The Joyful Home Makeover: 5 Essential Steps to Organize and Thrive

MY SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE STRATEGY TO GET YOUR HOME ORGANIZED, FOR GOOD.

Say no to clutter. Say no to overwhelm. Your home should nurture you, not leave you empty. Let me help you get started with my simple and effective strategy for eliminating clutter from your life.  

I will start by busting a myth: Do not start small in a little corner of your home!!! Here's what will happen if you do: You will encounter all sorts of objects, miscellaneous little things like safety pins, bands, pens, random beauty and self care products, papers, books, decorative items, some memorabilia.... and what do you do with all this you will ask? ugh! Just this question will start overwhelming you. You might put a few trinkets in a junk drawer, place back the beauty products in the bathroom and the books on the bookshelf. The papers will pile on a corner of your desk for a later dooming decluttering session. If throwing away doesn't put you off, you might throw most of it out (only to buy some later because you do need rubber bands occasionally!). If you keep at it, with a lot of willpower, you might get through your home. But you will find yourself encountering the same items many times, and just put them in what you think could be a better place for now, as long as it's away from the corner you're currently decluttering! This method will leave you with a lot of frustration and a distaste for organizing... you might even have a little resentment for your home that doesn't bring you the rest and peace of mind you need after a long day. And most likely you will find yourself with the same disorganized home a few months - if not weeks - later, as what you achieved was moving clutter around, and adding unnecessary storage that is slowly eating up at your very precious space.

What you need....is a PLAN. A true commitment to live organized and clutter-free for good. A little patience, and trust in the process. And I will lay it out for you.

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First, you need to ask yourself WHY you want to have an organized home. What will it bring you? What will you accomplish in a tidy space?  Who would you want to have over? This question of WHY is so important. It will keep your motivation and purpose fresh when you start feeling overwhelmed or feel that you'll never be done. 

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Second, you need to embrace a category-by-category approach. This will allow you to have a laser focus on just that category of things (books, or electronics, or clothes, etc...), and blissfully ignore everything else until their time comes! This step is extremely important because you need to assess the exact amount and volume you own in this category. This will also have a pretty powerful effect on your mindset. You might get very surprised by the amount, and will start seeing things differently and buy and bring things home more consciously. 

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Third, you need to PURGE! Focus on keeping what you love and what serves the purpose you established as you started this process. Because our brains are hardwired to see the negative first, we tend to focus on what doesn't work and what we should discard. Here, I want to introduce another way of approaching your purging: focus on what you want to keep.  What's the difference between keeping what you love or throwing what you don't ? It may feel like it would have the same result, right? Wrong! I challenge you to try it for yourself: grab a pile of things, and discard what you don't like. Now, grab the same pile of things, and keep what you love. So? Now, imagine the result you can have on your whole home when you take this approach rather than merely removing the old and ugly... it will blow your mind!

Place unwanted items in bags labelled trash, recycle, donate and sell. Do a search for your local donation stores and schedule your trips there. If you want to give some items to friends, prepare a different bag for each one with their name on it, and plan for a visit!

And do not worry about where you will store your items yet, until you're done purging everything. This will prevent you from buying unnecessary storage too soon. Most of the time, people already have everything they need to store in their homes. Any container can be repurposed in every area, and you can also get creative with using pretty shopping bags, jars, shoe boxes etc to store items across your home. Just keep on collecting containers as you do your purging. 

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Now that you are left with only the things you love and serve you, it is time to find them a home. Keep like items together. It is the best way to find them when you need them, even if they are not in the room you need them in that instant. It takes less time and mental energy to get something and put it back with confidence, than trying to remember where you put it, and forgetting you have a similar item someplace else. Labelling everything will also help tremendously. Don’t skip it, it will help you in the long term remembering where things are, especially things you don’t use all the time, and you’ll get used to your new system faster.

It is also time to make things look pretty and decorate. Display your favorite memorabilia instead of having it stored in the garage. Use your most beautiful dishes. Tape some photos in your closet that will give you a smile every time you get dressed! Enjoy!

Every step of this plan is designed to have a positive effect on your mindset. After this complete makeover, you will be more likely to be mindful of your purchases, and be less wasteful. You will know exactly what you own and where it is. Less frustration, less time wasted looking for things, less overwhelm stemming from seeing clutter. More smiles and positive thoughts as all you see around you brings you joy! Can you see how this can actually have a life changing effect? 

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Of course, life happens, and things will get messy. So the last step to incorporate to keep the tidy bliss going is a routine to put things back where they belong after each use, and keep up with regular cleaning. 

Tackle your clutter once and for all. You deserve it. Create the home that will support your values, your dreams, and make the space you need for what matters most in your life. 

Happy Tidying!