How To Find Time To Declutter (Even If You're Super Busy And Low Energy)

One thing that is a huge barrier for so many people (I hear about this all the time) is how do I find time to declutter. “Sure, I would love to have a holistic clutter-free space that makes me happy every day, but I’m incredibly busy, and how am I supposed to find the time to get this done?” Well, I’m gonna tell you how to find the time to declutter even if you’re super busy like most of us are!

Now, first of all, before we dive into the three shifts that I’m gonna share with you today, I have to say that you make time for what matters. So, part of creating this time and really making the space inside of your home that you are wanting is that you have to know what you want.

You have to know why you want it, and it has to be something that matters to you. Otherwise, it’s never going to be a priority. You’re never going to find the time to do it.

That’s why, with all of my students or anybody that I help go through the process of creating holistic clutter-free spaces, we always start with the ‘what’ and ‘why’.

• What is it that you want exactly?
• What are you wanting to feel?
• What are you wanting to experience?
• What are you wanting to gain out of your space?
• And why do you want it?

Because it’s so powerful.

The ‘What’ & ‘Why’ Of It All

When you have a really solid “why”, that gives you the power to go through even the difficult parts of the process which generally come, especially if you have a lot of clutter.

If you truly have a belief and a firm understanding that your environment impacts every area of your life, that your home space can give you more time, it can give you more energy, it can give you more breathability and more happiness on repeat… if you believe that, then it’s something that you’re going to prioritize and you’re going to find more time to do it.

However, it’s definitely easier and more doable and more enjoyable if you don’t approach the whole project as being a giant event that needs to be done all at once.

So, here are the three shifts that are really going to help you find the time to declutter and make the process more efficient and more enjoyable.

The First One Is To Think: “Bubbles”

Think bubbles of time. Doesn’t that feel so much lighter than thinking, “I need to set aside a giant chunk of time and get this all done even if it means staying up till 2 a.m. I need to get this thing done in 48 to 72 hours!”?

The biggest mistake that I see people make when trying to take on a project like decluttering their entire home, basement, or garage is that they think that it needs to be a huge project or a big event. Like it needs to be done all in one go or it’s not worth doing at all. An all-or-nothing type of mentality.

And look, I can totally relate to this type of mindset because I’m kind of the same way. I’m the type of person that, once I get my mindset on something, I’m like a bulldozer until that thing gets done.

Our Garage Project

Where I’m sitting right now- this lounge we’ve created inside of our garage. Initially, I decided exactly what I wanted to do with this space, meaning I understood that I wanted to use a partition, I understood that I wanted it to feel like a lounge, and I had like this idea, conceptually, of what I wanted to get from this space.

My initial response was, “Okay! Let’s bulldoze this thing. Let’s get it done. I want to have it done like yesterday!” And I had to force myself to slow down and allow myself to take this project in layers.

I’m so glad that I did! Honestly, if I had gotten it done in two days, looked for all of the different pieces that I was wanting to bring together, figuring out how to treat the cement and all of the different steps that we ended up having to go through, we would not have the space that we love and enjoy here today.

I would have ended up with totally different furniture. I would have ended up with totally different things and accents. The entire project could look very different. Each decision took a little bit of time for us to find what really felt like, “Yes! This feels great!” And the end result is something that we’re all really happy with. The same approach works to find time to declutter.

The Dangers Of “Bulldozing”

When you bulldoze a project like that, not only does it suck your energy but it also sucks away your time because you start to lose steam. When you lose steam, you get slower. Your mental clarity gets a little bit fuzzier, and it makes the project less enjoyable but also less efficient.

What that does is it not only puts all this pressure of, “well, I can’t do anything else during that time, so I need to find this time when all of a sudden I have no other responsibilities and nothing else to do, no work, no kids.”

When you have that mindset, it can feel really overwhelming. It can feel impossible. There’s no way that this is ever gonna get done because you’re never really gonna have a total absence of other things needing your time and attention.

The Mental & Emotional Considerations

You know, a big part of the decluttering process is really about the mental attachments and the emotions that you feel going through and letting go of things. It’s not just the physical process. Have you have ever moved houses and realized that going through everything you own took way longer than you thought? It always does.

The same is true for any kind of decluttering project. It usually is going to take longer to go through things than you thought. Even with just the physical aspect of things.

But when you couple with that the mental attachments that you’re going to be going through at the same time, the emotions that you might go through, and the back and forth- unsure if you should let something go or if you should keep it- all of these decision-making processes that we go through when going through the process of decluttering, those are gonna take time too.

And those aren’t things that we generally tend to account for when we’re planning and spacing out our time.

Shift #2 Is To Organically Find Time To Declutter (Via Bubbles)

Try to find time to declutter using organic bubbles. When I say “organic decluttering”, I just mean decluttering where you go. Where you go, there you declutter.

For example, I had a student who had moved in with her mom and was living in the guest room. She really wanted to move into this master bedroom but that’s where she had put all of her boxes.

So that presented this big dilemma of, “well I’m sleeping here in this space that really isn’t intended to be my space. I want to be over there but I have all of those boxes taking up space. So, how can I really create this holistic, authentic space that I’m wanting to create for myself in my master bedroom when I’m currently shoving a bunch of boxes in there and sleeping in this other room?”

What I told her, is “every time you get up and go to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, every time you get up and go to the bathroom, come back to your room with one box. You’re already going that way anyway. You’re walking past the master bedroom that you want to be in that’s currently covered with boxes to go to the bathroom or to go to the kitchen to eat or to grab a drink. Every time you walk back, just organically grab a box with you and move it into the guest room.”

Slowly, she could organically move those things to where she wanted them until there was space to create and curate.

Convenient For Moving Houses

It’s the exact same thing that I did when we moved into the home we’re living in now. (It happens to be a three-story, so it’s got two sets of stairs). You know, it can be exhausting, especially in the middle of moving, to go up and down. And you always end up with stuff up that’s supposed to be down and vice versa.

So, what we started doing is just creating a pile of things or boxes of things at the top of the stairs that needed to go down and creating a section of things at the bottom of the stairs that needed to go up, so that when we were naturally organically going about our business, if you happen to be walking down the stairs, then everybody knew just take a box with them.

That way, you’re not having to front-load a whole bunch of energy all at once. You’re doing it organically. You’re already going in those directions.

Poor Health & Low Energy

The same is true for those who need a lot of bed rest or have poor health. I have a lot of people who reach out to me with health issues. It was becoming increasingly more difficult for them to put in straight multiple hours into a project.

I’ve even had people say, “I only have five good minutes of strong energy throughout the day. I have to lay down frequently.”

When you’re going to the restroom, when you’re going to the kitchen to grab a drink, just come back to bed with a box. You can even take naps in the middle of going through the box. Any progress is better than no progress. It’s about finding these effervescent bubbles of time. It doesn’t have to be like a giant bubble of time, right? You can find time to declutter in little bubbles and it’s all an organic process.

The 3rd Shift Is To Find Category-Based Bubbles

When you’re planning your projects- let’s say, the baby’s laying down for a nap, or you’re in between work hours and you have an hour to spare- use that bubble of time to do something that is of the same task or the same category.

Expired Products & Consolidating

That could be going throughout the house and gathering all of the expired products from all of the places that expired products can gather: the fridge, the pantry, the medicine cabinet, the beauty products that actually do expire even though we don’t usually think about it, old makeup.

Use a bubble of time to focus on one category and burn that category down. Then switch over to a different category.

One of my favorite types of categories is called “the consolidation method”. That’s where you have two bottles of something and you consolidate it into one. That saves 50% of the space right there.

The Multitasking Trap

So frequently, we get into this trap of trying to multitask even though multitasking isn’t a real thing. Our brain isn’t actually capable of focusing on more than one thing at once. So, what it’s actually doing is switching back and forth from topic to topic and project to project and it actually drains your energy and really decreases your efficiency.

"In fact, multitasking is almost always a misnomer, as the human mind and brain lack the architecture to perform two or more tasks simultaneously."

Kevin P. Madore, Ph.D. & Anthony D. Wagner, Ph.D. – Multicosts of Multitasking

You end up spending more time in the process of trying to jump back and forth. By using category-based bubbles, you’re maximizing your efficiency helping you find time to declutter. You’re not trying to multitask. You’re able to get in that state of flow that allows you to get more done, more quickly, and more efficiently. And it’s easier to set a shorter deadline for these smaller projects as opposed to an entire big project that’s going to take days or weeks.

Maximize Your Efficiency & Find Time To Declutter

I promise if you get started with this new mindset and these three shifts of 1. thinking in bubbles instead of thinking in giant, heavy, overwhelming projects, 2. using organic bubbles and just following your natural flow and taking care of things as you do it instead of making it a whole special separate event that needs to be planned and 3. using category-based bubbles- you’re going to really maximize your efficiency and have shorter timelines to work through.

You don’t need to take an entire day or an entire weekend or an entire week to finish your project. Use this bubble method to increase efficiency and allow them to stack up to massive results.