Welcome to the 13th habit in the #GiveMe30HabitProject!!

See this post for all the details and backstory!

This month’s habit is to implement a daily declutter practice!

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This month’s habit challenge is designed to help you achieve a greater sense of order and peace!

“Outer order, inner calm.”

—Gretchen Rubin

No matter what you are trying to accomplish, having a peaceful environment is critical. Order (lack of clutter) is directly tied to mental peace, which is necessary for productivity and creativity (not to mention well-being). This principle applies to our minds as well as our environment.

P.S. I recommend following Gretchen Rubin and listening to her podcast, Happier. I highly recommend it, as well as her books The Four Tendencies and Better Than Before. This isn’t her first appearance as inspiration for a #GiveMe30HabitProject post! 04.01.2019 featured her too! In adding these links to the post, I discovered she’s written a new book called Outer Order, Inner Calm! I already purchased it on Audible when I saw it! I mean check out this description:

“In this easy-to-read but hard-to-put-down book, Gretchen Rubin suggests more than 150 short, concrete clutter-clearing ideas so each reader can choose the ones that resonate most. The fact is, when we tailor our approach to suit our own particular challenges and habits, we’re far more likely to be able to create the order that will make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative.”

Sounds exactly like my purposes for this month’s habit project!

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What this challenge isn’t about is going all-out spring cleaning mode. I want you to break this down into a manageable, daily habit. Whether it’s 2 minutes or 5 minutes or 10 minutes doesn’t matter, as long as it is small enough that you don’t dread doing it every day. Because for you to make real progress with the clutter does not require much more than a few minutes daily for a month to see some return for your effort.

There’s all kinds of ways you could do this. The key is to pick one that works for your unique clutter issues.

• Have problems putting things away? You could set a timer for two minutes and go around one room in the house putting everything away that isn’t in its place. Then once you have managed the clutter in every room of the house, make an effort to put things back in their place when you are done using them. This has been extraordinarily helpful for me especially for things like coming home after trips or events/holidays with the family where there are all kinds of things to tidy up and put away. It is my habit to unpack and put away everything the same day that I get home from a trip (or from a gathering which required a lot of which required transport of a lot of items from home). I absolutely love the feeling of getting up the next day and not having that on my list of things to do in addition to trying to get back into my routine schedule.
• Have too much stuff that you don’t need overall? You could decide to find 3-5 items daily to sell or donate. (Tip: If you already know that the idea of spending time selling them will be a obstacle to getting the decluttering part done, then just put them in one place for later, or go the route of donation).
• Have certain spaces that need help? Go through that closet or junk drawer that has been haunting you and use your daily allowance of time to organize it in small chunks.

My recommendation is to pick one plan of attack from the list above (or from your own creative thinking) and practice it daily until it’s done before switching to a different method. The idea is to start and finish some kind of decluttering process so that you have motivation and momentum working in your favor moving forward.

Most of the time the barrier to an organized and clutter-free space is the current clutter. My hope is that over the course of 30 days, you will be able to overcome the thing standing in your way from maintaining a clutter free environment. Once the clutter is gone, then you only need to keep your effort’s focused on maintaining, which is much easier than attaining.

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OK, so now that you have an idea of what the habit looks in practice and the benefits of practicing it, it’s your turn! You don’t have to do every single one of these, but these are some ideas for you to implement.

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 Don’t forget to share this project with others! You can share the link to this blog post as a status/post on Facebook. Feel free to save and use the image from this post, or use the ones I’ll have on my Instagram page. Whatever other means you have to get more involvement will make this project more fruitful! Tweet, email, pin on Pinterest, etc.

Also, I encourage you to keep track of your journey and use the hashtag #GiveMe30HabitProject on social media. Please tag me in your habit progress and insights! I’ll also be glad to troubleshoot sticking points. I’m Kaci M Byrd Cheeseman on Facebook and @CheeseGirlPA on Instagram.

If you want to check in daily for accountability, you can post either a photo and/or status and use #GiveMe30HabitProject #Day1, #GiveMe30HabitProject #Day2, so on and so forth. I’d love to see how it goes and repost—only if you give me permission, of course! I’ll be searching the hashtag to see who is joining in.

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Remember: What is it you want to achieve? Who do you want to become? How do you want to serve others? You may not know how to get there, or even how to get started. I just ask that you trust me and help spread the message to others so they can become involved. Keep showing up, and together we will get you there, one 30 day habit at a time!

Are you ready? Let’s get growing!!

| Kaci

Reader Questions:

1/ Do you have a good idea for a specific decluttering habit?
2/ How do you prevent clutter from accumulating in the first place?

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P.S. If you are interested in working on a specific habit and need someone to help you troubleshoot, keep you motivated, and hold you accountable, I offer coaching a variety of ways, which you can learn more about here.

My specialty is habit change and my approach is to work on mindset alongside the habit, so that it is healthy and sustainable, and this is best done via 1:1 Coaching which you can learn about here. Whether it involves your health, finances, nutrition, exercise, relationships, or personal growth, habits are the key to success. We are the outcome of what we repeatedly do. Without addressing that, there can be no change. Learn more here!