The 7 Clutter Clearing Concepts
Didn’t know there are 7 things you need to be aware of when you declutter?
You are not alone.
Discovering the Concepts
When time Clare Baker, Founder of Clutter Clearing had her clutter challenge and started modelling people who were clutter free to work out how to clear her clutter for good, she discovered there were 7 Concepts that were crucial to success – many of which clutter free and organised people didn’t even know they were using.
1. Clearing Clutter is a Journey It takes time to truly declutter
If you’ve had your clutter for a year or more, it’s going to take more than a day or two to clear, yet most people expect that they can clear it in a matter of hours or days.
Some might say it’s a marathon not a sprint. We recommend you commit yourself to a minimum of half a day a week to begin with.
That way you will see results quickly, perfect the skill of decision making, yet also ensure your Clutter Clearing Journey doesn’t take over your life.
Unless you accept that clearing your clutter is a journey that needs to be taken in regular small steps rather than taking over your life for the duration, you’ll never become Clutter Free Forever.
2. Clearing Clutter is a One Way Journey If you want to be Clutter Free Forever
Building from point 1 above, the journey we’re taking is one way.
We’re aiming for a Long Term Permanent Solution to clearing our clutter.
I’m sure you don’t want to have to deal with this all again – you’ve probably already had blitz’s that didn’t last.
If you accept that clearing your clutter is a journey and that we’re going to make it a one way journey on which we learn the habits, routines and skills we need to stay clutter free so that we never again have to spend time and energy repeating this journey then you’re half way to success already.
3. The Clutter Conveyor Belt – What comes in, must eventually come off
This is understanding that your home is like a conveyor belt.
Things come into your home or onto the conveyor belt, travel along the conveyor belt and may stay on the conveyor belt, and some things come off the conveyor belt.
If you have more things coming into your home or onto the conveyor belt than coming off the conveyor belt, you will get clutter build up on the conveyor belt.
If you have more coming off the conveyor belt than coming onto the conveyor belt you will reduce the amount of things on the conveyor belt.
To successfully declutter what’s on your conveyor belt you need to get more things off the conveyor belt than come on.
If you only get more things off your conveyor belt and don’t control what comes onto the conveyor belt, the clutter will grow back on the conveyor belt. It doesn’t matter how big your conveyor belt is (your home), the principles apply whether you have a 1 bedroom flat or a 12 bedroom mansion.
4. Storage – The ‘Perfect’ storage solution
Many people who try to declutter focus on storage solutions or reorganising of their clutter.
Yet when you do this you are simply trying to deal with the symptom, not the cause of your clutter.
When we accept that our home is like a conveyor belt we can see that storage solutions or reorganisation does not reduce the amount of clutter on our conveyor belt.
The amount of space we have in our home is limited.
Only fictional characters such as Dr. Who have something called a tardis, where there’s more space on the inside than there appears to be from the outside.
No storage solution will give you more space in your home. FACT. Yes, reorganising your clutter more efficiently may create a bit of space but it won’t be enough to hide all your clutter.
Off Site Self Storage is no better. All you’re doing is getting it off your conveyor belt and putting it onto someone elses.
I guarantee that if you haven’t dealt with the amount of clutter coming onto your conveyor belt, you’ll soon fill up any space you create by putting your clutter in Off Site Self Storage.
5. Method 1, 2, 3
The 3 most common decluttering methods are: ‘keep’, ‘chuck’, ‘charity’ which relies on you being ruthless with your decision making – which usually leads to regret ‘piles’ method where you sort your clutter into endless piles of types of clutter and most people end up surrounded by a sea of piles, then pile the piles on top of one another to make it look a little better when they run out of time or energy’weeding’ out what you know can go based on what you can see on the top of the clutter mountains.
None of the above methods enable you to clear your clutter for long because not only do they only deal with the symptom of your clutter, not the cause, they also don’t teach you how to make safe decisions that your brain is comfortable with.
But then I’m sure you know that already.
When you use one of these 3 methods it’s like trying to put diesel into a petrol engine – it’s not going to work for long.
With the Clutter Clearing Process we make sure we use a process that is tried and tested and proved to work by thousands of former clutterholics, and one which works WITH the brain so that it can make SAFE decisions about what to do with the clutter whilst focused on how our Clutter Free Life is going to be.
We also make sure that it’s a process that can be followed regardless of how much time you have available.
You can do a Clutter Clearing Session using the Clutter Clearing Process in as little as half an hour, If you believe you can’t make time to do a half hour Clutter Clearing Session once a day then you’re not ready to start your Clutter Clearing Journey yet.
6. New Habits – 21 times to create a new habit
As mentioned in point 1 and 2 above, Clearing your Clutter is a Journey and when you use the Clutter Clearing Process it’s a one way journey.
That’s because it involves creating new habits. Did you know that to create a new habit you have to repeat it at least 21 times in 21 days?
It can be a bit longer the older you get. What this means is that when you’ve repeated an activity 21 times you’re less likely to have to consciously think about doing it because it’s become a more automatic action that you just ‘do’.
That’s why the average number of driving lessons someone takes before they take their test is 21, because by then the use of the breaks, accelerator, clutch, gears, mirrors etc is more automatic which makes you more likely to be safe on the road.
When you clear your clutter using the Clutter Clearing Process you’ll find you create new habits to help maintain a Clutter Free space so the Clutter doesn’t grow back.
7. 7 Choices Work ‘with’ your brain not against it
As mentioned above, the 3 most common decluttering methods limit the number of choices you give yourself about what to do with your clutter. Did you know that your brain is most comfortable with 7 choices? Assuming they are action focused choices, your brain will be able to make a decision with 7 choices.
Not 3 like the ‘keep’, ‘chuck’, ‘charity’ method (because let’s be honest, most of our clutter ends up in the ‘keep’ pile because it might come in useful or be used in the future), endless choices like the ‘piles’ method, or just 1 choice like the ‘weeding’ method.
The Clutter Clearing Process uses 7 action focused categories to sort your clutter into and you WILL be able to make a decision when you have the right 7.
