So, OK, we all know how wonderful it is to be in a tidy, organised space, right? We know that decluttering and organising saves you time, saves you money, gives you peace of mind, protects your physical health, improves your mental health and reduces your environmental impact.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s all very well, isn’t it? But you’re too flipping busy to spend time decluttering and organising. Jeez!

Hmm…you sure about that?

Here’s a few little secrets about decluttering and being organised.

1 We’ve all got time for what we want to do

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein”.
H Jackson Brown, Jr American author of Life’s Little Instruction Book

Ever asked someone to do something for you, only to be told they haven’t got enough time…

…and then noticed that they’ve uploaded a bunch of photos to Facebook?

How come they had time to do that and not what you asked them to do?!

Same reason that you’ve got time for all the stuff you do.

We’ve all got time for what we want to do.

It’s about motivation, baby.

So what’s yours (as a method actor might say)?

Mentally beating yourself up for your messy surfaces won’t move you forward.

Getting in touch with your vision for your life will.

Get clear about how you want your life to be, and then take a look around and assess whether your home is in line with that commitment.

“You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.”
Charles Roberts Buxton (English brewer, philanthropist, writer and Member of Parliament 1823-1871

2 You’re never stressed about time

Uh-uh. No you’re not.

I know it feels like it.

I speak from experience. I go there constantly. I frequently feel anxious that I haven’t got enough time to do what I’ve got to do.

So much so that I specifically took the issue on through personal development work. I signed up to coach on a full-on 14 week programme. On top of my already busy working life, I travelled 60 miles each way for weekly evening sessions and three full Saturdays, provided telephone coaching for four people and ran a project in my local community.

I thought I might explode until I finally got that…

…there’s no reason to stress about time. The reality is that I’ve made commitments (to myself or others) to do a certain amount of stuff, and I’ve got a certain amount of time to do it in. Either the stuff I’ve committed to do can be done in that time, or it can’t.

If it can, great. Nothing to stress about.

If it can’t, it can’t. And there’s some action to take. I could tell someone I won’t be doing something after all. I could ask someone else to take something on. I could reschedule something. I could think of a quicker way to do something. I could find a way to combine two activities.

Still, nothing to stress about.

All my anxiety is about something else.

Maybe I’m attaching some meaning to cancelling, delegating, rescheduling or reworking something (‘I’m a failure. I should be able to do this’).

Maybe I’m afraid of the meaning I think others will attach to it (‘They’ll think I’m useless. They’ll hate me’).

Once I’ve worked out what meaning I’m attaching, I can see that it’s just a story I’ve made up and not the truth.

And that, even if what I’m afraid of does happen, it doesn’t mean what I’m making it mean either.

Then I can remind myself that there’s nothing wrong and deal calmly with reality.

3 You get the time back

Sure decluttering and organising takes time, especially if you’ve got a backlog of clutter to clear and lots of piles of stuff to sort out.

Thing is, you get all that time back…and then some.

In a decluttered and organised home, you can lay your hand on whatever you need quickly and easily. You no longer waste time searching through piles of stuff for the one thing you need.

Not only that, your thought processes are lighter and clearer. You’re more productive because you’re not distracted by the clutter around you, You’re not brought down emotionally by feeling guilty about the mess you’re in.

All of which enables you to enjoy yourself. Doing what you love in a clear, uncluttered space is bliss.

4 Staying organised is easy

Once you’ve invested the initial time involved in decluttering and organising a backlog, it takes milliseconds longer to put things away in their designated place than it does to leave them lying around.

Once you’re using lists and schedules as reminders, rather than leaving things lying about to remind you, it takes a matter of seconds to add something to a list or schedule and put the associated item away.

5 The more you do it, the more you’ll do it

Staying decluttered and organised is a matter of building up your organisational muscles.

Just like when you start a new fitness regime and begin building up your physical muscles, the biggest breakthrough comes when you get started.

You see results straightaway, and that’s so satisfying that you want to keep it up.

Eventually, staying organised becomes a habit and you find yourself not only sticking to the systems you’ve already devised, but developing more.

You know why? Because it’s all about motivation, baby.

And I do believe that brings us full circle.

How are your organisational muscles? Honed and toned or flabby and shabby? Comment below.

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