Big Goal Part 1 – Decluttering My Entire Life

In my post last week, I described a goal that has lived on my goal list for many, many years. The goal is: 

My home is completely decluttered, decorated, organized and always company ready. 

For the remainder of May, I am going to break this goal down into each of the four pieces and the exact way I plan to track it. Decluttering is my starting place. I must get rid of stuff before I can organized, decorate, or even be always company ready. 

Part of the reason I think I have had this goal on my list for so long (besides the fact that I can’t seem to find the time to declutter, decorate, organize or clean up my house) is because I don’t know exactly it looks like to have this goal completed. 

Track It To Hack It

I believe that you need to “track it to hack it”. If I don’t know what it means to have my house fully “decluttered”, then I won’t know when the goal is completed. I could go around and around in my house and never be finished “decluttering”, so what does it look like to complete this goal and to finally remove it from my goals list? 

I have decided to define “completely decluttered” using a process that I learned from the book “Decluttering at the Speed of Life”. 

In this book, Dana K. White gives five steps for decluttering a space. These steps are: 

1. Trash – Remove all trash (easiest step!) 
2. Do the Easy Stuff – Stuff that has a home somewhere else 
3. Duh Clutter – “Duh, why do I have that??”  
4. Ask the Two Decluttering Questions
   • Question 1: If I needed this item, where would I look for it first? Take it there now! 
   • Question 2: If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one? – If no, donate! 
5. Make It Fit – Apply Dana’s Container Concept to the space 

To fully declutter my home, I want to apply her decluttering method to every area of my home which means every drawer, every closet, every corner.  

A great idea in theory, but I’m very visual and I love to see items crossed off, so I can’t just rely on memory to know when I have officially declutter every space in my home. I have a Task Manager, but I don’t feel like it’s a great place to track projects and goals. 

Using Trello To Track My Goal

Instead, I have decided to use a tool I have used on and off the last few years called Trello. This online tool allows me to add “cards” for all of my tasks and to move cards into different states such as “Pending”, “In Progress”, and “Complete”.  

In Trello, I created what is called a “board” for each of the main areas of my home. Within each of these boards, I have created a card for each of the spaces in that area (a drawer, a closet) that I need to declutter. All of these items live in the list “Declutter.” 

With Trello, you can also add a checklist to the card. Even better, you can create a checklist and reuse it as a template. I have created a template checklist with the five decluttering steps listed above. I will add this to each decluttering card/task. This will help me to see what steps I have completed in each area. 

I will use these cards to track that I have gone through all the spaces in my home at least once. When I’ve finished with a card, I will move the card onto the Done list.  I know that no area will stay decluttered forever, but I have to at least take one full pass through my home to declare this piece of the goal as Completed. 

I plan to try and use these same area boards to track the other pieces of my goal. This way, once everything is in the Done list, this goal is fully complete. I will need to maintain my decluttering habits in order to stop the clutter from getting out of control again, but my original goal will be achieved. 

Follow Along and Join Me!

As for accountability, I will post to this blog with updates of my progress. Do you have a space that needs decluttering? Or maybe, your whole home like I do? Let me know in the comments and let’s do this together!