Also by MARTIN HILL
Declutter Workbook
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DECLUTTER WORKBOOK
Declutter Your Home, Organize Your Life And Free Your
Mind With This Step-By-Step Guide!
Martin Hill
Copyright 2019 by Martin Hill
All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
L
ife is stressful and hectic at times, and is often very, very full. Full of responsibilities, loads of things to recall, lots of paperwork and bills to pay, lots of stuff to put away and things to handle.
There are times when everything simply feels like too much to handle. We know, deep down, something needs to be given and yet we can't seem to be slowing down long enough to step back, reassess, and take back our lives from the clutter weighing down on us.
Sometimes we need just someone else to walk us through the process of decluttering our lives, breaking down what seems like an impossible task into manageable bites that we can deal with one day at a time.
This book is just that.
The purpose of this book is not to overwhelm you with details, but to give you a practical, step-by-step guide to cleaning up the excess clutter that tends to pile up in your home, mind and schedule.
Each day we're going to focus on one small area of our homes and lives, knowing that these little tweaks together will add up to a big change. Every assignment to keep it manageable is short and to the point. There are also some helpful worksheets and checklists to use for you, in case you're like me and like to check things off a list to feel like you've done something.
If you feel even a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of organizing your house, you will breathe a sigh of relief right away. Because, really, we at The Home Edit are barely capable of simple tasks such as ironing or cooking rice (Do you leave it open? closed? Do you have to stir? Why is it so complicated??). But what we are good at is going into a room, looking past the mess and coming up with a methodical attack plan. So if we can make sense out of uncertainty anyway, we're hoping that you too can.
We had a very clear objective when we first launched this book: to transform the way people think about organization. Now... we understand that we are not doing brain surgery or cancer cures. BUT we've known firsthand how efficient it can be to create a clutter-free space and make it exceptionally functional whether it's the children who can help themselves to a cereal station in the pantry (we're going to do anything to get thirty more minutes of sleep) or finally see your clothes in the closet after twenty years of nostalgia clearing (no, your daughter won't want to see you in the closet!
We weren't happy to be just another few organizers who could sort things into bins and use a label maker. We wanted to make our spaces work, and look decent. So we figured out a lovely system that adds alongside the practical one a layer of visual aesthetics much the same way a designer approaches a space.
We didn't do this because on Instagram it looked amazing, or because we really (for real) like when things are organized in rainbow order we did it because we understand that organizing spaces and rooms shouldn't just be about putting things in their place. Nor should it be just about the looks of the room. We wanted to exhibit the magical sweet spot that exists where function meets form when spaces are at once effective, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing to everyone. It not only makes it more pleasing to look at parts of your house, but we have also found an sprinkling that extra layer of pixie dust helps people to maintain their organized spaces. Which is the idea! If you are not able to maintain the processes we put in place as our customer, then we did not do our jobs effectively.
There are different reasons why people are not organised. No one has ever taught you, quite simply, the most common is! Organizing is a skill that can be learnt by anyone at heart. We're moving out of that center and finding a cornucopia of reasons why it's not part of your life: maybe your mom was a neat freak and chaos is how you chose to rebel. Mom is long dead, and you've reached retirement age, no matter.
Tracing your personal history, you might find that you've always been structured and then your last baby's birth has driven you over the edge. It has seemed insurmountable to juggle a home, a career, a spouse and motherhood. You may also be trapped in the vise of that age-old two-sided terror, fear of success and fear of failure. Getting it all together seems like excessive responsibility, no matter how you cut it down.
Unwanted or abrupt change can also knock you off the organized path right into the depression clutches. Maybe someone near you died, or you had to move to a new town to accommodate the career of your spouse.
The pad to launch into depression is varied. Once you know you are not getting out of bed, you can be there for a long time, much less make it.
While this book's scope is narrow, and we're not free to delve into your past and find out why you're in chaos, we can identify one common denominator. Unorganized individuals avoid, delay or simply fail to take decisions. That's how they make clutter. Item by item goes into the environment, and nobody knows what to do with that. To make effective use of this book, you just need to make one decision: decide to use it as your guide to an organized living. Step by step through all of your home or office rooms, we're going to make a journey into order out of chaos.