Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Your use of these links is greatly appreciated!
Last updated on November 20th, 2023 at 09:03 am
Facebook Live Recap: If you want your home to stay decluttered, you have to take another step …create organizing habits!
We’re almost to the end of January, and a lot of people have been decluttering their homes. It’s a great time to do it because it’s a new year, but the problem is, a lot of people will declutter this January then when next January comes around, they’ll have to do it all over again.
Here’s how I know this. At the beginning of my journey as a pro organizer, I’d return to a client’s home after a break in sessions only to find that all the work we did was undone.
This really bothered me because my clients were paying me their hard-earned money to help them organize, and it would only last maybe a month at most.
Other pro organizers reported similar results. And as pro organizers, we want so badly to help our clients! We know how organizing can change someone’s life!
I needed to find a way to crack the code and actually help my clients get organized for good, not temporarily. So I started analyzing the things I do.
I’m a naturally organized person, so I wanted to know if it’s something innate or something that can be acquired. And the more I looked at what I was doing to stay organized, the more I realized it came down to one thing:
Instead of decluttering, I do little things, the same things, throughout the day, every day, that keep my home from getting messy.
I always clean up after myself and encourage my kid to do the same thing.
I put things away when I’m done with them.
I don’t put off my decisions on where to put things.
Basically, it came down to my habits.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you may be thinking, not this again! But I’m going to talk about habits until I’m blue in the face. Habits are the cornerstone of organization. And it’s the reason why decluttering alone won’t help you to have a more organized home.
How do you even begin to create a new habit? That actually may be harder than decluttering.
It won’t take you 21 days. Current research tells us the number of days doesn’t matter. What matters is intention and implementation.
Let me give you an example.
Right now, I’m working on creating a habit of meal planning once a month because it takes me too much time and brain power to do it every week, and I hate doing it every week. So I decided it’s going to be easier to do the task all in one sitting.
Step 1: Know why you’re making the habit.
Next, I had to figure out how I could make it easier or more enjoyable. So I spent 30-45 minutes writing down every single meal I could think of to create a master list. This makes it so much easier than trying to remember different meals I can make.
Step 2: Figure out your strategy.
Then, I needed to figure out an implementation plan. In other words, when and where I would do my monthly meal plan. I’ve found it’s more enjoyable for me to do it on the last Sunday morning of the month while I’m planning out my week. It’s nice and quiet, my brain is fresh, and I’m already in planning mode. It doesn’t feel like such a drag to do it then.
So if you wanted to create a habit of getting the kids to put the toys away every day, you’d have to start with the smallest possible thing. You can make it easier by deciding where the different toys will go …giving them homes.
(So this is where organizing comes in handy, and you can download a free step-by-step organizing checklist here. And funny enough, the last step in that checklist is “Upkeep.”)
Step 3: When and where you’ll implement taking action.
You can decide that the action of putting away the toys will happen immediately after dinner and you can make it satisfying by making it into a game for your kids.
If you have decluttered this January, I recommend creating habits to keep your home in it’s decluttered state. A simple one is putting items back where they belong as quickly as possible.
Habits will take longer to develop, but the outcome will be so much greater than just doing the decluttering. I know this because this is the lifestyle I choose to live. I choose to create habits and routines so I can spend time prioritizing the things I really want to be doing, like helping you, and not having to spend all my time and energy trying to keep my house clean.
Leave a Reply