I’ve been decluttering a lot recently. My home was rapidly becoming a place of clutter which was negatively impacting my mental health.

My home no longer felt like my safe space and began to add to the stress of daily life. Instead of walking through the front door and feeling ready to relax, I felt like I still had so much to do because my home was in chaos.

Enough was enough, I needed to do something about it!

This is when I discovered minimalism and decluttering. I’d watched hundreds (yes hundreds) of YouTube videos all about how owning less can improve your mental health and wellbeing. A repeated theme in as lot of the videos I watched was productivity and slow living. Those are two things that I value in my life too so I figured, why not become a minimalist?

Well, I’ll tell you why; I like stuff. I enjoy collecting things, especially books and plushes. I love having physical copy of photographs to flick through. I want to be surrounded by beautiful things.

So that ruled out being a minimalist for me.

But does that mean that I couldn’t embrace decluttering into my life? Absolutely not!

So my decluttering journey began…

Knowing where to start was my first issue. My whole home felt like it needed to be sorted through and I didn’t want to get overwhelmed before I’d even started. That’s why I decided to start by taking it slow and working through one area at a time. I’ve seen people declutter one room at a time but that seemed like too much for me.

One of the most important things to be aware of with decluttering is that it has to be personal to you. Just because you’ve seen people declutter in one way, doesn’t mean that is the only way. You can adapt methods and tasks to suit your lifestyle which makes decluttering so much simpler.

I started by focusing on my clothing. I went through and decided what fits and what I actually wear. Everything else went into a bag to be taken to the charity shop.

Once I’d gotten through my clothing, the ball was rolling and it became easier to move on to the next area. I started decluttering area by area and eventually got quite a lot of clutter out of my home. I went through kitchenware, paperwork, stationery, soft furnishings, and so much more.

After the big declutter…

Something that I have learned by decluttering and organising my home, is that it’s a never ending journey. That might sound daunting and make you not even want to start, but just hear my out for a moment.

Decluttering and home organisation is a journey. It’s something that you want to transform into a habit rather than something you can do once and move on. Let’s face it, we aren’t going to stop buying things, so why should we stop decluttering?

As you go through life, you’ll adapt and change meaning that some of the things in our lives no longer serve a purpose. This isn’t a bad thing but it does mean that it’s time to let some of our no longer used items move on to a new home.

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So to answer my original question of can you declutter as a non-minimalist? Yes, you can!

Decluttering is a habit that we should all form in our lives and it’s not limited to minimalists. So, get decluttering and de-chaos your home!