It’s so easy to make a resolution about keeping your home tidy in the calm days between Christmas and new year. A serene space that is easy to care for seems well within reach. And then the decorations come down and the year begins in earnest with a new school term, long working days trying to catch up after the break, right in the middle of flu season and a period of bad weather.
It’s not unusual for decluttering resolutions to falter in the second half of January – but never fear! With a few tweaks, you can self-rescue and get back into your organised groove.
Think SMART to get yourself back on track
With a couple of weeks’ experience of the realities of your home organising resolution, you’re better placed to make goals that you can work with. As well as that useful failure data, there’s a handy tool that coaches and project managers have been using since the 1980s to help people set goals – the mnemonic SMART. It stands for:
Specific
Measured
Achievable
Relevant
Timed
Here’s how you might apply each of these to housework or decluttering.
A specific decluttering goal
The best goals can be described in a sentence or two, and they are specific . For example: My house will look amazing is not a great goal because amazing could mean a lot of things. Instead try, I will spend ten minutes tidying my living room after dinner.
Measuring your housework goals
Measured goals are much more satisfying so you’re more likely to keep trying for them. Use a tick list, or a to-do list that breaks the goal down into steps. You could even score yourself out of ten for speed, efficiency and aesthetics each time you do your evening tidy!
It’s also a good idea to take stock every so often. And don’t just rely on the intrinsic reward of achieving your goals: as Very Well Mind explains, because of hedonic adaptation, achieved goals become less satisfying over time. Sweeten the deal by promising yourself a regular treat when you reach a certain point (for example, for every ten tidies you tick off you can have a night off).
Check that your goals are achievable
Setting a goal is a great motivator – but goals do need to be achievable within your resources and time frame. Now you’ve tried your resolution out for a couple of weeks, it’s a great time to take stock and decide if the goal you’re working toward is achievable.
For example, if you lack storage space, with the best will in the world you will struggle to keep your home clutter free. Keep your decluttering goal achievable by putting some of your less used goods into storage – Christmas decorations are an ideal candidate for this, and can be covered by your self-storage insurance.
Another example might be expecting yourself to spend an hour a day cleaning when you work 12-hour shifts. Instead, try shorter cleaning sessions that match your energy, or schedule longer sessions on your days off.
Set housework goals that are relevant
Your goal needs to be relevant, which means that it should feed into your long-term goals and your values. Watch out for tempting social media trends (such as beige life and minimalism) that don’t align with your world. For example, you may aspire to a serene minimalist space, but how relevant is that to your lifestyle that includes three children a dog, and a taste for the boho look?
Instead, think about what appeals to you in those images of minimalist rooms, and bring that into your resolutions. An example might be: I will reduce visual clutter by boxing up and storing some of my knick-knacks and pictures and swap them out in three months’ time.
Timed goals are more achievable
You will succeed better if your goal has a deadline. Tidy the garage might never happen. By the end of March, tidy the garage so there is enough space to park the car is more likely to get done. And that goal is also measurable too, because it’s got a built-in indicator of success.
Fine tuning your resolutions – it’s the SMART thing to do
Hop back on the tidy home wagon: with a few tweaks, you can make your decluttering resolutions work for you.
