5 Successful Ways to Declutter Your Home and Improve Willpower: Rec. Reading v11
We recognize that habit-building and good mental health can’t be isolated to just one corner of the internet. Myrth is our favorite tool, but it’s not our only tool. In our regular Recommended Reading series, we’ll share links to articles, books, and other tools that we think you’ll find helpful in your journey.
During the dark days of winter, a lot of us are tempted to hibernate and hunker down. That might be a good idea on some days, but it can lead to an unexpected problem: spending a lot more time at home can make our homes messier, and messy homes can cause a lot of stress. Our founder Emma has been known to walk around her house quoting “Outer order, inner calm” as she declutters her space.
This week, we’re talking about building good habits that can help keep wintertime clutter at bay.
Raise your hand if, in your house growing up, there was a specific day of the week dedicated to marathon cleaning. If this was you, too, you might have struggled as an adult to get into the habit of a little daily cleaning. That’s why we love the 20/10 method from Unfuck Your Habitat:
“A 20/10 is 20 minutes of unfucking (cleaning, studying, what have you) followed by a 10-minute break,” she explains. It’s not always literally 20 and 10 minutes; “45/15s are the same, only, you know, 45 and 15,” [Author Rachel] Hoffman says. The idea behind a ratio—multiple parts drudgery to one part fun—is that it motivates you to do what must be done in small manageable steps.
If you are looking to establish a daily cleaning routine, try adding a 20/10 or two to your schedule.
Junk builds up fast. Try setting aside five minutes every day for a quick swoop through your living space to toss out things you don’t need - empty shampoo bottles, junk mail, bags of bread with the stale heel that you swear you’ll turn into croutons but you know you’ll never really get around to it (just us?). We liked this guide to a daily 5-minute declutter habit, especially the emphasis on having compassion for yourself:
Start with the areas that you spend the most time in! Remember that you’re doing this for yourself and for your peace of mind. So if you spend the most time in the back of the house (that nobody sees), it’s ok for you to start there!
A lot of people get discouraged when starting a daily cleaning habit because they feel disappointed when their homes don’t look like the photos in magazines or on Pinterest. We liked that this guide emphasizes progress, not perfection.
3. Think About Your Motivations
We liked that this WikiHow guide to making cleaning a habit started with self reflection:
List your problems with cleaning. Why do you not like it? Is an enormous mess the turn-off? Maybe your parents were lax with cleaning, and you took up their lazy lifestyle? You can fix these problems, but that will take some time. Dealing with a huge mess of dirty laundry, candy wrappers, and lollipop sticks is torment. YOU didn't make this mess, so why should you have to clean it up? We all ask ourselves, "_____ made this mess, not me! Why am I cleaning it up?" The point is, sometimes, you have to just suck it up and clean it, whether you like or not.
Sometimes, the mental roadblock to cleaning is something we have to deal with before we can get down to the physical work. Take some time to see if your assumptions, perceptions, or attitudes are getting in the way.
4. Harness the Power of Cleaning to Help Your Mental Health
Some people with anxiety have noticed that cleaning helps them feel better. It turns out there’s a reason for that:
People sometimes turn to rituals—including cleaning—to reduce stress stemming from other parts of their lives, says Martin Lang, an evolutionary anthropologist at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic who studies ritualized behavior. “The human mind likes to predict things,” Lang adds. “We like to know what’s going to happen because it allows us to survive in and extract resources from the environment.”
If you’re feeling inexplicably anxious, especially during the wintry months, spending a few minutes each day on cleaning or organizing could help you manage those feelings.
5. Follow Somebody Else’s Lead
When you’re decluttering, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! Lots of people have been through this process and have written about their experiences. Whether you’re a Marie Kondo devotee, an Unfuck Your Habitat fan, or somebody new to this journey, take some time to check out resources from others. We thought this comprehensive guide was wonderfully thorough. It’s aimed at military families, who have to regularly undertake massive moves, but it’s great for others, too.
We hope these resources help you start or improve a daily cleaning habit. It’s worth the effort to have a space that feels good when you’re in it.
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