of Americans have participated in “comfort buying” – shopping as a way to relieve stress and boredom – due to social isolation*. We are wanting to buy more and more and more because a lot of us are bored at home, so we’re online shopping.
Of course, millions of people have been busier than ever during the pandemic. Nurses, grocery store employees and other essential workers have hardly experienced lockdown tedium. Women and men who have left the work force to take care of children who cannot go to school are frequently exhausted and overwhelmed, their days of Zoom classes, dinners and bedtimes. A huge number of families are mourning loved ones, a painful and saddening change.
Boredom, in some ways, is a luxury, experienced by those who have unfilled, and unfillable, time. Some groups of people are more likely to experience boredom than others.
Before buying something be aware of how you are feeling and ask yourself.
Is this a boredom buy?
Maybe be really daring and delete the Amazon app from your phone for a week see what happens.
Tip 3: Hone your Habits
Maintaining an organized life does come naturally for some, but it’s something that anybody can achieve by practice. Incorporating little habits into your daily and weekly routines. Habits do not make life dull. They remove (or at least diminish) the arduous process of doing things we don’t want to do. They also free our minds from thinking about things we don’t want to do. In the long term, we learn to enjoy those things when they become automatic and we continue to reap the benefits of the habit.
Use habits to make your behavior automatic so you get lots of small rewards to keep you going and then you get the big, long-term intrinsically motivated pay-offs as well
Make your habits: obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying
Small changes can compound themselves and lead to big outcomes.
Sometimes change takes a long time. Don't give up. Whining about not achieving success despite working hard is like grumbling about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty to thirty-one degrees. Sometimes change requires persistent practice and effort - don’t give up.
It is a new season. Give yourself permission this spring to hit the refresh button on your daily routines, including taking a closer look at your organizational habits. Remember organizing is a process and that we need to give ourselves tons of grace along the way. It’s not about being perfect or having all of the “right” bins and baskets. It’s about creating systems and processes that help things run more smoothly so we can spend less time sweating the small stuff and more time on the things that really matter to us.
Thank you so much for being here— I’m so excited to share decluttering | simplifying | organizing | tips with you in this space.
With Gratitude,
Leah Morris
Founder & Chief Organizer
If you need support decluttering Mindfully Minimized would love to help.
Mindfully Minimized is a holistic organizational solution company committed to helping people clear the clutter from their lives. Based in Minneapolis, Mindfully Minimized was founded by owner and chief organizer Leah Morris who works alongside her clients to help them with their challenging spaces to create a beautifully organized home focused around their intention. Leah is a professional organizer, decluttering expert, speaker & coach. She is committed to helping people declutter their lives to focus on what they love. With her passion for providing solutions to problems and serving others she is able to transform spaces to be more clam, purposeful, sustainable, and joyously livable. Check out her website or you can also follow her on Instagram or on facebook.
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