Is your home overweight?

I have no doubt you own some good things. So do I and everyone else. The thing about good things, though, is you can have too many of them. When I’ve overindulged in junk food more than occasionally, eventually my pants’ waistbands get tight. The same happens in our homes. We can unintentionally fill them to the brim and suffer the consequences of less productivity with what matters most in life and more work to do because we’re busy cleaning and maintaining the stuff. Having too much stuff in your home costs you time, energy and unneeded stress, so get rid of that weight and spend your extra time and energy doing the things you love!

Belongings are as sneaky as calories. Before you know it, your home is as full as one’s tummy after a third pass through the buffet line.

Here are some suggestions on a taking a healthy approach to the process for avoiding an overabundance of possessions:

Start with a plan before you minimize belongings. Write out which categories you’d like to tackle and order them by importance or difficulty. Sometimes starting with the easiest category will help you build momentum to move on to more difficult tasks.

Choose the first category from your list to focus on: For example, let’s say you’d like to have a minimalist closet. If your closet feels out of sorts, you could weed out the torn, wrong size, and unnecessary items. Alternatively, you might choose to attack your makeup.

When you’re done with one category, STOP. Your goal is to start small and celebrate the victories. My experience over the years has been one of gaining as much pleasure from minimizing belongings in a category as when we’ve finished minimizing everything in an entire house.

After celebrating the victory with the first category move to a second problem area on your list: This approach will keep you from being overwhelmed while you minimize belongings. Maybe you’d like to tackle that photo collection next? Give it a go, if you are feeling up for it. The last thing you want, however, is the sense that you’re being driven to let go of things that you will later regret having done.

Make a long term Commitment: Your house didn’t become filled with stuff and disorganized overnight, so you can’t expect to get things back in order in a weekend. Depending on how much weight your house has to lose, it will definitely take some time to go through everything and make your home the way you would like it to be. You need to realize that that’s okay and have some patience with the process.

Develop new Healthy Habits: You need to be open to changing some of your old, unhealthy organization habits and truly commit to forming those new, more helpful ones. Just as we have to develop new eating and exercise habits to lose weight, we need to develop new healthy habits to create {and maintain!} a clean and organized home. At first, this will likely require some intentional planning and focus; however, over time, these new habits will just become part of our regular routine and you will rarely have to think about them.

Get rid of the Excuses: The best way to get things done is to just get started.” Don’t put off getting organized until you have more time, or more money, or more energy. Get started NOW!

Look but don’t buy (or even better – do not go shopping unless absolutely necessary).

Borrow books instead of buying them or download them on electronic devices.

Do a furniture audit to remove the unnecessary pieces and make sure not to add in extra side tables, chairs, or decorative items unless they serve a true purpose.

This is similar to achieving a healthy body weight: We don’t want a sparse home, nor do we want one that is overflowing to the point of being stressful, overwhelming, and lacking peace. Over time, as we follow habits like these, we’ll find our number of possessions stays at an amount that’s healthy, and eventually…no more overweight home!

Finally, please remember that your purpose isn’t just to organize. Buying handy dandy little baskets to hold or hide items doesn’t make them disappear; owning less does.

Has a recent season of buying and/or receiving gifts left you with an overweight home? Would you like some help on your journey to minimize belongings? I’d love to work with you.