How I Used A Calendar to Declutter My House

Read time: 4 minutes

I had a problem.

A problem I had known about for a while, but felt too overwhelmed to try and fix.

You know what I’m talking about. Not the kind of “the bed is messy so I guess I’ll make it” kind of problem. Or “I’m out of eggs so what can I substitute for my random midnight cookie baking session” problem.

Those are simple problems, solved in under 2 minutes.

This was a big, complex, scary, overwhelming problem (at least to me).

Clutter.

Drawers full of useless things and piles of unfinished projects were catching up to me, weighing me down, distracting me from focusing on my important work, and hanging onto the back of my mind like Jack hung onto the Titanic’s door in the icy water because Rose wouldn’t scoot over and make some room for him.

I always had the best intentions to clear it all out, but I felt dread whenever I thought about sorting through all my stuff.

This was a complex problem, not solved in 2 minutes, or even 2 hours, and full of hundreds of difficult decisions of what was worth keeping and what I should l let go of.

And it seemed so big and complicated that it was like my brain shut down whenever I tried to take it all head-on.

But a few weeks ago I started an experiment that finally seems to have made this easy, and I’m convinced it will work for any big scary goal that you find yourself constantly putting off for another day.

Have any of those?

In today’s issue:

• My not-so-hidden mess

• How I used an old calendar for super doses of motivation

• How you can use this principle to reach any goal

How This All Started

Recently, my grandparents sold their home of 38 years and moved into a retirement community. And when I say recently, I don't mean quickly. Four decades of life had to be sorted through, moved, given away, sold, or thrown out. 

The process took almost 2 years.

“That’s what happens when you just can’t let things go,” I thought to myself as I watched all of this happening.

But then I got home and walked by the pile of furniture in our basement from our long-closed Airbnb rental.

Oh.

While we're not your typical clutter-bugs (if you walked into our house, most people would agree that it is ‘clean’), for years it has become all too easy to hang onto stuff "just in case". Some project I want to get to, book I want to read, or item I used to use, but no longer do.

And ample storage space has made the decision to keep or throw out an object a decision that could be put off for another day.

Because of this, slowly our basement has been filling with piles of surplus things. Bookcases have been overflowing. Junk drawers have become mystery boxes. 

And in the back of my mind, all these things building up in our home has been eating at me.

I knew I wanted to do something about it, but because the project seemed so big, it felt too hard to even start.

It was like my brain shut down before I could even get going.

One of several overflowing bookcases.

Introducing My Secret Weapon

But watching my grandparents have to sort through their things finally woke me up.

My wife and I decided to take on a January Decluttering Challenge. Every day of the month we are getting rid of a few things. 

On January 1st, we each got rid of 1 thing. On the 2nd, we got rid of 2. All the way until January 31st where we'll get rid of 31 things.

If we follow this all the way through to the end, each of us will have gotten rid of 500 things.

The first day is incredible. We each throw out 1 thing. Easy. Done. And we were on our way.

The second day too, also easy. Momentum was building.

But by the 8th I find myself struggling to find enough things to clear out.

Uh oh.

“This isn’t good”, I tell my wife. “Maybe this idea wasn’t so genius after all.”

My wife, not at all surprised by my lack of genius, agrees with me.

“How are we going to keep this up?”

I felt doomed to fail.

Eventually though, I find 8 items that I miraculously won’t die without, check off the day, and keep the chain going.

Our Decluttering Tracker ^TM, courtesy 2023’s family calendar. Can you tell my wife is an overachiever? In college she finished her final papers by midterms. Gross.

I thought things would continue to get harder. If 8 items were hard, surely 9 would be worse.

But by the 13th I got rid of my 13 items easily, and was already planning ahead for what I would throw out the next day.

Huh.

Turns out, the challenge has actually been training me how to let things go.

Those early days of the challenge weren’t actually about how much progress I was making.

They were about teaching me how to declutter my house.

The challenge starts off easy - so easy I couldn't fail. And slowly it has become tougher. But over that time, I've become tougher too. 

Right now as I write this, it’s January 16th.

I still look at that calendar and the fact that I've only let go of 100 items, and I still have 400 more to go. 

That feels impossible. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to do that.

But I don't have to worry about getting rid of 400 things. I just have to worry about getting rid of 16 things today.

And that? That I can do.

The Power of Small When Attacking Goals

If I had tried on January 1st to get rid of 500 items, I would have failed miserably. 

The task is so big that my brain instantly gets overwhelmed by the complexity of it, by the hundreds of decisions I'll have to make, and by the lack of skills I have in being willing to let a thing go when I just maybe in some distant future might possibly have a use for it.

It's my same avoidance of these decisions that led to my currently overflowing bookshelves to begin with!

But by breaking it down into simple, small steps, it was easy to get started.

I made it easy for myself to stack wins early on, even though getting rid of 1 or 2 things really didn't make a bit of difference to our full house.

They made a difference within ME.

And that's the power of small habits.

I still have no idea how I'll handle the next 15 days. 

But I have skills now that I didn't 16 days ago.

I have a stack of wins today that I didn't 16 days ago.

I have momentum now that I didn't 16 days ago.

And crucially, I have a simple process I can follow, and I don't have to overthink anything else.

The most powerful change you can make is not one big action that changes your circumstances, it's a string of tiny actions that changes you.

That's the magic sauce for hitting your goals.

Keep growing,

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