No Pressure Please When Decluttering

On many occasions, clients have told me that either the organizer they hired or the friend they asked to help them declutter, applied pressure, and it backfired.

Instead of ‘getting them’ to make progress letting things go, the pressure created a lot of anxiety and set them back for years. Decluttering went back on the back burner and asking for more help became an added source of stress and anxiety.

No pressure please when decluttering.

That’s why I encourage a gentle, compassionate, slow, and steady approach. 

When clutter has been a challenge for a long time, it takes time, patience, gentleness and compassion to heal and transform. There are many emotional threads tied in with having clutter. 

Clutter is a response to something on the inside. It is an expression of something that has been hurt and needs attention. Attending to the practical side of decluttering and putting things to order is one crucial step but attending to the roots of clutter is equally as important. What has or is contributing to your clutter and what is standing in the way of your motivation or ability to declutter.

This is often what people don't have clarity on. It looks different for everyone and takes some exploration to figure this out.

For some people letting go is the challenge.

For others, letting go is not hard but making the time to sort through to see what there is to let go is the challenge.

For some people the clutter itself is not emotional but the process of decluttering is highly emotional.

For others the clutter itself is filled with emotions.

For some people once they have directions, accountability and emotional support, following through on their own is no problem.

For others, following through on their own is a huge challenge, because they get easily distracted and swept away from their plan for decluttering.

When I ask clients the question, ‘how long has clutter been a challenge for you?’ they can often pinpoint a time and life situation that triggered it. For some it’s revealed immediately, they are already aware of it, and for others it takes some conversation and exploration for it to come to light.

• How long has clutter been a challenge for you?

• Can you pinpoint a time or life situation when clutter began?

Journaling about your personal history with clutter, using the above list and questions as a guide, will loosen up some of the knots and shed some light on your relationship with clutter.