5 EASY WAYS TO START SIMPLIFYING YOUR LIFE IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN

Want to simplify your life but not sure where to begin? Here are 5 easy ways to start simplifying your life this week. Let’s create a little more time, space and freedom with less stress and less decisions to weigh you down.

WHY SIMPLIFYING LIFE ISN’T SIMPLE!

Simplifying life isn’t always as easy as it sounds! If you’ve tried to clear your clutter at home, find some downtime in an overstuffed schedule, or just want to take a breather as you rush from one thing to the next, you’ll already know that a simpler life isn’t that simple to create!

Our busy lives and busy brains keep us on the go from morning until evening so how do we find the time, energy and motivation to declutter and simplify our home and life when we’ve already got so much on our plates?

In this article I’m sharing 5 easy ways to start simplifying your life if you don’t know where to begin!

These ideas may also be helpful to you if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed and need a quick reset! Or you could suggest family or friends try them out if they want to explore decluttering and simplifying but don’t know where to start.

5 EASY WAYS TO START SIMPLIFYING YOUR LIFE

Here are 5 easy ways to start simplifying your life and hopefully create some time and freedom in your week ahead.

1. Declutter one room

For most of us, the thought of decluttering our entire home can seem overwhelming and time-consuming. And, when we feel like that, we often put it off until tomorrow, next weekend, or never!

There are so many tips and ideas available on how to declutter fast, how to make decluttering less overwhelming or decluttering questions to ask yourself on what to keep and what to get rid of. Yet, realistically, all of these strategies still take a bit of time and energy.

When you don’t know where to begin simplifying your life, one of the first suggestions I have is to just declutter one room.

Choose your room. Remove everything that doesn’t absolutely need to be in that room. Keep it in a box in another room (just for now, not for always).

Live with this decluttered room for a week or two. Notice how much easier it is to keep clear, tidy and clean. Five minutes instead of half an hour?

Does it feel more relaxing, more peaceful, less stressful. Do you enjoy the look and feel of your uncluttered space, tabletops, floors?

If your decluttered room gives you more peace and less stress, in time you could think about decluttering the rest of your home. Here are some tips on how to declutter your home in 30 days if you’re up for the challenge!

2. Remove social media from your phone

Social media has benefits but it’s also a great time-waster and source of frustration, comparison and envy.

An easy way to start simplifying your life is to remove social media apps from your phone completely for the next week or so.

If you really need to check your social media feeds, go to a computer and log in. Keep them off your phone and take a look at your screen time usage at the end of the week. Did you notice a difference? What did you do with that time and your phone instead?

When it comes to the end of the week, question whether you really need social media back on your phone and if so, decide carefully which feeds and accounts add value and which just add distraction to your life!

3. Purge your closet

Another easy way to start simplifying your life is to purge your closet and try out a more minimalist wardrobe over the next week.

Choose your very favourite pieces of clothing, the ones you wear most often because they look good and feel comfortable. Put these back in your closet and check that you’ve got a few different complete outfit choices just for the coming week.

For everything else that you’re not keeping in your wardrobe this week, put them all in a box, or bag and preferably store it another room.

The aim is for you to have a wardrobe filled only with clothes that you enjoy wearing. It’s easier and quicker to choose your outfit in the morning and with fewer decisions that require brain power. See what a difference it makes tomorrow when you go to get dressed!

If you need to retrieve something from the box of clothes that didn’t make it into your wardrobe the first time round, that’s fine. This is meant to be a fun and easy exercise, not one that causes you frustration or difficulty! At the end of the week, think about whether you enjoyed a smaller wardrobe and found it easier to get dressed each day. Could this work for you longer term? If so, here’s a free Wardrobe Declutter Checklist you might find helpful!

4. Declutter your schedule

Take a look at your schedule for the next week. Is there anything on there that you can postpone or cancel? See if you can block out some quiet downtime for yourself over the next few days. What would you like to do with that time? Read, walk, swim, garden, kick-box, bake?

A cluttered home is stressful but so too is a cluttered schedule. We all have things we have to do, such as dentist appointments, work etc but finding a balance between what we HAVE to do and what we WANT to do is so important for our mental and physical health.

Simplify your life this week by freeing up your time and focusing on yourself. If you find you enjoy it, and feel better for a slower and simpler schedule, can you make some changes to your calendar going forward?

Try these tips on how to be less busy for some ideas or this article on how to create a daily routine to simplify your day.

5. Do 10 minutes of cleaning every day

Keeping the home clean and tidy may not be very exciting but it feels even worse to have a pile up of laundry or dishes waiting for you when you get home from work or a whole home to clean at the weekend. Doing a little bit often is a great motto for many things in life, but especially household chores!

Every day this week aim to do 10 minutes of cleaning. What, where and when you clean is up to you but find a little time to clean your home each day and avoid a build up that takes longer when you feel like it least.

Listen to some music, your favourite podcast or TV programme, make it fun and stress-free.

Try these tips on a minimalist cleaning routine and how to save time cleaning for some more tips.

5 EASY WAYS TO START SIMPLIFYING YOUR LIFE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN

I hope you enjoyed these 5 easy ways to start simplifying your life. When you don’t know where to begin, it often feels unrealistic to press pause on life whilst you figure out how to make things less complicated. Life doesn’t wait for us whilst we work out what to do!

There are many more ways you can create more ease and less stress in your life. I share some more of them in this article on 20 ways to simplify your life.

I hope, for now though, that you might like to experiment with these 5 easy ways to start simplifying your own life. I’ve suggested you try them out for a week or so, just to see if they could maybe help you going forward. It might take longer for you to feel the full benefit but try them out and see how you feel.

At the very least, they might help you carve a little more time out of your day and give you some wiggle room for other things in life than clearing, tidying and chasing your tail.

START SMALL AND BUILD UP

One of the reasons why simplifying life might be difficult is because we tend to overthink things.

• What to declutter?
• Where to start?
• What to do with your unwanted stuff?
• How to decide what to keep and what to get rid of?
• What does simplifying actually mean and is there a correct method or way to go about it?
• What’s the ultimate objective?

All these questions are valid and important but you don’t need to have all the answers right now, not when you’re just wanting to get started. The answers will come as you follow your own simplicity journey.

That’s another reason that I’ve chosen these 5 ways to start simplifying your life. They’re designed to help you both see and feel a difference in your home, schedule and life.

Hopefully you’ll feel encouraged to continue beyond the week and in a series of small steps, address the clutter that you’ve temporarily moved out. Of course, that clutter still needs dealing with, but in order to start simplifying you need some quick wins that make you feel good, positive and motivated to carry on!

For more on this topic, try this article on the benefits of simplifying life or learn more about what it actually means to simplify your life.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Have you simplified your life or are you struggling to know where to start? Why do you want to simplify and what do you hope to gain? More time, more space, less stress? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts and what simplifying means to you! I’d love to hear from you!

MORE RESOURCES TO HELP YOU SIMPLIFY LIFE

Here are some more articles and resources to help simplify your life in different ways. There are some free printables and workbooks to accompany the blog posts which you might like!

• 15 ways to be more productive
• Quick ways to simplify your space
• Meal-planning made simple (+ free printable)
• 20 habits for a clutter-free home
• 30 simple living quotes to inspire simplicity in your home and life
• 10 simple household routines to keep your home clean and tidy (+ free printable)
• Simplify Your Home – A guide, workbook and checklists to help you declutter your home and keep it clutter-free.

DON’T MISS OUT!

I’m Antonia and on this blog I share practical inspiration to simplify your home, time and life. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest! You can also subscribe to Balance Through Simplicity and receive regular simplicity tips straight to your inbox for free. Make sure you never miss an article plus you’ll get a copy of my free Declutter Starter Kit as a welcome gift!