PEOPLE WITH CLUTTER CAN’T MAKE DECISIONS

Many friends and family who ‘try’ to help us deal with our clutter believe we can’t make decisions, which can lead to frustration on both sides.

We may even start to believe it ourselves, and start to defend ourselves by saying things like “I’m just indecisive,” or “I don’t know!” It’s an easy story we tell ourselves, and it’s a comforting way to avoid responsibility for the piles of clutter in our homes.

Here are five key reasons why this myth is a myth.

1. Decision Fatigue

Those of us who struggle with clutter experience with decision fatigue. That’s when our brain gets tired after making lots of decisions in a short period of time, leading us to make fewer and lower quality decisions as time progresses, and eventually failing and refusing to make any. It’s one of the many reasons why you will never be able to clear your clutter fast.

Your brain is a muscle and just like any muscle that gets tired when you work it, it will regain its strength after a period of rest. People who claim they “can’t make decisions” have over-worked their brain so many times in the past that they believe they can’t make any decisions and aren’t willing to even try.

The good news is, just as athletes’ train to build endurance, you can learn to manage and reduce the effects of decision fatigue by limiting the amount of time you spend making decisions and giving your brain a comfortable amount of decision choices. When you do that, you can develop greater decision-making stamina.

We do this on our Journey by using 2 important tools:

• The 30:10:2 rule that we follow to manage our overwhelm, which ensures we’re only making decisions for a maximum of 30 minutes at a time before resting our brain muscle.
• The 7 action focused choices about what the decision is for each and every item in our clutter.

2. Perfectionism

People who struggle with clutter can make decisions, but the fear of making the “wrong” decision—of letting go of something and later regretting it—can be paralysing, especially sentimental or inherited clutter.

Yet perfectionism isn’t the absence of decision-making ability; it’s the over-valuing of the “perfect” decision.

People who are perfectionists often overthink every scenario, weighing hypothetical regret against hypothetical need or use, and wind up in a state of suspended animation.  You believe you

can’t decide, but the reality is that you ARE making a decision. A decision not to take action in case it’s not perfect.

The truth is, until you take action, you’ll never get the feedback and learning about whether or not you made the perfect decision. The perfectionist gets stuck in a cycle of making no decisions at all, so they get no feedback and learning, and they never successfully clear their clutter.

Recognising that most decisions don’t cause your world to stop turning if you make a less than perfect decision can be liberating. When we realise that the “right” decision is often simply to take action on the “next” decision, we empower ourselves to move forward, imperfectly but effectively.

3. Emotional Attachments

People who struggle with clutter become emotionally attached to the things in their clutter. We can make a decision; we just choose to maintain the sense of emotional safety, security, comfort and familiarity that our physical clutter gives us rather than experience the emotional uncertainty that results from letting go.

But emotional attachments don’t always have to be a reason to keep our clutter. We need to reframe them as guideposts. They tell us what matters and has meaning to us, and what we value about our past. We can find ways to let go of the physical things, while keeping the emotional attachment.

Perhaps a single photograph from a much-loved holiday rather than a whole box or cell phone of rarely seen mementoes.

The process of making decisions about these things helps deepen our understanding of ourselves, helps clarify what is truly meaningful to us, and decision-making becomes not just possible, but an act of self-discovery and self-care.

4. Lack of Skills Not Lack of Ability

For those of us who were never taught or learnt how to make decisions about our belonging, perhaps because we grew up in a home where nothing was ever thrown away, making decisions about our clutter is a challenge – but not impossible.

As with any other life skill, we can learn how to make balanced, realistic decisions and get better at it through practice, both of which you get on your 7 Step Journey.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are training grounds for making decisions thanks to your weekly planners, meal planners, e-mail and paperwork sessions.  On Step 2 you learn how to help your brain make decisions by using the 7 action focused categories. On Step 3 you learn about specific decision-making concepts and create tools to use. On Step 5 you learn how to make decisions about sentimental and inherited items in your clutter.

Over time, as you get more learning and feedback from the decisions you make and action, and you literally see the difference that makes to your clutter and your home, your confidence grows and the speed of your decision making – and your Journey – increases.

5. Just In Case Justification

People think we can’t make decisions when we keep things just in case, but it’s a decision based on an imagined hypothetical future in which every item might be needed or used. The things in our clutter represent what might or could have been in our lives and letting go of them can feel as though we’re closing the door on those possibilities and choices.

We believe we’re being prudent, even though it looks as though we’re not making a decision. The reality is that we’re deferring decisions and allowing the weight of endless possibilities to crowd out the present. The imagined “someday” rarely materialises, and in meantime, we sacrifice space, peace, and our Best Lives.

Making decisions requires us to be honest about our lives as they are now, not as we wish they were in the past or fear or hope they might be in the future. By using our Worksheet 7’s and Best Life Scripts we can be more realistic about what things support our current needs, and which represent resistance to letting go.

Believing that people with clutter can’t make decisions is a myth. We do, but we can make better ones with knowledge, understanding, tools, time and support.

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/