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How To Clutter Proof Your Home For The Last Time

If decluttering seems like a never ending process in your home, then most likely what you’re suffering from is NOT a lack of skill, knowledge or expertise on how to tidy up and stay organized. It’s coming from a lack of awareness.

Read on to find out what’s holding you back from creating a clutter proof home you and your family can enjoy.


When it comes to your home clutter, you may assume that if you only had more time, energy or know-how to get rid of the stuff, you wouldn’t struggle so much. 

I used to feel that way too until a major financial crisis forced me to get rid of nearly 70% of what I owned and experience a total mind shift that got me started on the path of home simplification.

Without this mind shift, I’d still be struggling with home management .

But once I understood WHY I had a tendency to accumulate clutter, I was finally able to eliminate it and restore the calm and peace I longed for in my home.

Currently, studies show that  a whopping 54% of Americans struggle with clutter and the rental storage  industry is now a $24 million dollar industry.

So if you’re someone who is stuck in this binge and purge clutter cycle but want a way out, here are 3 simple steps you can take to break free and create that clutter free sanctuary you’ve always wanted.

Know That Clutter is Not the Enemy, You Are

Changing bad habits or breaking free from those tendencies you may have to accumulate clutter into your home is not all that complicated.

All it takes is just 3 steps and these are to:

1. IDENTIFY

Assess which behaviors are attracting the clutter into your home

2. ACKNOWLEDGE

Understand why these desires or cravings are driving these behaviors and lastly,

3. CHANGE

Modify the behaviors, or clutter forming habits that are keeping the clutter in, and replace them with habits that will keep the clutter out.

If you don’t manage how you behave in this way before you manage the clutter in your home, it will be the same as trying to lose weight without changing what you eat and how much you eat—It just won’t happen!

Identify Your Clutter Habits

Identifying why we have so much clutter in our homes can be tough however—especially because not many of us are aware that it’s our habits and not necessarily our stuff  that’s messing up our homes.

When we get so busy with life and are living in constant survival mode, it’s hard to notice how and why we  accumulated all this stuff in the first place.

It’s like that proverbial frog that didn’t realize it was being cooked alive until the water reaches the boiling point; In the same way,  we often don’t realize we’re drowning in clutter until it’s too late.

As Charles Duhigg explains in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business, all our habits, whether they’re good for us or bad for us, develop through a series of actions we take daily without thinking in response to a cyclical pattern of cue, routine and reward.

Therefore, just as we develop good habits like, waking up (cue) in the morning and going to the bathroom to brushing our teeth and washing our face (routine), to feel refreshed (reward) before going to work , many of us can get, just as easily, locked into our bad clutter building habits without ever realizing it.

Duhigg says:

“Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. But we’re often not conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviors…. Most cravings are … obvious in retrospect, but incredibly hard to see when we are under their sway.”

In this way,  when we see clutter (cue), we should clean and organize (routine) to maintain a sense of peace and order (reward) in our homes.

And yet, if you’re still finding that your home stays cluttered no matter how much you clean, organize and purge (take the actions), then the problem may not be in the methods  we’re using to manage our stuff but rather why we’re cluttered in the first place.

In fact, there are three patterns of behavior or Clutter Management Styles (CMS)  that will attract clutter and not repel it. 

These are the behaviors of:

  • CONSUMER
  • COLLECTOR
  • CONTROLLER

If your CMS is based on one or all of those three behavioral styles, you’ll find it really really hard to break out of the clutter cycle.

Here are the reasons why…

The Three Clutter Tendencies

smart phone

Clutter Tendency #1: The Consumer

The Consumers are people who get bored easily or can’t resist buying the latest “As Seen on T.V.” gadget even though it never works as well as they thought it would.

If you’re a consumer, you may be open to buying or trying anything— for convenience sake until it becomes not so convenient, after all from having too much stuff than you know what to do with!

Even though what you really crave is to stem the constant desire to buy-buy-buy, the irony is that the more you buy the less you feel satisfied.

As soon as you see something newer and prettier, you feel compelled to buy it even if you have something like it already.

The negative consequence of this behavior of course is constant anxiety and discomfort at having so much stuff around!

Helena Bonham Carter in the 2012 movie adaptation of Great Expectations

Clutter Tendency #2: The Collector:

If you’re the kind of person who holds on to things because you just can’t decide what’s valuable or not, you may be a Collector.

Like that tragic character from Great Expectations, Ms. Havisham, the Collector values their stuff more than they value themselves or sometimes even others–maneuvering their lives around their things because they can’t shift things around themselves as needed.

A Collector’s closets, garage and every nook and cranny will be filled with old clothes, memorabilia, souvenirs and even their children’s art projects that go back 10+ years–even if the kids no longer care about them.

Despite the fact that they often feel like they’re being over run by the stuffy they’ve accumulated, having, for them, feels better than losing.

The consequence of this behavior is that their things are heavy burdens to carry so they stay stuck where they are, like Ms. Havisham, always wishing and hoping but never willing to make their hopes a reality.

Clutter Tendency #3: The Controller

If you’re the type of person who hates, no loathes, any kind of waste because to waste something means that you’ve failed to maximize the items’ fullest potential, then you may be a Controller.

The Controller, unlike The Collector, holds on to their stuff not because they want to hold on to what they have, but to have control over what they have.

For the Controller, their sense of accomplishment comes in making what they have last as long as possible.

Even if this means that they’ll have 3 cars in the garage and only 1 works.

Or they’ll duct tape a leather sofa cushion that has a tear in it, just to see how much longer they can use them before they’re forced into getting a new one. (Guilty as charged…)

And because Controllers can’t stop fretting over every thing they have, they can’t enjoy what they have.

Rather than feel contentment over their blessings, they  feel discontented and therefore cursed by what they’ve amassed. They’re constantly working to fix things to make them right even though much of what they’re holding onto no longer serves them.

Why Good Habits Become Bad Ones

I don’t know about you, but I must admit that I’ve been a consumer, collector or controller throughout the various seasons of my life. 

When my first child was born, for instance, I became a Consumer-buying anything and everything to ease that difficult transition period into Mommyhood.

Rather than feel ease, however, all the stuff made me more uneasy—especially since I was racking up credit card debt to keep up with my insatiable desire to give my child the best that money can buy.

Then, as my kids got older and our family moved into our first “real” home, I became a massive Collector—holding on to all of my kids’ outgrown clothes along with their toys even though we lacked the space and I lacked the energy to move everything around (You can read about that here).

Then, after our financial crisis, where we lost everything or sold off what we could, like my wedding ring so that I could get the creditors off our back, I became a Controller—clutching on to whatever I could until the very last moment until it nearly became a health hazard!

And sometimes even then, I found it agonizing to let go.

During every one of those phases, I remember feeling like the things I had held more power over me than I had over them.

Yes, those were sad, confusing and very depressing times.

And yet I couldn’t break out of my desire to consume, collect and control. What started off as my desire to attain comfort, convenience and complacency, ended up making me feel anxious, discontented and tired… like all the time.

Overcoming Bad Habits With Good Habits

My breakthrough moment came, however, when my business fell apart during the financial crisis in 2008. To close out the office and salvage whatever I could, I tried selling off everything. But what I learned during this process however, is that 99% of what I thought was valuable wasn’t worth much to anyone. 

The same thing happened when my dad passed away a year later and I had to sell off his thousands of dollars worth of musical equipment for pennies on the dollar or by just giving it away in most cases.

This is when it hit me that all this stuff we treasured, was really not as valuable as I though

But, as without these painful experiences I would have never realized that my habits of consuming, collecting and controlling, were not as life giving as habits like reusing, relinquishing, and refining.

These were the habits I learned to adopt and the behaviors that would reform my clutter building habits into clutter busting habits forever.

Reuse, Relinquish, and Refine: The 3 R’s of Clutter Proofing

Soon after I was forced to sell off and downsize in all sorts of ways to pay off close to $140,000 in credit card debt to avoid bankruptcy court, I became enamored, by the grace of God, with a new wave of DIY and money savings blogs cropping up all over the place on the internet.

Armed with inspiration from Pinterest and from many savvy DIY bloggers, I learned how to paint, design and decorate my home using whatever I had or with whatever I could get on the cheap.

By doing this, I was able to furnish and decorate my whole house and pay off all our debt all the while transforming our home into a place I love for the people I love.

Reuse Not Consume

For instance, rather than purchase a new china cabinet because it wouldn’t fit into our new dining room…  

…my husband and I refurbished it by separating out the top and the bottom…

…so that the China cabinet could fit underneath our air conditioner and the bottom would serve as a serving table.

This was one of many instances thereafter where I learned the value of reusing something I had. 

By doing so, I became less stressed out about having to buy stuff all the time.

When I needed something, I knew I could learn to create something that would work just as well with what I had.

Relinquish Vs. Collect

Learning to Relinquish what I had was a lot harder process. Not only did I have loads and loads of clothes from my past days as a Consumer, I had room full of kid’s books, toys, not to mention 50 or so children DVD’s that were no longer useful to us.

What ultimately made it easier for me to let go was in learning how to sell these things to make money that I could then use to pay off my debt faster.

In a course of one month, I made close to $2,000 selling all that I wanted to get rid of on Amazon, eBay, Craigslist and used clothing places like Twice (no longer available) or ThredUp .

This ability to let go of the things I no longer needed or cared for and to make money off of it, gave me hope that I had more control over what I had than I thought.

I started to see that letting go, of my excesswas more rewarding than collecting it, after all.

Refine More, Control Less

Control is a habit I’m still struggling to break out of but I’m making progress incrementally as I learn to depend more on God’s sufficiency rather than my own sufficiency.

Even after my husband’s car broke down recently and we had to replace it with another car by dipping into our Emergency Fund, I found peace in reminding myself again and again that Jesus says:

“My grace is sufficient  for you. My power is perfected in weakness”. –2 Corinthians 12:9

In fact, one of the greatest blessings of my home simplification journey has been to see how God works his greatest miracles in my weakest moments.

Although this kind of self refining process is a lot of work, it’s not as exhausting as trying to control and collect all the spoils of what I consumed.

Taking Action Is the Antidote to Clutter

I tell you my story not because I think I have it all figured out but to encourage you that regardless of how much hold your clutter tendencies have on you, you can still break free from your clutter.

Believe me, if someone as clueless as me can do it, you can, too.

Remember Who You Are and Whose You Are

I’m certain that if you think back, there are many times when you overcame  circumstances that looked beyond your control at first.

Maybe it was that time you stayed up 3 nights in a row with a colicky baby in your arms…

Or maybe it was getting that first dream job that you didn’t think you were qualified for…

Or maybe it was that time you lost 40 pounds and got back to wearing that swimming suit you’d been dreaming of wearing one day.

During all of these moments, what probably drove you to overcome those challenges was the hope you had that you can overcome this challenge because you’re someone who knows how to do this and most of all the ONE who can do all things has got your back.

So if you’re struggling with your home clutter right now,  identify, acknowledge and change those clutter building tendencies.

Then grab this FREE Simple Decluttering Checklist to jump start your home simplification journey.

Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram and  Facebook where I share more simple tips and strategies for creating a home you love for the ones you love.

Hope to see you there!

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