The Uncomfortable Truth About Clutter | Clutter Video Tip

⚡️ UPDATE: The Clutter Diet program has officially ended. I’m now helping professionals and entrepreneurs with personal branding and communication at 👉 BePutTogether.com ✨
The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. But honesty is the best policy, so grab a glass of water and sit back for the unvarnished truth about the disorganization in your home. These Clutter Video Tips are posted frequently here on our clutterdiet organizing channel. You can search Twitter for #ClutterVideoTip also to find comments on our organizing tips. Lorie Marrero is the creator of ClutterDiet.com and the author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. Lorie serves as the national spokesperson for Goodwill Industries International and ambassador of the Donate Movement.

I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book & online program, today we’re talking about the uncomfortable truth about clutter & getting organized. I want to talk today about some things that maybe another expert might not say, some things that could be hard to hear.

You’ve always had the power. Remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz? She had the red shoes, all she had to do was click her heels together to go home, but she didn’t know that. The whole time she had the power. You do too. There are tools out there, products, books and plans, experts like me- those are all external authorities. You might get conflicting advice, tips that say one thing & someone says something different. What you need to know is to trust your internal authority to do what’s right for you. The motivation for getting this done comes from you. An expert like me can’t make you be motivated. You have to have a reason.

The state of your home is a reflection of your inner self. This one is really hard to hear. If you are depressed, your home probably looks like a depressed person lives there. When you’re tired or sick, things start to get out of hand. This is kind of a chicken & egg thing. Does the clutter make you depressed? Or does your depression create the clutter? The answer is both. Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” I believe that our environment does contribute to our state of mind, but our state of mind absolutely contributes to our environment. If you are depressed, sick, tired, whatever that is that’s causing you to let go of some of your maintenance, get some support, because when you improve your environment, you’re going to improve your state of mind.

Let’s talk about how making any changes in your life are only going to happen if something is important to you. People can make massive change in their lives when they finally decide that it’s important. If you want to get organized and lose the clutter, you have to find out why. It’s that internal authority, that motivation that only you can bring to this equation. You may have a ton of stress over this, embarrassment over the clutter, issues with what you’re teaching your children; you may not want to teach them bad habits. You may have some kind of massive deadline or really important goal and you realize that the clutter and the disorganization in your life is holding you back. Whatever the reasons is, latch on & get in touch with the why and you’ll get it done.

Getting organized takes time and energy. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and if you have been accumulating things in your home for decades, it’s going to take quite a bit of time and energy to go through these items and make decisions. If you watch a television show about organizing & see a clutter problem get solved in 30 minutes, you’ve got to understand that it doesn’t work that way in real life. You’re going to have to do some hard work. It’s going to be very taxing on your decision-making skills & you’re going to get fatigued & need help. You can create that motivation & build that stamina to get that project done, but you can’t get disappointed thinking that this is only going to be a 30 minute process. Be prepared to put in the time & energy that it’s going to take to get this done.

The answer you’re looking for is not going to be found in a product. The answer is in a system. You can stock up on bins and neat gadgets for organizing, but the best gadget in the world is not going to work unless there is a system & a method around using it. There’s maintenance required. Even if you have something as simple as a trashcan, you need a system of throwing things into that trashcan for that to work. Do not think that buying these products is going to solve your organization problem.

If you’re having trouble creating these systems, this is what we do. Trust yourself, but if you’re stuck, we’ll get you unstuck so that you can move forward & get this work done at http://www.clutterdiet.com. See you next time.