This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I make a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Disclosure here.
Have you heard about the Silent To-Do List? This minimalism concept is one that could be affecting you more than you think.
I used to open our garage door, and I could instantly feel my stress levels rising. I knew I would have to tackle it all one day, but I kept closing the door shut, putting it off for another day. This changed when I realised what an effect that garage clutter was having on my anxiety and my mental load.
That’s when I started getting rid of items here and there.
Boxing them up.
Selling some of them.
Taking others out for recycling.
And with each box or bin bag leaving that space, I could feel a bit of the weight being lifted, like I could breathe a bit easier.
Feel free to keep reading below or watch the video:
What is the Silent To-Do List?
It was a while into my decluttering journey that I read, in the book Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki, about the concept of the ‘Silent To-Do List’, and it all made sense to me.
The idea is that all of the things, all of the items that we have in our house, are constantly sending us messages.
It might be things like boxes that say ‘Recycle me,’ clothes thrown on the floor that say ‘Wash me,’ windows saying ‘Clean me,’ dust on the furniture saying ‘Give me a wipe,’ or pre-pregnancy clothes that hang in the bottom of your wardrobe that make you feel bad.
All of these messages—’Clean me,’ ‘Tidy me,’ ‘Organise me,’ ‘Return me,’ ‘Replace me,’ ‘Got this item for a hobby you said you would pick up but you haven’t used me’—can add onto our mental to-do list.
Yes, some can be positive messages, sent by items we love looking at and that bring us joy. But most of the time, especially if our homes are filled with clutter, we can get loads of these negative messages on a daily basis from all of these little items. This often happens without us consciously realising it.
This is why clutter can feel so stressful and why it can make you feel on edge.
This is also why decluttering can have such a positive effect and give you such a good feeling.
Through decluttering, you’re essentially just removing those items and reducing your mental load.
Did you ever notice, when you’re in a hotel room, that it all feels so nice and inviting? That’s because it’s a clean slate. There’s nothing for you to do in there. There’s no laundry, no dishes, no piles of stuff or paper or clutter that need you to address them.
Of course, it’s also the fact that you might stay at the hotel because you have time off work. But the space itself feels so inviting because it’s clear of all of those negative messages from the ‘Silent To-Do List’.
Many studies have been done on the topic of clutter and they showed that it can affect our stress and anxiety levels.
One study done on couples living in cluttered, stressful homes found, interestingly enough, that the women in the family had higher cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone.
So it turns out that women are affected by the clutter a lot more than their partners. This explains why sometimes you feel like you’re the only one who’s noticing all the clutter and all the stuff in your house, whereas your partner or your family might be less bothered by it.
Clutter is affecting us a lot more than we realise.
I remember being pregnant, over a year ago, walking into the kitchen, opening my mug cupboard, and having a bunch of water bottles fall out of the cupboard. Then I would sift through the mugs I disliked because I wanted to find one that I actually enjoyed using.
I would then walk in the hallway that was often filled with stuff on the floor. In the living room, I would stumble on toys on the floor.
All these little things kept adding to my stress levels throughout the day. I noticed that I had less patience. I sometimes couldn’t focus well on working on my laptop if my environment was cluttered.
Clutter was affecting me way more than I had realised.
And of course, having children and a young family means there is going to be mess around. It’s impossible to have the house always tidy. This is not even the goal here.
The goal is to have an easy-to-tidy home. One that is easy to manage, so that when we do want to tidy it, and we do want a clear space, it doesn’t take us hours to achieve that. For me, this job usually takes 10-15 minutes now.
Let’s do a fun experiment together right now. As you’re reading this, look around the room you’re in and find three items that are sending you messages like ‘clean me,’ ‘organise me,’ ‘recycle me,’ or ‘return me.’ Spot those items that are whispering tasks to you and comment them down below. I would love to hear from you.
When I started paying attention to the whispers and the ‘Silent To-Do List’, I could see the parcels that needed to be taken to the post office, the clothes that needed to be donated, the birthday invites that needed to be answered, the jeans from before getting pregnant that I couldn’t fit into…
All of these items were constantly sending me messages and often making me feel bad about myself and my body, and about the fact that I couldn’t keep on top of all of these things.
So how can we feel less stressed by the Silent To-Do List?
We can simply start by decluttering them. And it doesn’t have to be this massive undertaking.
I started by doing small 15-minute declutters at a time.
I would do bigger ones when I had the chance, but for the most part, I would work on little piles here and there. I would tackle the cutlery drawer, my jeans or t-shirts, or the kids’ pyjamas. Just small things now and then.
Within a year or so, my home was completely transformed.
If you are postpartum and you have pre-pregnancy items that you want to keep in case you fit into them one day, you can choose to declutter them. You can acknowledge that probably if you do get back to that pre-pregnancy body, you will likely want to buy other items.
We do often want to reward ourselves when we reach a goal or a change that we’ve been working towards.
Or you can keep them. In this case, it might be better to keep them in a storage bin somewhere, not in your daily wardrobe. If you were to see them every day, you’d get those negative messages, making you feel bad about your body. So store them away.
The 2 Minute Rule
Another thing I found really helpful is the 2-minute rule.
If there is a task that you see and it takes less than 2 minutes to do, just do it right then and there. That can be replying to a birthday invite, putting something in the recycling, or putting a cutting board away. Any little thing that takes very little time to complete.
Practising this, I found that the more I do this, the less overwhelmed I feel because there are not a million little tasks around my home to do every single day, all day long.
Keep in mind that the goal of this is not to reduce our to-do list to zero. That’s going to be impossible, especially if you have young children.
The goal is to have a calmer space. Then, when you look around your house, you might see three or five things that you have to do or tackle soon. It’s not going to be hundreds of items requiring your attention, sending you negative messages, and making you feel bad about yourself and your house.
The goal is to move away from that and get more of a calm feeling.
If you need some extra help with this, I have a freebie for you. It’s my
Declutter Checklist. There have been over 33,000 people who have downloaded it, and so many people have messaged me to say how helpful it has been to them.
Honestly, decluttering has changed my life. It has made me a calmer person, it has made me a less overstimulated person and a more present mom. It has made me slow down my shopping, and my life, and it has made me appreciate what I have a lot more. And I do have this sneaky feeling that it might just do the same for you.
True, we will always have stuff to do. But the less that we have on our ‘Silent To-Do List’ and in our visual clutter space, the more we can relax and enjoy the things that matter most to us.
I do hope this was helpful, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
RELATED:
Leave a Reply