Declutter Your Life In These 4 Powerful Areas

holistic spaces Nov 08, 2023

Do you ever feel like you need to declutter your life entirely 😂? Oof, I’ve been there. And I know I’m not alone because, when I ask what you all would like to hear me cover, something that always comes up is “how can I declutter my mind of these anxieties and busyness”.

If you’re feeling like a total life declutter is in order, you’ll likely want to declutter your life in these 4 powerful areas first!

#1. Declutter Your Mind

I like to say “your mind is the projector and your environment is just the projection” but really it’s so much more than your environment. Your mind projects onto every aspect of your life and happiness. It can help to hold everything together or be the cause of everything falling apart.

Needless to say, if your life is a mess it’s very likely because your mind is a mess.

Therefore, it makes sense that in order to declutter your life it helps to start with decluttering your mind. But that’s such a huge problem to solve- how to declutter your life and mind? I’m not saying that making intentional adjustments to your mindset is easy but here’s the process that works for me when I need a total mind declutter!

First, find mental space and stop the noise.

It’s just as important to create mental space as it is physical space (like you would in your home). Before you can course-correct and remove the mental clutter, you have to stop the noise. Can anyone relate to the noise I’m talking about ✋?

Sometimes pausing can be really hard. Especially, when you’re in the middle of a big project and it always feels like the perfect stopping point is just around the corner (only to find that there’s another task with another stopping point waiting there).

If you have to force it- DO IT. It’s important. I get tunnel vision and I never feel more anxious, depressed, and unhealthy than I do when I allow myself to run on constant autopilot toward a distant goal. You’re not giving up, you’re just pausing. You’ll likely find, as I always do, that the pause makes your work so much more productive and enjoyable. You might see things differently- opportunities and possibilities that you missed before.

Tools that can help to declutter your mind:

Meditation: I prefer guided but I also dig some Tibetan Singing Bowls from time to time 😌
Yoga: Yoga With Adrien is my go-to and she makes my mind and body feel oh-so-good
Breathing, stretching, and hydrating: bringing in fresh oxygen and water is a quick way to flush out a bit of mental clutter
Journaling: my personal fave is stream-of-consciousness writing to empty my brain of EVERYTHING
Nature: we all know how I feel about the power of our environment- fresh air, nature, sunshine, movement, all are amazing at working out the kinks and clutter and washing out our perspective

I’m a firm believer that the mind impacts every area of our lives, including our homes. You can see more about this and how to create a truly holistic and clutter-free space in my free masterclass right here.

Then, go deep by addressing your beliefs.

I can say with total certainty that the #1 area where our mind wreaks havoc is in our beliefs. Our beliefs are habitual and they dictate everything we do, how we think, and the decisions we make.

If you’re trying to bring more positivity into your life, let me tell you, it won’t work to simply think positive thoughts, shout affirmations, and coat yourself with a gluttonous slathering of inspiration…UNLESS you’re also working to remove the root cause of those negative thoughts (i.e. your belief patterns).

This process is never an immediate transformation- it’s an ongoing process. Each time you clean up one area of your thinking you’ll find another BUT you’ll be that much clearer. Cluttered, old, unhealthy beliefs can cause immense misery that can’t and won’t be satiated by anything other than altering those beliefs.

Not sure if you have any? Here are some examples of common beliefs I hear that relate to cluttered homes:

I might need it someday
It’s rude to get rid of gifts
I’m just not an organized person
It’s wasteful to let decent things go
There’s no point in decluttering with my messy family.
I’m just too sentimental

#2. Declutter Your Home

Remember earlier when I said, “your mind is the projector and your environment is just the projection”? Well, I have some good news- it’s also a feedback loop. Why is this good? Well, it means that you can make positive changes to your currently chaotic environment that result in positive changes being made to your mind (and the spiral continues upward).

I think this is great news because of all the things we can’t control in life, and there are many, our home is one thing we absolutely can change in our favor. One of my favorite quotes is by Dan Buettner, author of the book Bluezones which was based on a study of longevity and happiness that analyzed billions of data worldwide.

He said: “Your environment, where you live or how you shape your surroundings, is the biggest, most important, and most impactful thing you can do to favor your own happiness.”

You can’t declutter your life without decluttering your environment. Our environments are so impactful to our daily lives.

Your home is where you draw your energy.

That’s why I focus on clearing the physical clutter first. Your home is where you draw your energy. So much of your internal life is derived from your external life. That means that if your home is a mess, your mind is probably a mess (and vice versa)!

Stepping into a space can immediately transform how you feel on every level: your physical body, your emotional landscape, your mental anxiety, your energy, and so on. Consider the difference between stepping foot into a haunted house vs. a day spa. One increases your heart rate and breathing, tightens your muscles, contracts your posture, and increases your mental alertness and emotional stress… the other has the exact opposite effect.

Our environments matter so much. We directly derive our energy from our surroundings. Being outdoors makes you feel fresh and expansive, sterile rooms make you feel clean but uptight, and cluttered environments make you feel stressed and chaotic. Space, light, organization, and even color all have an effect on our energy.

This also means that you can jump-start the path to declutter your life simply by decluttering your home and making intentional changes to your space.

Clutter is a pain point.

Clutter, in particular, has been proven to have multiple psychological and physical impacts that can’t be denied. If you’re feeling the need to declutter your life, there’s a good chance that you have some physical clutter weighing you down as well.

An article in The New York Times cites research done at UCLA. This study observed 32 middle-class Los Angeles families. They found that “all of the mothers’ stress hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings.”

Of course, clutter also adds layers of distraction to our already cluttered minds and schedules. Princeton University did a study that explained how clutter in sight competes for the brain’s resources. Clutter is visually disruptive and overwhelms your brain that’s trying to process everything in real time.

They determined: “Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout the visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.”

And the list goes on and on from health concerns to mental health concerns. It’s an area that MANY people struggle with (due to a variety of contributing factors).

Our habitats are personal- declutter your home to amplify your results.

When a particular space belongs to you (like your home), the effects are amplified because you have a vested emotional interest. On some level, we all sense that our homes say something about us. This internalized impact can either amp up or drain your energy even more. That’s why it’s important to declutter your life at home before you look to other areas (like the office, car, etc.).

So many people admit to feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, shameful, and embarrassed about their home. Your home can quickly become a point of strife for relationships and has been known to lead to depression and anxiety. I get it. Your space can make it hard to breathe when it gets out of control.

#3. Declutter Your Emotions

Believe it or not, I used to be at the total mercy of my emotions and it wasn’t a pretty thing because they were completely unstable and unpredictable. Emotions have no boundaries and need no reasons. They’re not logical and they can change like the wind. That’s why you’ll want to declutter your emotions in order to declutter your life fully.

Intuition vs. control

I know it can be awfully popular to rely on feelings and make decisions based on those feelings. While I do firmly believe in intuition and that sometimes our bodies try to reinforce something that we truly know subconsciously is right or wrong for us, it’s very dangerous to let our emotions take the wheel. *Cue car crash*

This doesn’t mean denying the existence of emotions and resorting to pretending that we’re robots (that’s just as bad). We are emotional beings and we are so lucky to have that ability but control is key. Just like your home, your time, and your thoughts, YOU need to take control and declutter your own emotions if you want to have a full life.

If you maintain the limiting belief that you’re just an emotional person and can’t help it, you should squash that right now! People do have the ability to train their emotions and doing so will greatly help to declutter your life. Write down the areas of emotional craziness that you’re no longer going to allow to run your life. You may even want to discuss these areas with another person. The point is, it’s possible and if it’s possible then you can do it.

Declutter your emotions related to your clutter.

If everything is sentimental, nothing is sentimental. Overidentifying things as being sentimental only detracts from things that are truly worthy of the label. You should be selective about what things you allow to have a piece of your emotions. Of course, it’s not the ‘stuff’ that really holds meaning it’s the memory we associate with it.

This means it’s all perceived value. If our beliefs can be changed (and we already mentioned above that they can), then there’s no reason to believe that a person will always be destitute to drowning in sentimental clutter. That belief, in itself, is a limiting belief.

Of course, that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with holding onto things that are truly sentimental. I hold onto some, myself, inside of my memory box. That’s a good clue for you- having spatial constraints (or boundaries for your things) is a huge benefit when it comes to deciding what’s truly worth keeping and what isn’t. Boundaries create space.

#4. Declutter Your Schedule

I said earlier that “your home is where you draw your energy”… well your schedule is where you spend your energy.

We are constantly investing our energy and time into our schedules. If you don’t think time is a currency, think again. It absolutely is and a valuable one at that. It’s crucial that we choose what’s worthy of our time and energy. Otherwise, you will certainly find your life feeling overwhelmingly cluttered and your body and mind suffering as a consequence.

If you own nothing else, own your time. Whether you’re working for someone else, have a big and busy family, or are running a full business from home…own your time. This doesn’t mean you need to be mean, uncaring or do a poor job. But boundaries and priorities are a must. We’ve only so many minutes in life and it’s our responsibility to assign those minutes to the best of our ability.

Needless to say, you 100% cannot declutter your life without addressing your schedule.

So, how do you know what the best use of your time is?

It all comes down to what your goal is for your life. I know that sounds deep and maybe even somber to some but it’s something that I literally think about on a daily basis. Not in a morbid way but in an inspiring way. During my lifetime, what do I want to accomplish and experience? That single question determines the majority of my decisions.

Determine your goals (both long-term and short-term). Make a list of the things you hope to accomplish in life AND in the next 90 days. Add to that list the things you value and cherish- the people you love, self-care, passion hobbies, etc.

Keep in mind that “lifetime goals” are actually more of a vision than a goal. Don’t invest too much time trying to map out long-term goals. They’re often too vague and will almost certainly change over time. The purpose of this big vision is to make sure you’re on course.

Declutter your schedule and focus on the next 90 days.

If you plan for nothing, then everything will steal your time. This is why we can get overwhelmed and sometimes feel a complete loss of control. It’s important to declutter your schedule as a core practice in order to declutter your life as a whole.

Sometimes we have good intentions but unrealistic expectations. We overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year. (I’m pretty sure it’s Tony Robbins who said that but I’ve found it to be so true). This is where focusing on the next 90 days comes in handy. It’s a long enough time span to allow for some major progress without feeling the need to cram all of the tasks in a single week ;).

Here are some steps I recommend in order to declutter your schedule and get back on track:

Do a brain dump of every task and project you can think of
Circle the 10 that are the highest priority (or that give you the most ROI)
Prioritize that list by a.) the lowest hanging fruit (easiest) and b.) most valuable for ROI
Break down those projects into smaller tasks
Assign due dates to each of the smaller tasks that span the 90 days
Prune (i.e. LET GO OF) anything that has not made it’s way onto the priorities list

Which Of These 4 Key Areas Do You Need To Declutter The Most?

Creating a calm and simple life for yourself rarely comes down to a single thing. We, humans, are holistic and complicated beings! It sometimes takes a varied effort to create a life that feels decluttered and in alignment. Here’s a quick reminder of the 4 powerful areas to declutter your life in today! I’d love to hear down in the comments which of these you resonate with the most!