It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily episode 2835, why declutter instead of organized by Antonio Collins of BalanceThroughSimplicity.com and I'm Justin Malik. Happy Monday, welcome back to Optimal Living Daily where I read to you with permission from the authors every single day of the year. So that was right to our minimalist Monday post as we optimize your life. Why declutter instead of organized by Antonio Collins of BalanceThroughSimplicity.com?
Why declutter may not just organize? That's a good question. Why should I declutter when I could just organize my stuff better instead? In this post, we look at the benefits of decluttering and why it's better to declutter instead of organize.
The benefits of decluttering. Decluttering is really popular right now and there are some wonderful benefits to be had by decluttering your home and learning to own less stuff. Some of the benefits that I've found in my own life are, one, we have more space. There's more physical space because my home isn't cluttered.
There's no excess furniture, ornaments on the shelves, piles of paperwork on the table services and the garage is no longer used as a random dumping ground for stuff I don't want in the house. Two, I'm calmer. My time isn't spent clearing and tidying up. When I do have free time, I can use it to do things that I want to do instead of catching up on household chores and laundry.
And three, it's easier to find things. Everything has a place, not home. I know where things are, I lose things less often, and I'm much more efficient and productive as a result. There are lots of other benefits of decluttering your home and life.
Why organizing doesn't work? For those who haven't yet discovered the benefits of decluttering, it's a common question to ask. Why declutter when organizing one's stuff could do instead? Why should we declutter when we can just order, store and organize our belongings better?
Surely, this will make the home neater and tidier. Won't we still be able to find things? And isn't it better to keep our stuff and just store it properly rather than throwing things out and wasting our time, money and energy? Organization is vital and I'm a self-confessed, neat freak.
So organization is something that I love to talk about. I'm not for a moment suggesting that you won't benefit from getting a bit more organized with your stuff. However, there are some definite downsides to only organizing what you have instead of decluttering. One, time.
Just organizing your belongings will still mean that you have to spend time looking after them, moving, tidying, cleaning, and storing them. Two, energy. You'll still have the same number of possessions and probably even more storage space to look after as well. If you organize your stuff, chances are that you'll have more shelves, tables, cupboards, and boxes to put it all in.
That means more dusting and cleaning of not only your belongings, but those storage units too. Three, stress. You're also more likely to get stressed when your lovely new storage solutions aren't doing the job you intended for them. Will that magically mean that your kids or partner know to put stuff away in them?
Will it mean they take care of the stuff any better? Will it encourage you to be neater and tidier if basically you're not a neat and tidy person? Probably not. Four, frustration.
In my experience, it'll just cause you more stress and frustration because the storage and organization you've spent time, energy, and maybe money putting in place isn't working. And five, yet more clutter. There's so many storage options ranging from boxes to complete shelving units. It's easy to clutter up our homes just with these, let alone the items we're actually trying to store.
That's why decluttering instead, in my own experience, there are two important reasons why decluttering has much better rewards than just organizing. Number one, less stuff to look after. By decluttering your home and removing the items that you no longer need, want, or use, the biggest difference will be that you'll have so much less stuff to clean, tidy, and look after. That means keeping on top of your home will be easier and quicker.
With some simple household routines in place, your home will run smoothly with minimum effort from you. Putting it simply, decluttering means you have less stuff. If you only organize what you have rather than decluttering first, it means you have the same amount of stuff to look after, but you also have to spend even more time making sure it stays organized as well. To put another way, what you'll end up with is organized clutter, but it's still clutter all the same.
And number two, reduce stress levels. The other reason why decluttering has an added benefit over just organizing what you have is that there's scientific evidence to suggest a relationship between clutter and stress levels. You can read more about the research, but by reducing the clutter in your home, your stress levels could go down. That's why I encourage you to declutter rather than just organize.
The perfect solution. Perhaps the perfect solution to simplify your home and your life could be a combination of both decluttering and organization. Declutter the stuff that you don't need, don't want, and doesn't add value so you're only left with the things that you actually want, then find a way to organize and store it. Whether it's paperwork, art supplies, clothes, cooking utensils, tools, books, it's definitely easier to find what you're looking for and enjoy making the most of them when things are stored properly.
Our homes look better when they're neat and tidy, and if you find that you run out of storage space, maybe it's time to declutter again. Storage plays a vital role in our homes, but it's not the only solution to keeping our clutter under control. Decluttering and organizing for a simpler life. Creating more space, time, and freedom with less stress on you is key to a simpler life.
Training is a tool to help you sift through your stuff in all its shapes and forms. It helps you identify what's important, so you can get rid of the rest that just distracts and clutters your physical and psychological space. Getting your home more streamlined, easier to manage, more relaxing, and enjoyable to live in and more organized will help free you up so you can get on with living the rest of your life. You just listen to the post titled, Why Declutter Instead of Organized by Antonio Collins of Bouncer simplicity.com.
Thank you to Antonio. I think this is something that comes a bit more naturally to me personally. I'm not much of a big organizer because when I have a set space to work, for example, I simply try to bring as little things into that space as possible. Now, that said, other places that I don't pay much attention to or I'm in constantly, like a storage closet, for example, might not be the same, but I'd say in general for my living space, there's really not much organizing going on because of what Antonio talked about.
When there's less clutter and stuff to look after, it's just easier to put things back where they belong and not have to worry about organizing in the first place, which, again, like you said, takes a lot of time and energy. For me, it's more about efficiency than anything else. My workspace might not be the most beautiful space to look at, but to me, I love it just how it is because it only takes a minute to tidy up, if that. So thank you to Antonio for the post.
Thank you for being here and minimizing it along with me. Have a great start to your week and I'll catch you tomorrow with another article where your optimal life awaits.