One of my goals for the summer is to make good progress on decluttering my house. This is a difficult goal to have a clear ending because stuff is always coming into my house and organization systems in a house are live, active, and dynamic. So instead I am trying to put in the time to declutter, have that dedicated time for decluttering because this is something I really want. How do I know that this is a goal worth pursuing?
Annual planning
This past fall I had the pleasure of attending an event that provided training on how to do annual planning, this plan-a-palooza event was put on by Megan Sumrell. She’s great! You should check out her website and podcast. I have learned a lot from her.
Part of the yearly planning event was to come up with a list of want-tos and also answer the following questions about these goals or want-tos.
- Why do you want this?
- When you achieve this, how will you feel?
- When will you start this? When will you finish?
- What are some milestones and deadlines?
- What are some activities to support this goal?
Why declutter?
For me because the decluttering is so amorphous, it is a bit harder to come up with milestones, though I suppose the milestones could be different parts of my home. What is more helpful for me is the activities I can do to support this goal.
Here is what I came up with:
- I want to: declutter the house.
- I want this because: it will give me a sense of peace, make my life easier.
- Start: today (ongoing)
- End: end of summer 2024
- When I achieve this, I will feel: excited for the future, hopeful, peaceful
- Activities to help make this happen: schedule time for decluttering; provide myself with instructions for decluttering (a template); schedule time to bring items to donation center; get family members to help.
So how am I actually doing it this summer? I am scheduling 5 hours a week in my ideal summer schedule for decluttering. See my blog post about my ideal schedule – weekly planning part 2.
Asking the why
Another thing I have done before is to keep asking the why. Why do you want this? And then, why do you want that? And keep going until you feel you have gotten to the core reason why you want that.
Knowing your why can be very helpful for motivation. The activity itself might be unpleasant (for example, you want a clean house but you hate sweeping) but if you can connect to the underlying reason why you want to achieve that thing, it can provide you with a jolt of motivation.
Doing an exercise like this can also provide clarity if this is a thing you actually want as opposed to something you think you are supposed to want. The example that comes to mind for me is losing weight. I can see how losing weight is something that society might expect me to want, given our culture’s beauty standards and also research evidence of the health risk of being overweight/obese. But at least right now I find it hard to be motivated to lose weight. When I ask myself the why, I get stuck. When I ask myself why about other healthy habits, like exercise and eating healthy, I find myself more internally motivated.
7 whys deep
Another activity I found very helpful from the Plan-a-palooza event was a training by Mindi Huebner called “ creating routines that last”. In this she encouraged us to go “7 whys deep”. With my decluttering example – 1) Why do I want to declutter? Because I want less stuff in my house.
2) And why do I want that? How will having less stuff be good for me? Because it will be easier to find the things I actually like and use.
3) Why is it good to be able to find my things? Being able to find items will get me closer/faster/easier to the intended activity for that stuff.
And so on…
Link to Megan Sumrell website: https://www.megansumrell.com/