If you’ve been thinking that you need to get stuck into giving your home a jolly good clean out & tidy up, i.e; clearing clutter and getting rid of useless junk [ok I know you probably don't think most of what you have is useless junk - yet! ] then NOW is the time to get started and totally surprise everyone by hosting Christmas Dinner at YOUR home this year - after all when you’ve gone to the trouble of decluttering you really will be so proud of your home that you will want everyone to visit! Imagine, if you’ve been avoiding having visitors or been embarrassed by their arrival on your doorstep, how it will feel to not only be totally calm at the prospect of an unannounced visit, you’ll be hoping people will! and inviting everyone to drop by for Christmas drinks! It feels fantastic - a social life where you don’t always have to leave home. Truly I much prefer people coming to me and it’s so much greener (for you!) and it saves you money!

Wow think about that…… when you clear your clutter you can make some money selling some of it, feel good by donating some to charity (perfect time of year for that) and then save money by avoiding having to drive elsewhere on the day! PLUS you can massively improve your overall finances after you realise just how much stuff you buy that you really don’t need too, when you stop that behaviour your household budget will blossom so you can have better holidays and more fun with the family more often. Yep NOW is the perfect time to get stuck in and declutter your home, one month folks - you can do it, and I’m here to help.

A friend was recently explaining about visiting a friend of hers with a very minimalist decor and how wonderful it made her feel. When I quizzed her about her own home (we were standing in) she knew that it was a clutter problem. Because Joy does work from home and the only place for her home office is the family room in an open plan layout it’s important that these areas are defined and tidy or the entire house looks a disaster!
What I found interesting about this ‘job’ was how much we achieved in 4 hours. I really enjoyed working with Joy as she was very open to my suggestions to make some very big changes to her decor. Whilst the hardest part of her decluttering was yet to be tackled the changes we made gave her a real boost and the motivation to get the rest of her house done. This is a really important strategy I feel. To start with one room and get it totally sorted and feeling great as a source of inspiration to keep going! Here’s what Joy had to say.

I came across these videos today and thought it was well worth providing an example of a classic mistake people make when they think they’re decluttering. In the video below is a woman who, being inspired by the clutter show on Oprah recently with Peter Walsh shows us around her house to view her clutter prior to her declutter effort. Now what I noted when viewing her before and after videos is that first of all (as she stated) her home is by no means seriously cluttered, however she does have lots of stuff poorly organised. She was “motivated to declutter” and the after result is quite impressive - and a big congrats to her, well done!

What she has done however is a classic mistake of ‘undirected’ declutterers and that is; she ran out and grabbed more boxes and the like and organised her stuff, trouble is, it still takes up the same space! just that now it looks better and she probably knows for a while where things are (don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing). What did she do wrong? She didn’t actually declutter - looks like all the stuff is still there to me - correct me if I’m wrong. The real process of decluttering for people for whom it just doesn’t come naturally is to actually get rid of stuff you rarely use and can easily do without, never use, don’t even know you’ve got, belongs to someone else etc etc…

Some questions to ask yourself are:

• Do I really need this?
• Am I making use of this often is enough to justify keeping it?
• Can I take a photo of it and then sell or donate it to someone who could make use of it / a charity?
• Is having this item making me happy?

Here are the before and after videos - let me know what you think!

BEFORE

AFTER

I have just finished a quick 10 step guide to decluttering that just seemed to flow out of me, it’s called; D’ 10 Steps to DeCluttering. In it I define 10 basic steps involved in the clutter clearing process. I will follow with a post series expanding on each of these steps. This is going to be a series covering the mental, emotional and physical aspects of ridding your home of unused stuff. My inspiration came after reading It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh . If you’re not familiar with it let me tell you it is THE best book on decluttering I’ve ever read. Peter Walsh (an Aussie like me by the way!) appeared on the Oprah show recently and the response from those people lucky enough to have received his service  was astounding. Most of them were very emotional about how things had been in their lives and how they were now by comparison. One gentleman realised where most of their hard earned money was being spent when he came home from work (after the decluttering process had begun) to see a mound of kid’s clothes a kangaroo couldn’t jump over. Here’s a tip: if you’re only just managing to meet all your payments (or more importantly - not!) but just aren’t getting ahead, take a look around your home and see if you have more clothes or magazines (subscriptions) or toys or other such things than you really don’t use let alone need. Be honest with yourself. A clutter free home and importantly an organised clutter free home office (for those people who work from home either a full-time home based business or part-time work at home) is the physical foundation for everything you do in life. The habits you develop here are important and can have far reaching effects. Your home IS your kingdom, be grateful you have one and treat it with the respect it deserves because you’re actually showing respect for yourself after all you’re working your butt off to pay it off or pay the rent - aren’t you? To allow it to become a dumping ground &/or mistreating it is tantamount to doing that to yourself. Part of the declutter process is to look at what you’re really wanting from your life and then looking at how your home can support those dreams. There’s more on this in my soon to be released D’ 10 Steps to DeCluttering. I’ll keep you posted!