Selling Your Family on Decluttering

Benefits of Decluttering

(Post Updated February 2020)

Last night I was reading the book “The One Minute Sales Person” by Spencer Johnson. It says the best way to sell anything is to help the person get what they want from the product, idea, or service.

So what does this have to do with decluttering and organizing? Actually plenty!  When it comes to decluttering, we not only have to “sell” ourselves on the idea, we also have to “sell” our family members on it.

We can work on keeping our own things cleaned up. However, if our spouses and/or children leave things laying around we’ll become frustrated and discouraged.  Begging them to help usually doesn’t work in the long run.

 

Selling the Benefits

We have to figure out how to convince them that decluttering and organizing helps everyone in the household. That is where the “selling” comes in. They need to know how they will benefit from getting rid of the old things and organizing what is left.

The specific benefits may different for each person but here are some basic benefits of decluttering and organizing that applies to all of us.

  1. Fewer things laying around (toys, electronics, etc.) makes it easier to find and put away the ones we really use and enjoy.
  2. Putting dirty clothes in the proper designated place makes it easier to keep the laundry up. That means they will have clean clothes when they need them.
  3. Putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher or washing them by hand instead of leaving them all around will allow you to use clean dishes instead of paper ones. That’s better for the environment and today’s children are learning to take pride in protecting the environment for their own future.
  4. Keeping track of how much money is spent on “things” and if they are “wants” or “needs” will help save money and keep the clutter from building up around the house. I call this conscious buying and it benefits everyone.

More Ideas to Help

I looked through some old blog posts and found ones that may help inspire you to find the benefits for you and your family.

Wants vs Needs
Mindfulness in the Home 

Things Can Be Freeloaders
Time To Get Off Autopilot

Mistakes As Clutter 

 

How do you “sell” yourself and/or your family members on the benefits of decluttering and organizing? Please let me know by leaving a comment so I can share these ideas with all my readers. Thanks.

 

To a lighter load along the way.
Janice Scissors


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