Money Insights Detail

It’s Spring!

Spring Cleaning is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it goes back thousands of years. The idea of having a good sort out and a deep clean pop up in many cultures and in lots of different formats.

These days, of course, the term Spring Cleaning has been replaced by ‘Decluttering’, with the likes of Marie Kondo appearing in books, articles, and TV shows, explaining how to declutter our lives.

What does your life’s clutter mean?

The physical things we acquire and then cling to are often highly symbolic of what’s going on in the rest of your life.

The clutter is a representation of what you’re tolerating in your life. Perhaps you’re holding onto something from your past; or maybe you’re still feeling sad about something that’s gone out of your life. Maybe you know something is broken or redundant, but you can’t bring yourself to throw it out. Or it could be that you don’t want to get rid of a gift in case the sender comes round for a visit, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings.

Clutter and your financial situation

Most of the time we hold on to things we don’t use or need out of a scarcity mentality. We might have had parents or grandparents who were war-babies, living in a time of rationing and not sure where the next meal was coming from. They held on to their belongings tightly and lived in constant fear that they might lose everything.

To throw out a perfectly serviceable item just because it wasn’t used was waste. That’s not our lives now. We live in a society where there is enough – more than enough.

Yet we often have the feeling of not enough.  We wake up and say to ourselves, I didn’t have enough sleep. Or at the end of the day, I didn’t do enough today.  That sets the tone for more not enough thoughts, I’m not good enough, I don’t have enough…

So we fill our lives with stuff. We go shopping to relieve the feeling of not being good enough (prompted by the types of adverts that show us how the right brand of washing power will make the whole family laugh and sing!).

Create space in your life

By getting rid of the things you no longer use, you make space in your life for new things, new energy, new ideas, new gifts…

I’ve been doing this for years, and it gives me the most amazing feeling of being free!

So, I thought I’d share my top decluttering tips with you, so you can create space for magic to come into your life:

1. Go through your computer and get rid of all old unwanted emails: especially all the ‘temptation’ emails (‘Special Offers,’ ‘Buy one get one free,’ ‘Only seven days to buy this incredible product.’)
2. Declutter your social media of all negative comments and people who are ‘mood hoovers’.  Social Media is a great place to connect but it should be uplifting.
3. Take one room at a time and then work your way through cupboards and drawers. Take your unwanted clothes to the charity shops or sell them at a car boot sale or online.
4. What’s in your spare room?This is usually full of things you no longer require (lofts and attics are even worse!). If you can’t remember when you last used it, sell it, or give it away.
5. Clear out the office of all those pens you never use or don’t work. Donate them to a school or charity who can make use of them.
6. Bless someone else with your unwanted gifts. Only keep things which, as Marie Kondo says, “spark joy”.
7. De-clutter your laundry room. Throw the odd socks away – let’s be real here, the other sock isn’t going to miraculously appear!

Even if you only spend 30-minutes a day on decluttering, you’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll create space – both in your home and in your mind.

If you want to declutter your money story, take my Money Quiz and then book a free call to chat through your results.