When decluttering is overwhelming
The number one challenge I hear over and over from my community and tidying clients is the feeling of overwhelm and how this feeling stops them from making any real progress or change when it comes to tidying up their homes.
This is common so I promise that you’re not the only one.
What is overwhelm?
Let’s say you’ve been living in a cluttered space for some time and you start to feel frustration about your situation yet you’re not really motivated to take any real action.
Days become weeks and weeks soon become months, and before long you’re way past frustration. And you’re experiencing full on overwhelm. Overwhelm creeps up on us and it can quickly become unmanageable.
What does overwhelm look like when it comes to tidying up?
It’s the feeling that the clutter has gotten out of hand.
You look around, not sure where to start, how to begin or how to wrap your head around the big challenge of organizing your space and home.
Overwhelm causes many to stop before getting started and that’s called procrastination.
I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
You might be so afraid of doing it wrong or not doing it the best way and that fear prevents you from taking any real action towards clearing the clutter.
Overwhelm happens everyday
As someone who does this professionally, I want to share a secret with you.
I get overwhelmed too.
There’s usually not a single day that goes by when I’m not feeling some form of overwhelm.
I could be at the grocery store and there’s so much going on all at once or multiple people, usually my kids, are talking to me at the same time and over each other.
Or overwhelm happens when our brains, our computers, become overloaded with information and our processors are overloaded.
That’s usually when my computer’s fan starts to kick on.
The same thing is happening when we visually see all the clutter before us in our homes.
It’s information overload, which makes so much sense because our eyes are forced to bounce from clutter to clutter throughout the space, rather than letting our gaze freely glide throughout the home.
When decluttering is overwhelming try this
Over the years, I’ve come to learn the steps I need to take in order to move past a state of freeze and overwhelm and motion, which brings clarity for me.
The solution is really simple. It really is.
The simple solution when decluttering is overwhelming is to simplify and we do this by choosing one thing.
This is extremely effective because I’m just simplifying the situation.
And I give my computer only one program to run.
The added benefit is that the one thing then becomes one action.
When that one action is complete and I feel so good about checking that off my list, I then move on to the next thing.
Cleaning up the kitchen
Here’s a practical real-life example.
I’m what you call a messy cook. I love to cook, but it’s absolutely looking like a war zone in the kitchen after I’m done.
I’m so focused on making the recipe at hand that I don’t bother putting anything away. It’s just not my style, but at the end, when the meal is complete, I start the cleanup process, which always contributes to a little bit of overwhelm.
This is where I apply my strategy of picking one thing to focus on rather than the entire mess I created.
One example is that I will gather up all the spices used during cooking and bring like kind items together and put them back in the drawer.
After completing the spices, I feel really good and accomplished and then I’ll move on to the next thing, which might be dirty dishes.
This continues on until all the similar tasks are complete.
By doing this, I reduce the overwhelm and I simplify the process so that my brain can handle the task at hand.
Tidying up a cluttered space
When it comes to tidying up a cluttered space, you want to apply the same strategy, pick just one thing.
Pick one subcategory of items that you know you can gather up and then tackle it by either decluttering the items or putting the items back right where they belong.
Conclusion
I have a free resource I created to help you with tidying up your space.
By broad categories, I break down decluttering your home into many categories so that the overwhelming task of organizing is simplified.
You can grab the free checklist linked in the button below.
The most important thing when decluttering is overwhelming on your tidying journey is to move out of overwhelm by taking a small action.
Focus on the small, manageable actions first, then move onto larger and more significant tasks after developing the habit and building your decluttering muscles.
Southern California based Professional Organizer, Sandy Park, owner and founder of Tidy with SPARK shares her joy of organization with her clients.
She serves clients in Orange County as well as the hundreds of thousands of followers on her combined social media platforms.
Connect with Sandy through her website or by connecting through her social channels.