February’s focus was Decluttering — check out my past posts if you missed the start of the challenge and how I turned the challenge into a game 😉
I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be easy and it would most likely stretch into March. I wasn’t wrong. We had high hopes of decluttering and painting my daughter’s room for her birthday, but we underestimated just how tough it would be to do that, given our busy schedules and energy.
I ended up onboarding a few new clients this month and I’ve been spending more time in the editing cave, which is awesome. (It also meant being able to daydream a bit more about the possibility of grad school, which is my current mental Hyperfixation right now.)
And let’s be clear, I don’t write about it much because this blog is a little space away from it, but the state of the world is a lot right now and I can’t say that hasn’t been something I’m trying my hardest to balance thinking about as well.
My mantra lately has been “Chip Away.” I write it in my planner most days to remind myself that even spending a few minutes working toward my goals is progress. It’s made it easier to start tasks, which leads to finishing them, which leads to starting on the next and repeating until I finally complete whatever it is I’m working on.
One thing I noticed with the decluttering challenge is that it’s not as simple as trying to cook every day or learning to roller skate by getting on skates every day. It’s actually more of two-steps-forward, one-step-back process, since we are living in the space I’m decluttering and even though my husband and I are pretty good about cleaning up after ourselves, our kids are still getting used to that being a general function of having a clean place to live so I quickly had to let go of the frustration of decluttering a common area, then coming in 12 hours later to discover I created more space for messes to occur again.
I have to just laugh it off and remind the kids to put things away when they’re done playing with them. They’ll forget and I’ll remind them again. But even so, we’re still living with a kid under 5 so we’ve kept our social bubble rather small and rarely have people over anyway so who are we trying to impress?
I’ll be continuing my decluttering into March and I even started off the month by cleaning out the pantry.
One of the biggest things I’ve found with decluttering is I need some space between tackling it. My brain really does get tired and decision fatigue over “Do I throw this out? Can I give it away or donate it? Will I need this in the future?” I’m actually averaging a day or two in between projects now to give my brain a rest.
Luckily, I got encouragement from my friend Deirdre from DeClutter by Deirdre who told me she has clients take breaks as well because it’s a long process to declutter! (Check out her website and blog for decluttering tips! I’ve gotten a lot of great ideas by reading through it 🙂)
I have to also give a shoutout to some of my Instagram friends who have been decluttering, as well! You’ve been awesome in supporting and also inspiring me whenever you post your progress! We’ll be the ones who got ahead on spring cleaning yet! 😉
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