You’ve just made yourself start dealing with the overflowing inbox, or the pile of papers on the kitchen table, and do a little a day. Congratulations!
But what happens when the mess is more than you can take on in a single session? Even a week of sessions?
This is where decluttering decision fatigue comes into play – and why you never want to make yourself look at your email (or kitchen table) again (because no matter how much of the stack you got through, your kids are bringing home more tonight).
Here’s what I told my client last week when she brought this issue to me – see if it helps you.
When you’ve got an overwhelming inbox (or kitchen table), you need to reframe your decluttering time. In other words, this is “add stuff to my to-do list time”; it’s not “take action on my entire inbox, one email after another” time. (That’s exhausting!)
Or “file each paper with the appropriate label and set a calendar reminder for each thing.” Nope!
You’re just going to blitz through your (physical or electronic) stash, junking everything that can be junked and writing down what needs to happen on the rest of it.
It’s “throw, throw, throw, add appointment to calendar, throw, write down friend’s recipe, throw, check to see if we have a present for that kid’s birthday party.” Not “throw, throw, throw, wander off to calendar to see if we can make it that day or get distracted writing down the recipe and wondering if I have the ingredients to make it tonight or searching for a potential present in the gift closet stash.”
See the difference? One gets you bogged down in doing a thousand different things; the other has your inbox significantly smaller, with a discrete to-do list of things you can plop on your calendar (or to-do list or planner) next time you’re looking at to-do’s for the week.
You’re not trying to declutter AND take action AND run down all the loose ends all in the same day. (That’s a recipe for disaster and overwhelm!)
You’re just decluttering. Then you’re just adding to-do’s to next week’s schedule. Then you’re just going about your day and taking care of that birthday present while you’re at it.
That’s it.
So much less stress, so much less overwhelm, than trying to do everything at once.
What about you? What’s the part of your life that tends to pile up on you? (Is it the digital side, or something tangible?)
Apply these decluttering principles, and you’ll never have to worry about scatter brain taking over again.
It’s worth it.
