Mental Health Tips - Decluttering Your Life
Decluttering your life
Living and working in a cluttered environment is expensive. Clutter costs us:
- Time - which is priceless and can never be replaced
- Energy - because it makes our jobs harder
- Financially - because we pay for the initial purchase, pay to maintain the clutter and pay for wasted time spent looking for misplaced items
- Peace of mind - because it’s hard to relax in a space that’s overloaded with things that demand attention. And, as we all know only too well, it’s very stressful to look for items that go missing when we need them
Making order out of chaos
Here’s a simple, three-step process for organizing any space:
Step 1. Designate the purpose of the space you’re planning to organize
- Create a purpose statement for your space. Identify all the activities that will take place in that space and write them down in a list
Step 2. Eliminate anything that doesn’t fit the purpose of the space
- Start by creating four sorting boxes or piles:
o Give away
o Throw away
o Store in this space
o Store in another space
- Now, with your purpose statement and list in mind, go through the entire contents of your space and sort everything into these four categories
- ‘Sort everything’ means exactly that! Take a good, hard look at everything on your desk, drawers and cabinets - don’t forget to check your walls and counters, too. Sort all the items in one area before moving on to the next spot (yes, it’s a big job, but it’s worth it - once your living/working spaces are organized, you’ll have more time to relax!)
- As you go through the sorting process, ask yourself these questions:
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Is this item useful to me? Have I used it in the past year? If not, get rid of it
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Is it in good condition? Does it work properly? If not, fix it or throw it out
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Do I have too many of these? Store excess supplies somewhere else or give them away
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Is this a seasonal item I can store elsewhere? A labeled storage box is ideal for this type of thing
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Step 3. Find a home for the items in the ’store in this space’ pile
- Eliminate the things that don’t fit the purpose of your space
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Invest in some organizing tools for storing the items that you put back into your desk, cabinets and counters. File boxes, drawer organizers, accordion files, even plastic containers will help keep your spaces tidy
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Store frequently used items in easily accessible drawers and cabinets. Make sure these items are kept close to the place where they’ll be used
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Store similar things together (eg. all office supplies in one place)
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Store items on your desk or counters only if you use them often (several times a week). Otherwise, put them away
- Once you have everything in the right spot, use a label maker to label what goes where. Then make a point of always putting things back in the right place!
Tags: Health Tips, Mental Health Tips, Stress Management, time managment, work life, work life balance