Every so often you can feel like the whole world is on your shoulders. Things are getting you down, you’ve got a to do list as long as your arm and you don’t know where to start on everything you want to get sorted. So you, effectively, shut the curtains and ignore the world. Sometimes you need to do that and it’s not a negative thing but it’s not that helpful in the long term, so I’m trying to avoid doing that. Instead I’m decluttering my life, and here’s how.
Cut out the crap
The first step in decluttering my life is to declutter my environment. I try to do this as least once a month, I go round with a black bin bag and throw out anything I don’t need. Books I’ve read, clothes I never wear, makeup that just isn’t my colour and never will be-it all goes in the bin (or to the charity shop, or to friends-but out of MY house) This helps with the feeling of being overwhelmed by how much tidying and cleaning I have to do, because I never really have that much to tidy anymore. And it’s a really good feeling.
Step away from drama and toxic people
I’ve done this quite a few times in the last few weeks. I had some friends who rejoiced in telling me everything they thought was wrong with me-as is their right. I’d usually spend a lot of time trying to change, to be the person they wanted me to be, so that I didn’t lose friends. And then I thought well, no. I don’t expect THEM to change, I like them as they are. So if they don’t like me, that’s fine-no one has to like me. And I walked away. I had a couple of days of being really sad about it and then as I’m writing this I realised that actually it’s just stopped me having lots of messages to reply to on a regular basis. It’s given me the gift of time I now spend doing something else.
Do little and often
When you’ve got too much to do, the answer is simple-do it. Do a few things a day, spending a short amount of time on each but making sure you tick off a few things. As an example, now I work full time I only have the weekends to do washing, the majority of my blog work, my photography, and general cleaning and tidying. This weekend I’ve been to get my car tyre fixed, put the washer on and hung up a pile of clean washing. That’s all I’ve done, but because I did everything in five minute chunks I still managed to do the fun things I wanted to this weekend-mostly watching season two of Gilmore Girls and painting my nails. And everything feels like it’s done.
Eat better
Decluttering the cupboards to make sure they’re not full of junk food can really help your mindset-or at least replacing some of the crap with healthy food will make you feel physically better. I’ve started making sure I drink more water, get more fresh air and eat more fruit and veg (and get my multivitamins from my juice) and it’s definitely improving how I feel mentally.
Stop and smell the roses
I’m very much guilty of rushing around too much and never appreciating anything. I’m actively trying to spend more time in the moment-watching the sunset, looking at a lovely view, watching a cute dog or enjoying a certain song on the radio. This doesn’t declutter my life at all, but it helps to declutter my brain, and that’s half the battle.
Are you decluttering your life?
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