Declutter to Detox Series: Intro

This series focuses on Minimalism and other methods of organizing and simplifying your life!

Exciting things ahead:

Not only are the weekly Friday blog posts starting back up in a big way, but the first series that I will put out revolves around a deep intensive tidying up and organizing, that I am calling "Declutter to Detox".  

When you declutter, get rid of things, go through all your shit you really look at all the material things that weigh down on you. Critically going through all of this is a great way to lift some weight off of your shoulders. It's amazing how you feel like you can get your life together by simply getting rid of all that stuff that you never use, that doesn’t fit right, that you might need someday some time (but you really won't), along with all the things that just don't have a place or bring you joy.  

This first new series includes three posts; each post is a method that I incorporated into my tidying experience and from where I drew inspiration in order to create a method that really suited my best in my experience. The final post of this series, an extra fourth one, will outline a step by step process that combines all of these different methods that deeply resonated with me, so that you too can create your own personalized process to help you declutter and organize your life and incorporate only the things you truly need and that truly add value to your life.

I have obviously taken from various different people and methods as inspiration, so here is a break down of what you can expect.

 

The first post will talk about my deeper discover of minimalism through The Minimalists and their podcast. I started listening to their podcast over Christmas and everything they talked about really resonated with me in terms of living a meaningful life with less stuff. I always felt that I was an organized person but I never really considered that perhaps being good at organizing could mean that I was simply someone with a lot of stuff who knew how to organize it all… that didn’t necessarily mean I needed all of it. I really connected with the way they talked about what was important and shared thoughts on what you need and how having less is a really positive experience. It never occurred to me that maybe we don’t need that much stuff. We are always told to buy more, and that we need this product, and if we can afford it than why not buy it! But do you really need it? It made me realize that I was living with way more than I actually needed and used and that was reason enough to simplify!

The second post will focus on a method I found in The Minimalist Documentary (on Netflix) called the “3,33 Project”. This project was started by Courtney Carver and the idea of this project is that for three months you only wear 33 items. That includes jewelry, clothes, shoes, scarfs, etc. but does not include indoor clothes like PJs or gym wear (but those things aren’t meant to be worn out of the house anyway). Carver's goal was to find as many different outfits as she could make with these 33 items and in the end, she realized no one even noticed that she was re-wearing the same clothes in different ways in the same week. I altered this a bit to fit my life and goal of organizing.

The third post will consist around the method of Marie Kondo, known as the “KonMari” method from her book The Magic of Tidying Up. This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read and it really encompasses the connection between your house and your mental well-buying and lifestyle. Additionally, even though she focuses on tiding up, there is really little organization that goes into putting things away when you have less stuff. If you have any interest in organizing your home or you want to take the first step to getting rid of things you don’t need, the writing and layout of this book makes it incredibly easy. She outlines all the different categories of things you could potentially have in your home and how to methodologically go through each to obtain the best results. Mari Kondo made points that varied from what I had been learning from The Minimalists Podcast, and those ideas resonated with me even more. Still, there were aspects of The Minimalist that I still really liked and wanted to incorporate along with my own ideas of what simplifying and organizing meant. 

I look forward to sharing my journey and hopefully my combined method can be a starting point for you on your decluttering journey!

Here is a little overview to start off this first week on the benefits of decluttering and simplifying and the art of minimalism.