Do You Need to Change Your Space?

Imagine you have a rattly A.C. unit that is constantly running. It’s running when you’re trying to nap, when your favorite show is on, and when you’re talking your grandmother who doesn’t hear well.

*FrrfffrrrrrRRRRrrrrnnnt*

*rrrrrrnt*

*rrrrRRrRRrRRRRRRRRRRnt* *mrrrrRRrRRnt*

*BRRRRRRRRRNT*

*xxxxzzzmmmmzzzzmmzzz*

How annoyed are you right now?

House clutter can be a rattly A.C. unit. You might be so used to clutter that you don’t consciously register the mess, just like the sound of the A.C. fades into the background after a while.

You don’t have to go through a super-purge or get hyper-organized to cut down the clutter. I love Marie Kondo, and her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has been an amazing tool for me.

But you don’t have to do that now! You don’t have to do anything fancy! You. Can. Be. Lazy.

Take the easy way out of decluttering one space. Take the piles of paper spread over five surfaces in your kitchen and put them in one stack. You are not allowed to feel guilty for not going through them right now.

Put the pens, paperclips, and knickknacks that have overrun your coffee table into a shoebox.

Got a big laundry basket? Everything in your bedroom that is scattered around and stressing you out gets put in the basket, and the basket in a closet. Or a drawer, or under the bed, or on the back porch.

This is not about organizing, this is not about storage, this is not about opening your mail. Lazy decluttering is about getting junk out of your visual field.

When you declutter one space, you might start noticing relief every time you pass it. That’s what happened to me. When I cleared one pile that had been in my hallway for years, I felt a physical lightness every time I passed that newly opened space. That’s where the A.C. unit analogy came from.

It turns out that every time I passed that hallway pile my brain was dealing with it, even if I wasn’t thinking consciously about the mess. Like the rattly A.C. unit, it’s not until you create quiet that you realize how loud the noise had been.

What is one space that you can lazy declutter in the next five minutes?