How to Start Decluttering | Beginner Mindset Toolkit

How to start decluttering is a question I am asked all the time. My answer is always the same. Don’t even think about opening your kitchen junk drawer until you declutter your mind!

Why? Because until you change the habits that got you in a cluttered mess the same patterns will continue to repeat themselves.

If your thinking thus far has been ‘Sure I’ll buy this cool new lime green color potato peeler even though I know I have 3 more at home’ then something needs to change, right?

Unless of course you want 4 potato peelers. Then have at it, your choice.

This article is for all of us who said we are going to declutter our home and abandoned the idea pretty much right after we started. If we started!

Great Decluttering Expectations

Some of us go out and buy sassy new totes and what we think will be magical organizing solutions before we start to declutter. Then we realize later that what we actually did was just bring more clutter into our homes.

I call this shuffling clutter. Now you have all the original clutter organized on or in a pricey organizer. This is not decluttering.

Then there are the serial organizers! This is who I am when it comes to my art supplies. One of the neatest parts of starting a new project used to be going out and buying a lot of stuff! Then bringing the supplies home and organizing them.

I still have the beeswax and supplies needed to make flexible covers for bowls to store leftovers in the fridge. That was a tip from the car saleswoman that sold me a car two cars ago!

What I have observed since I started my Declutterbuzz Facebook group community is some people seem to not want to connect the dots between stopping the habits that got them in the mess they are in and a successful decluttering job.

What is frustrating to me is the organizing solutions industry. From expensive storage bins to scented candles, the market is flooded with products designed to “help” us declutter.

Isn’t buying more stuff to control your existing stuff just… counterproductive?

The Freedonia industry claims the demand for home organization products is forecast to increase 1.5% per year to $15.3 billion in 2028.

This is the part no one talks about. I understand the concept of finding joy in your possessions. What I can’t understand is how or why Marie Kondo got so popular in the realm of decluttering considering she has a website selling a whole bunch of stuff that people don’t need.

I call this clutter and I talk about this in an article I wrote The Disconnect Between The Kondo Method And Decluttering.

Decluttering doesn’t start with bins, bags, or color-coded labels it starts with trash bags – after you change your mindset.

Everything Starts With Your Mindset

Once you start to change your habits and how you think about your stuff, the physical clutter will adapt to your new attitudes. In other words one of two things may happen…

You will either decide to hold on tight and love all the things that surround you or you will decide the person you are becoming has no space in their lives for all the old stuff you no longer use, like, or want.

The choice is 100% yours. What will happen when you decide either way is a great burden will be lifted from your shoulders. You will wither stop feeling guilty for not decluttering or feel better because you are decluttering.

If you don’t believe me talk to the Clear The Clutter GPT Tool I made.

Talk to this tool the way you would a best buddy. You will find clearing the mental clutter is the first step in approaching a decluttering task.

Why Start With Mental Decluttering?

Because if your mind is cluttered, your space will be too. I have not met a person yet who lives in a cluttered space who does not have a cluttered mind.

Here is what mental clutter can look like:

• Decision fatigue
• Procrastination
• Emotional attachment to things
• Guilt and ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ thoughts
• Recurring thoughts and feelings of overwhelm

If you try to declutter your space while dragging all that mental junk around, you’re fighting an uphill battle. You need to clear your head first to make decisions that actually stick.

I wrote an article called Why Decluttering Doesn’t Work Until You Shift Your Mindset

But for now, let’s build your beginner toolkit.

The Brain Dump

You don’t need more organizing solutions, you need less mental chaos.

This simple exercise gets the junk out of your head and onto paper. Think of this as an easier, cheaper therapy session. It is my belief all the answers to the nagging questions we keep tossing around are inside of us.

It is a matter of quieting down and listening to the innate wisdom we were born with. When you are quietly writing your brain dump you may find that some of the answers to the things on your mind will present themselves.

Write everything that’s swirling around in your head like tasks, worries, projects, stuff you’re avoiding. If you are thinking it write it down. Don’t concern yourself with neatness, grammar and spelling. Just write quickly and messily.

You will be amazed at the power of writing stuff down. Why? For me, I can see all the silly, sometimes petty thoughts and worry for what they are – just a pattern of negativity that needs to be broken.

Turning the negative to positive will help reduce the invisible clutter stealing your energy because the answers are often inside the positive.

Wait, What? Line Drawing for Mental Clutter

Yes, drawing. And no, you don’t have to be “artsy” or even slightly creative for this to work. No talent needed. I know- I can’t draw and I get great benefit from drawing lines.

This is a neurographic art, a technique I teach that uses simple line drawing to shift your mental noise. You grab a pen, draw a curvy line across a page, and follow a few easy prompts.

Here’s why it works, humans are wired to look for patterns. Drawing disrupts your usual thought loops. It tricks your brain into relaxing—and that’s when clarity slips in.

I am leading a workshop on this on June 20 at Noon ET. The last class was a blast!

Decision-Making

A lot of physical clutter is unmade decisions stacked in piles.

• “Do I keep this gift I hate?”
• “What if I need this someday?”
• “What if I get rid of this and regret it?”

You can learn how to be a better decision maker. I wrote a whole article on this topic with tips on How to Make Decluttering Decisions Without Overthinking

Check-In Before You Clean Up

Before you start a decluttering session, do a mindset check

• What kind of day did I have?
• What’s pulling my attention right now?
• What do I want from this space?

This pause helps you work with your mind instead of against it.

If you’re already tired, frazzled, or overwhelmed just doing it so you can cross off the list is not a great idea. If you’re not in a patient decision-making mood you may be sabotaging yourself.

This is when you end up making bad decisions, or none at all and throw up your hands in defeat.

A one-minute check-in can reset your intention and avoid burnout.

Forget Instant Gratification

We live in a quick instant gratification world now. I’m old enough to remember cutting boxtops, and snail mailing them to the enterprise offering whatever. Then we would wait 6- 8 weeks for the free thing to arrive.

We want what we want when we want it now and this is usually yesterday. People avoid mental decluttering because it doesn’t feel like a quick win.

You can’t see your thoughts in a trash bag. You can’t snap a before and after photo of a habit you changed. When you don’t deal with mindset first, all your physical effort gets undone.

Ask anyone who’s decluttered a closet, only to refill it six weeks later. A clear mindset is your glue that makes it stay decluttered.

Doing a simple line drawing a day opens me up for a good productive day. Productive too can mean taking a work-free day. Productive is reaching your goal be it work or pleasure. Make an intention in the morning and stick to it.

When things pop up and get in the way of your intention, work with it, reschedule and don’t be side tracked by it. It is a delay only.

Start Small, Stay Consistent

Decluttering your mindset doesn’t need to take hours. You can spend just 5–10 minutes a day.

• One drawing
• One mental dump
• One clear decision

Try a line drawing in the morning! Neurographic Art for Mental Decluttering A Beginner’s Guide will show you an easy way to get started.

For reinforcement about why line drawing works read How Neurographic Art Helps You Declutter Your Mind. This article even includes a GPT Tool to Analyze Your Line Drawing. How fun!

And if you want to see how I combine words and drawn lines come to the Messy Mind Workshop on June 20 at Noon ET.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about quieting your mind and building your awareness muscle so you stop reacting and start doing.