7Habits of a Successful Clutter Clearer
7 HABITS YOU NEED TO DEVELOP TO STAY CLUTTER FREE FOREVER
The A to Z of how to Clear your Clutter is mapped out, video by video in the 7 Step Journey. All you need to do is make regular time to watch, follow and take any action I guide you to take in each video.
But we know that clearing our clutter isn’t enough. We also need to develop new habits to help us control our Clutter Conveyor Belt if we want to stay clutter free Forever.
Here are 7 habits that successful Clutter Clearers have and that you need to develop while you’re on your Journey to ensure that you stay clutter free Forever.
1. Routine
Annoyingly simple in principle, yet the one that most Clutter Clearers struggle to get into. Routine isn’t just important for you while you’re on your Journey, it’s essential to break old habits and create the new habits you will need beyond your Journey to stay Clutter Free Forever.
You’ll only create a routine that turns into a habit on your Journey by being a minimum of a Successful Snail. You won’t create routines that turn into habits if you only do one or two sessions a week, even if those sessions are the maximum 2 hours. That won’t help you stay clutter free Forever, because you won’t have developed the automatic habits you need to control your conveyor belt.
Even if you clear all your clutter on your Journey, without routine you won’t have the automatic habits you need to do your weekly planner, your meal planner, your shopping challenge, your daily visual check-ins or your weekly paperwork and e-mail clutter clearing sessions that ensure the clutter doesn’t grow back.
2. Weekly Planner
As the saying goes: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you wake up every day and think ‘what shall I do today?’ or prioritise other people and their goals first, how will you ever achieve your Clutter Free Goal and live your Best Life? You need to prioritise putting your own oxygen mask on first, before you start helping others.
Those of us who struggle with clutter find it particularly hard to plan because we are predominately in-time – that’s our comfort zone. On our Clutter Clearing Journey we manage this by doing our weekly planner.
Doing our weekly planner – and following our weekly planner – is one of the most important habits to form to succeed on your Journey and stay clutter free Forever. Your weekly planner gives you short – and medium-term goals. It helps you make time to ‘Do the Doing’ and most importantly protect your boundaries to make sure you actually ‘do the doing’ – both on your Journey and to stay clutter free Forever.
3. Protecting your Time
When people first get into a routine of doing their weekly planner, they often fail to follow their weekly planner because they don’t protect their time boundaries. They let other people interrupt them when they’ve planned to work on their Journey, and because they’re people-pleasers they stop prioritising themselves so they can achieve their next Journey goal, and instead redirect their time, energy, and effort to help the other person immediately.
To clear your clutter and make time to do what you need to do after your Journey to stay clutter free Forever, you will need to develop a habit of saying ‘Not Right Now’. You’re not saying no – you’re saying ‘Not Right Now’. That gives you time to look at your weekly planner, find your next block of contingency time, and let the other person know that is when it is convenient for YOU to help them. If it feels selfish, it’s working. Often you’ll find that in the meantime, they are able to find someone else to help them.
4. Focus on Prioritising your Goal
Linked with the weekly planner is having your focus on prioritising your next Goal. These are your weekly, term time, peak and end of step goals, as well as your ultimate Clutter Free Goal and Best Life.
Life is full of distractions, and because we are predominately in-time we can easily get busy all the time and not prioritise our Clutter Clearing. We say we want to clear our clutter, but we don’t prioritise ‘Doing the Doing’ required to succeed. Start every Clutter Clearing Session by reading your Best Life card. Remind yourself of what your weekly and end of Term Goal is, and remind yourself of what your reward is going to be when you achieve that next goal. If you don’t make time to make the progress you need to succeed, you won’t create the routines and habits you need to stay Clutter Free Forever.
5. Self-Care
Impatience can mean we don’t prioritise regular self-care, yet it’s an essential habit we need to develop to stay clutter free Forever so that when life gets in the way, as it inevitably will, both on our Journey and when we are clutter free, we have a habit of managing our stress to ensure we don’t sabotage our success.
Self-care doesn’t have to take up lots of time – it just needs to be regular. It’s exactly the same as being a successful snail – half an hour three times a week is enough self-care to make a difference and manage the stress, frustration, discomfort and impatience we all feel on our Journey. Your rewards are all forms of self-care, as is working on your Journey and protecting your boundaries.
Think of self-care like this. You make sure your digital devices don’t run out of power – self-care is making sure YOU don’t run out of power either so you have the energy you need to work on your Journey.
6. Recognising Your Successes
We are perfectionists. We expect too much and are too hard on ourselves. We think that we haven’t succeeded until we’ve cleared it all and are living our Best Life. You’re going to need to get into a routine of recognising your successes, so that focusing on the positives becomes a new, automatic habit and new way of thinking. You need to start recognising the significance of the successes you have. Being a Successful Snail each week is a significant success. Following your weekly planner is a significant success. Having a lightbulb moment that helps you succeed is a significant success. Don’t sabotage yourself by ignoring your successes.
7. Not Giving Up
This habit is simple. If you give up the routine of doing your daily check-ins and weekly sessions it won’t be an automatic habit to do the daily check-ins and weekly maintenance sessions that you need to do to keep your home Clutter Free, and your clutter will grow back.
You can clear your clutter fast, or you can clear your clutter forever, but you can’t clear your clutter forever, fast.
To find out how Clare can help you clear your clutter Forever, without the need for an expensive home visit, click here now: https://www.clutterclearing.net/clares-help-centre/
