Level 1 Decluttering for the Faint of Heart

Have you gotten the garbage out of the space you want to work on yet?  See post Ground Level When You are a Clutter Procrastinator. Honestly, that is the best start. 1 single, non-emotional focus and 1 fabulous accomplishment!

Ready for the next step? Great, let's move on to useful items that you no longer need or want.

Let's deal with DONATE & GIVEAWAY

By Donate I mean specifically give to a charity shop of any type, Giveaway is to put it on a Facebook freecyle group, your own page to friends or a variation on that - I prefer this means when I don't have a lot to donate or I feel it's a really useful giveaway, I love when folks come to my house and take it away from me for free 😉 

LEVEL 1: The EASY items

items that you don't second guess or debate whether to keep or not

Tools:

I love the extra large ikea bags for this since they accept any weird shape and are easy to stack in the car.  It is also useful in the beginning to have boxes ready for ease of delivery to the donate shop, so you don't have to unpack your bags to bring them back with you.

Personal note: When I am at a client's house for a day I often use large heavy-duty contractor bags for ease of removal, sometimes I empty them at the charity and reuse them and sometimes I leave the items bagged if I have limited time.

Options:

1. Have a box ready and tagged for SALE items if you feel you need to recoup money and will do it within the month
2. Have a box ready and tagged for FAMILY items for items you don't want but feel someone in the family will give you grief if you let it go without them having first crack.

Steps: 

Step 1 Choose the least stressful room for yourself to work on first

Step 2 Put a timer ⏱️ on for 10 minutes - or 3 great songs on your playlist

Step 3 Start at one wall and work your way around the room quickly and put items in the donate box.  

Step 4 Ignore the "I should" thoughts, you are wasting time.  Leave it and move on. You don't lose points for not dealing with a item today.

Step 5 Ding, time's up.  Stop 🛑 Leave the room - take a few minutes away from the environment, because even though your focus was for easy items, you still got hit with stuff you saw, or touched that invoked feelings.

If you got this far and there are items in your donate box -- WELL DONE! WELL DONE! WELL DONE!  

You can stop here because you already won the day 🥳 or you can repeat these steps again, taking advantage of momenteum.

Remember your goal is to have a sustaining Clutter Liberation  

It took a long time to bring these items into your home.  It is ok to take a while to get rid of them.  You will have some heart strings to cut and some emotional untangling that needs to happen.  I delayed many of my hard attachments until much farther down in my journey and by then I was ready and it didn't cause much emotional upheaval.

Now celebrate what you have accomplished today in a way that doesn't involve past habits that brought clutter into the house 😉

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