9 Areas to Declutter for a Simple & Meaningful Life - Life's Little Pleasures and Struggles

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When we think about decluttering, we tend to think about getting rid of unnecessary material possessions from our home. But there are many other areas from where we can remove the excess or non-essentials to add more value to our life. To simplify your life and to create more time, space, and freedom for what truly matters, you need to declutter different areas of your life. Here are 9 areas you can declutter this year for a more simple and meaningful life.

Important Areas to Declutter to Simplify Your Life

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Your Priorities and Goals

This one is top on my list of areas to declutter. Decluttering your priorities and goals means identifying what matters most to you and focusing on these things on a daily basis.

Without simplifying your goals, it becomes difficult to achieve them. And without a clear list of your priorities, it can be difficult to know where to spend your time and energy. After all, when everything is a priority, nothing really is.

Decluttering your priorities and goals allows you to focus on the important things you need to do in the day and what will add value to you and your family. You will be able to set clear boundaries to curate a life that’s meaningful you, not a life that you might be living on autopilot.

Try simplifying your goals based on your core values and priorities. Reevaluate your priorities if needed. Make a clear list of your priorities. Think about the people, experiences, places, stuff, and activities that add most value to your life. Remember, we can say our priorities are whatever we want, but the choices we make will more clearly show what we truly value.

Your Physical Space

This one is very important if you truly want to live a simple and meaningful life. A cluttered, disorganized home takes a lot of your time for cleaning, maintaining, and organizing stuff. For most of us, our excessive physical possessions are not making us happy. Rather, they are taking us away from the things that do. Your excessive and unnecessary stuff distract you from what is important and meaningful. So, declutter your home. It has a profound impact on your mind and your spirit. When you remove the excess, you can focus more on the essential. By decluttering, you will make space and time for the things that matter most.

Get started today – one room at a time. Go around the room and eliminate the unnecessary. Keep only what you can use and what is truly valuable. Try to leave only the things that add value to your life, and let the unwanted and unloved ones go.

By reducing the amount of clutter in your home, you will improve the quality of your life significantly. When you have less stuff in your home, you have less stuff requiring your time, energy, and attention to manage it all.

I have been decluttering my stuff for a long time – on a regular basis. And I have found that my view of “enough” keeps changing with time.

Check out these other helpful posts on decluttering your home:

If you need extra tips on how to declutter and improve your life, you can refer to this wonderful book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White, for help.

Your Mind

One of the important areas to declutter to live a simple and meaningful life is your mind. A cluttered mind is one that’s not only full of good thoughts, ideas, and knowledge but also full of a million things to remember, negative thoughts, fearful, unhealthy, and toxic beliefs, worries, and problems.

As a result, a cluttered mind tends to lead to stress, anxiety, chaos, procrastination, and distraction. You fail to focus on important things that require your attention, and might even be unable to get things done simply because you don’t know where to start!

Begin decluttering your mind by getting your thoughts out of your head and down on to paper. This keeps your head from being filled with everything you need to do and remember. Looking at a visual list could help you prioritize, and take action where needed instead of remembering a bunch of things, and thus, creating a chaos in your mind. Watch less TV, reduce the amount of information you take in, try to get enough sleep, and identify what is essential, and eliminate what is not.

For more information, you might want to check out this great book by Barrie Davenport – Declutter Your Mind: How to Stop Worrying, Relieve Anxiety, and Eliminate Negative Thinking.

Your Relationships

This is one of the main areas you need to declutter. Not every relationship is meant to last. As you grow, you would realize some people are meant to stay in your life longer than others. Not all relationships are important or healthy either. While you should spend more time with positive, like-minded people – people who care for you, help you grow, and make you feel happy; you should get rid of all the toxic relationships that only drain your energy and add drama to your life.

Many of us have relationships that often feel a little one-sided, or cause us more harm than good. Declutter the relationships in your life which aren’t built on mutual love, respect, and support. If a relationship doesn’t add value to your life, it’s time to let it go.

Set healthy boundaries, and spend more time on nurturing the relationships that are important to you. Every relationship needs work and care to keep it strong and healthy. So, if a relationship means a lot to you, invest your time and energy in it. Because the quality of your life greatly depends on the quality of your relationships.

Your Schedule

Do you feel like you never have time for the things you want to do? If that’s how you feel all the time, you need to start decluttering your schedule and freeing up more time for the things that matter most.

Time is one of those things we can never get enough of. We all have 24 hours in a day, and we can only do so much! We have unlimited options, but limited resources. It’s up to us how we manage our time that’s limited and precious. We have to make important decisions to eliminate some things that don’t add value or simplify our lives.

Learn the art of saying “no” to non-essential things or events so you can make time for the things you want to say “yes” to. The things that are important to you will affect how you make decisions and how you spend your time. It’s not enough to know what things you should do. You also have to get clarity on the types of things you should not do so you can simplify your life and live intentionally.

If you don’t keep a calendar, start. If you do, look at your upcoming week and month. Start by writing down important events and tasks. Next, carefully consider the remaining tasks on your list. Are they worth the time and effort to keep in your schedule? Can you pick just one or two activities in the next week or month that you can cancel, decline, or postpone so you can spend that time doing things that bring you joy and value?

Making a conscious effort to write down your events and plan ahead for you and your family on a weekly basis is time well spent. By having plans for your week in advance, you can better prepare for upcoming events and avoid chaotic mornings that inevitably complicate your life.

Your Habits

Over time we all develop some habits, things that we do sometimes without even realizing we are doing them. While some habits are healthy, others are not.

Declutter your habits and make sure that you try to nurture healthy, positive ones instead of harmful and negative ones. Helpful daily habits can make your life a lot simpler and easier like making beds every morning, brushing teeth every day, washing your hands frequently, or clearing out the clutter in the evening before going to bed.

Your Expectations

One of the areas you need to declutter carefully in order to live a simple and meaningful life is your expectations. Too often people set unreasonably higher expectations for themselves. What you expect from yourself or from others should be realistic or practical. Too many expectations can make life difficult, cause stress and frustration, and even put strain on your important relationships.

It’s great that you want to excel in something you do or accomplish something big, but don’t expect to do that overnight. Give yourself time. Slow things down and take a break if needed. Don’t be hard on yourself if you fail, or make mistakes, or things go wrong. Take small steps to reach your goals, and keep your expectation reasonable. By decluttering your expectations, you can practice self-love, and increase your happiness, too.

Your Commitments

So many people lament that there is not enough time in their days. One of the main reasons for that is we fail to manage our commitments well. We commit to too many things, and then find ourselves without enough time or energy to fully enjoy or complete those commitments. Too many commitments increase your stress level and may even cause depression.

Decluttering your commitments will help you unearth more quality time in your days and allow you to spend your time doing the things that are truly important and meaningful.

Take a look at each area of your life and write down all of your commitments. Seeing it all written down can be quite an eye-opening experience as well as overwhelming. From here, look at each one and decide whether it really brings you joy and value, and if it’s worth the amount of time that you invest in it. Then, declutter the ones that don’t make life simpler or more meaningful.

Your Diet

Another area to declutter in order to simplify your life is your diet. Decluttering diet means getting rid of the excess ‘clutter’ in the form of a lot of added fats, high sugars, salt, and unnecessary additives; and choosing healthy, nutritious meal options whenever possible that are simple to plan, easy to cook, and yummy to eat.

Do advanced meal planning, and prepare your food for the week including all the snacks. This way you will not be easily tempted to shatter a healthy diet by grabbing a packet of salty chips or cookies as a quick energy boost. When you eat healthy and clean food, you feel healthy which, in turn, can save you from many diseases and complications. So, be more mindful and intentional about what clutter you feed yourself and your family. Your bodies will thank you for doing so!

Parting Words:

These are some important areas to declutter to create your best life that is simple, meaningful, and more fulfilling. Simplifying life is about getting rid of the things that don’t matter in order to make space and time for those that do.

Our physical, mental, and emotional environments shape us into who we are, how we live our life, and what things we focus on. I hope you will find these ideas encouraging and helpful in simplifying your life so you can live your life fully, vibrantly, and effectively.