The Biggest Mistake People Make When Decluttering

Before I get into the video today, I just want to take a moment and say, if you haven't heard, last month, Uncluttered Faith became a New York Times bestseller. It's a big deal for a book, not just for the author, but for future opportunities around the book. And of course, this only happened because of you, your pre-orders, your support, your encouragement, and your willingness to share the book with friends and on social media. From the bottom of my heart, I just want to take a moment and personally, as a few weeks ago, and I've also been so very encouraged reading through all of the five-star reviews, hundreds of them, Uncluttered Faith is making a real difference in people's lives. Thank you for making that possible. Now, let's talk about something I hear all the time when it comes to decluttering. Do you ever find yourself getting frustrated with your progress? Well, you should know that you are not alone. I hear that literally every day from people desperate for a change who feel like they've been working on decluttering for months, sometimes longer, yet their homes still feel just as full as when they started. Sometimes they are exhausted, often discouraged, almost always they are starting to wonder if decluttering is even possible. Now, there are many reasons why this might be the case, but I think the biggest mistake people make comes down to a tendency so ingrained in us, it results in even misunderstanding the word decluttering itself, a mistake so significant it will derail your efforts every single time. The biggest mistake people make in their decluttering journey is confusing decluttering with rearranging. It's not an intentional mistake. Instead, I think it happens because organizing our stuff is easier than parting with it. Organizing, which, let's face it, is just rearranging, doesn't require any hard decisions. Rearranging allows us to keep everything, or maybe rearranging is just the solution to clutter that you learned growing up. Regardless of how we arrived there, it's important to know that decluttering and organizing are not the same thing, and we'll never make lasting progress until we recognize this mistake when it happens and learn how to overcome it. Here's the best way to think differently about the process and start to find victory. Organizing is always, only, temporary. You can organize all your things into the most perfect setup in the most perfect containers today, only to have to do it all again tomorrow. As soon as you need to get something out or something new comes in, or life just happens, it all falls apart. Courtney Carver says it this way, if organizing was the solution, don't you think you'd be done by now? And she's right. After 20 years of buying bins and rearranging closets, you should be finished decluttering. But you're not, because organizing is always, only, temporary, and it's not the step you need to take. Decluttering, on the other hand, is permanent. Think of it this way, when you remove something from your home, when it goes out the door, it is gone forever. You never have to think about it again. You never have to reorganize it or find a new place for it. That space in your home is permanently freed up forever. You can't free up space by merely moving things around. You only free up space when you remove them from your home. And the more physical space we clear up, the more mental space we free up. Now, I love organizing just as much as the next person, but if the problem is that we simply own too much, organizing will never solve our clutter problem. We need to be honest and intentional about what we're doing. If you're spending hours moving things from one shelf to another, you are not decluttering. You're just giving yourself the illusion of progress. It feels productive because things look nicer for a moment, but the amount of stuff in your home hasn't changed one bit. It's like trying to empty a bathtub by swirling around the water. Until you pull the plug and let some water out, the tub just stays as full. So if you need a jump start in learning the difference, go grab a box or a bag and fill it with items that can be removed from your home. Take it outside and get rid of it. Recycle the items or donate the items, trash the items, whatever. Just remove them entirely. And then take note of how good that feels. Every item you remove is one less thing you'll ever have to organize again. That is progress that is permanent. And that's how you finally win in your decluttering journey. You will love it and you can do it.