Is decluttering a part of your commitment to keep healthy habits? If not, then Gretchen Rubin might convince you to make it so. The New York Times bestselling author on habits and happiness claims that decluttering is foundational as far as building healthy habits is concerned.
Why? Because decluttering gives us the willpower we need to keep choosing our healthy habits.
Though it might seem counterintuitive to use our limited willpower on decluttering, our decluttered spaces can actually provide us with more decision-making energy to spend on establishing new habits.
Decluttering our possessions effectively decreases the number of decisions we have to make in a day. Therefore, by decluttering, we can regain the energy we lose from making the simplest of daily decisions. And that decision-making energy is invaluable since the decisions we need to make in a given day can stack up fast—not the least of which is the decision to stick to our healthy habits everyday.
When we declutter our offices, we no longer have to choose from the forty pens we have stashed away in a drawer. When we declutter our closets, we don’t need to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to wear that one shirt we have yet to realize that we don’t even like. When we declutter our pantries, we can make healthier options easier to choose.
So save yourself from the unspoken perils of decision fatigue. Shed the unimportant things that demand your most precious resources, so you can finally make room for the habits that can actually transform your life.
