The path to decluttering your life may not be what you think

What my life was like before I decluttered it, and my journey to being ready to make the change to a more organised life

I’ve been on a mission to declutter my life for just over 18 months. It’s led me to reorganise every room in my home, downsize to a 1 bedroom apartment and has set me on a path to living a simpler and more orderly life. Has it been easy? Absolutely not! It’s actually been one of the more challenging projects I’ve ever attempted. But also one of the most rewarding.

Managing your space is easy when you don’t own much

I’ve never been an obsessively neat person. But I’m not particularly messy either. Growing up, whenever I enjoyed the privilege of having my own room (not always a given in a family of 5 kids), I delighted in arranging my bedroom furniture. While the rest of my family slept, I dragged my bed to different corners of the room, rearranged book shelves and organised creative projects, toys and school papers. I didn’t have a lot of possessions. So it was relatively easy to keep it organised. It was my own little sanctuary. And I took pride in it.

However, as I entered the grown up world, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the business of holding down a job, maintaining relationships, paying bills, socialising and living life. Back then, I didn’t know that I needed to “manage” my things. Fortunately, as a young adult I still didn’t own many possessions. As time passed, and I collected more and more things, staying organised became a little bit harder. However, I was still able to keep my home in a reasonably tidy state… That is, until I got sick.

The rug is pulled out from under me

I had been working in Sydney for the previous 6 years in a fast-paced corporate tech job. After feeling progressively more unwell during 2013, one day I collapsed at work. A visit to a specialist and rounds of tests brought the startling realisation that I had to quit my job and focus full-time on getting well again. I had to move back to Melbourne to be close to family, because for days, weeks, years after that, I could barely take care of myself let alone manage a home. I struggled with the most basic daily tasks such as brushing my teeth, showering and dressing myself. Any activity that involved standing for sustained periods of time felt impossible.

In addition to the physical limitations of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I also had psychological impacts to navigate such as illness induced periods of depression and anxiety that impacted my motivation and ability to concentrate on tasks.

By 2015, I was living on my own in a 2 bedroom unit. A cleaner came in once a fortnight to do the heavy lifting. She vacuumed, scrubbed the bathroom and mopped the floors. I also had help from family for large tasks such as fixing up the garden. I tidied up as best as I could in between visits.

There was little order to my home and my life. As I didn’t have the energy to think about clothes, my wardrobe ballooned out with a mixture of old corporate work clothes and loungewear that was completely worn out from years of wearing them at home. I had bills, medical reports, old medicines and supplements jammed into every cupboard. Make up and toiletries, well passed their used by dates, and old blankets and bedding took up space in my linen and bathroom cupboards.

As a result of high use, my kitchen was one of the most disorganised rooms. Since it took all my strength just to shop for the speciality foods that my body could digest, I jammed groceries into the fridge and pantry without being able to organise them. I ended up buying things that I already had because I couldn’t see what was behind the first layer of my pantry. My other kitchen shelves were stacked with appliances that no-longer worked and too many kitchen utensils and dish ware.

By far, the worst room was my home office. It was full of boxes and junk that I’d collected from deliveries during the pandemic and reject items from the rest of my home. In short, my home was an unmitigated, cluttered disaster.

Moving on

When I first got sick, I was fortunate enough to have an income replacement policy against which I could make a claim. It meant that I could afford to rent my own home, pay for expensive health treatments and avoid being a financial burden to my family. This insurance policy also meant I could focus on recovery.

Once I started to feel well enough to think about the future, the insurer sent out a rehabilitation consultant to support me getting back to work. As my doctors warned me it was not possible to return to my stressful corporate career, I chose to re-skill to become a music therapist. During those transition years, my energy was consumed by my studies, followed by setting up my music therapy practice. So there was nothing left in the tank to dedicate to my home environment.

So what turned me around, and put me on the current path to a more organised life?

A break through

By 2022, I was no-longer living in survival mode. My studies were complete, and I had a part-time music therapy business up and running. I finally had some capacity to think about other things besides my health, finances and employment. For the first time in many years I started to notice things around me. My home, where I’d spent days and weeks alone during the seemingly endless lockdowns, was not what I wanted it to be. I’d had enough of living with mess and clutter. So I took inspiration from the YouTubes I’d been watching about minimalism and decluttering throughout the pandemic, and finally made the decision to change my life.

I’m convinced that I could not have attempted this journey any sooner. In order to have any degree of success, I needed energy and attention to give to such a big project. And up until that moment, I had been consumed with making it through each day.

So what about you? What challenges have you faced that have monopolised your time, energy and attention, and created obstacles to getting more organised? I feel like we’ve all been through so much these past few years. Yet, something must of changed, because you’re here… reading this.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed because you’re at the beginning of your own decluttering journey and don’t know if you’re ready. Perhaps you can take comfort from the fact that, just through noticing that you want things to change, you may in fact have already taken the first step. And if you have started decluttering your life, this might be a good moment to stop and think about how much you have already accomplished, and how beautiful your home will be once you’ve achieved your goal. And if I can succeed, so can you!

Lilibet xo