111 - Why Daily Decluttering and Habits Fail And What To Do Instead.

In this episode, Heather explores why the idea of daily decluttering sounds great in theory but often falls apart in real life, especially for neurodivergent people. Many of her clients believe that doing a bit every day is the only way to make progress, and they put huge pressure on themselves to stick to it. Heather shares two client scenarios from this week that show exactly why that approach fails and how small changes created much more ease and momentum.

She also explains the difference between energy giving tasks and energy draining tasks, and how this shifts depending on what else is happening in someone’s life and how well their brain is functioning that day. Understanding this makes a massive difference to how sustainable decluttering becomes.

This episode is especially helpful for anyone who has ever started strong on a daily habit, missed one day, and then felt unable to start again. Heather offers a kinder and far more realistic approach that works with a neurodivergent rhythm rather than against it.

In this episode, Heather talks about
• Why daily decluttering routines collapse for neurodivergent brains
• How daily pressure creates burnout, boredom and guilt
• Two real client stories that show the power of flexible consistency
• Why energy levels affect what feels possible from one day to the next
• How to build a weekly rhythm that adapts to life instead of demanding perfection
• A gentler way to make steady progress without forcing daily habits

00:00
The Pressure of Consistency in Decluttering

06:05
Flexibility Over Rigidity in Decluttering Practices

11:16
Finding Balance: Energy and Motivation in Decluttering

Transcript

Heather Tingle (00:01.646)
Hello Untanglers and welcome back to another episode of Declustering Untangled with me, your host Heather Tingle. So today I want to talk about something that has popped up twice this week with two different clients. And when something comes up more than once, I always think, okay, this is clearly a thing for more people than just these clients. And that thing is consistency or rather the pressure to be consistent in a way that does not fit with real life.

and our real brains. So I need to probably explain this a little bit better than what I'm doing. But it seems to be that the general advice is when you're decluttering is to get into a habit with it, to do it every day. It just doesn't work. So let me explain what happened this week with each client. So client one came to me, determined that she was going to move forward with her decluttering, know, get stuff sorted.

make real big progress, making change and momentum and because the whole world says to tell us that the only way to move forward is to do something every day she thought I know what I'm going to do I'm going to decutter every day for an hour seven days a week and then she thought about it a little bit more and realized that actually seven days a week wasn't doable I'm going to give myself some grace I'm going to do five days a week so that was in her head when she came to me. The thing is

She kind of thought that was the way to make progress, know, like little and often, an hour was a lot. So then she ended up going down to 30 minutes. But in my head, my brain straight away went to 30 minutes every single day for five days a week. That becomes a chore. That is hard work. That is not going to happen because the message we get over and over again is, know, do a little bit every day, do 50 minutes, do an hour, chip away daily at it and it, know, chip away daily at it and it will add up.

Yeah, technically, of course it adds up. But what they don't mention is what happens when you get to day 12 and you're absolutely knackered, you're wiped out, you're poorly, you're tired, you're bored of decluttering now and your brain is screaming for something different. So day 13 doesn't happen and then day 14 doesn't happen. And before you know it, the whole thing's fallen apart. So a bit like when I did diaries as a kid. So I daily diary. And it only worked when I took the pressure off that I didn't have to do every day because what happened at beginning was...

Heather Tingle (02:28.096)
yeah, was great for the first week writing in my diary, know, dear diary, thinking I was Adrian Mole. If you're a person of a certain age, you will recognise that reference, apologies if you don't. So the first week, yeah, great. Writing in my dear diary, this is, you know, this is who I fancied this week, this is what happened with my teacher, this is the argument I with my mum, all that stuff, brilliant. But then, one night, I forgot about it, forgot to write in it, and then because that streak had ended, that was it. Diary over, finished, done.

I failed at it, I'm never going to do it again because I've now got a bit missing. And that's what happens with the daily decluttering rules. They rely on perfection, perfection never last, and they rely on that level of consistency to a commitment that is impossible to sustain in all honesty. If you've got an ADHD brain, you have got no chance whatsoever.

Now my autistic brain thinks, wonderful, I could maybe do it like for a set length of time. And yeah, I love that routine. But my ADHD brain goes straight into, I am bored now, this is a chore, I'm not going to carry on with this. So that's a client. After she realised that an hour was too much, changing it to 30 minutes, that could work Monday to Friday, and then she came to me.

I like, this is not going to actually happen because we chatted it through and I explained that that probably was not going to work very well. Yes, it might work for a week, it might work for two weeks, but then after that, it's probably going to fizzle out. You're going to get very bored. You're going to get very stressed by it and it becomes a commitment and a chore rather than a great thing to do for yourself. And it doesn't work with your energy. And it's not because she's doing anything wrong, not because...

If you lock something to specific days, you remove that flexibility. And if there's one thing decluttering needs, especially if you're neurodivergent, it's flexibility. So instead we changed it to aim to commit, aim to commit, not actually definitely commit, because if you're to really aim for something that feels like a positive, if you're committing to something, that just...

Heather Tingle (04:48.418)
feels like you've bricked it. That feels like a prison to me. Maybe it's my PDA part of my brain going, absolutely not going to do it because you're going to make me do it. But I think we changed it. We changed it to five 30 minute sessions across the week because that wasn't then pinned to days. So it's not pinned to times, just five 30 minute sessions whenever she has the capacity or the spark to do it. So if it feels good one day, she could do two sessions. She could do a whole hour.

You might do three, get three sessions out of the way, brilliant. If she feels rubbish another day, she doesn't have to do any, it is okay. And it all still counts. You're moving forward and you can kind of see that relief because it was like, ah, yeah, I can, I can commit to that. I'm not saying the other word commit again, but you know, I can do this because it no longer felt like a chore. It no longer felt like a commitment she was going to fail at. And then it felt doable. And that is what you want. We want you decluttering efforts.

We don't want them to collapse because you've had an off day, because your energy's low, because you've used all your spoons on something, because you're poorly, because life happened, because you had sudden commitment that came out of the blue. You don't want to get derailed by that stuff. You've got to work with it. So having that flexibility is so important. So we're not doing the childhood diarist resolution again. The whole point is to keep going in a way that works for your life, not one that crushes it or feels bad really.

And then they had another client today and she was the reason why I decided to do this was because she said, right, I'm going to do 15 minutes a day. And again, it was coming from this pressure to be consistent in the way we've been told, be consistent. You know, that's how it should look. And when we looked at a week and her energy and everything else she's got going on, actually that rule was not going to work. It was going to trip her up. It was setting her up to fail in all honesty. So we said, okay, try doing three 15 minute sessions a week instead.

which was much more doable and much kinder. But I also asked, what's the motivation to do the decuttering? So I well, there isn't any, because there's nothing. We're at the point now where, and this happens with a lot of clients, you get to the point now where you've fought the fires. So nothing is a total disaster anymore. And trust me, if you're not at this point yet, you will get to it and be ready for this when it happens.

Heather Tingle (07:13.038)
So congratulations if you're now at this point where all the stuff that was massively, massively impacting daily life had been sorted. So you might get to 90 % of your clothes. You don't really want to do that extra 10 % because most of it's done. It's a bit easier in the morning. You're not fighting with the floor drove anymore. Then you've got no motivation to do it. So we looked at what else she got going on in her life and what made it work for her.

was building in that dopamine hit. So she's got really exciting things happening that she wants to do. So we paired a task. So 15 minutes of decluttering and the 15 minutes of the fun thing that she wanted to do. Now this again, it's a short term thing. It probably won't last with this because your brain will go, why don't I just do the fun thing and not have to do the boring decluttering thing? But hopefully by doing the stuff as a reward, the 15 minutes decluttering feels doable.

It's only three times a week. You can choose what days you want to do. You could do it all in one day. You could do it across three different days. Totally fine. it's flexible again. But that pairing of do the things that you've got to do and then pair it with something that you want to do afterwards, because it's a short amount of time, it felt like it was doable. If it was going to be like an hour of deep cluttering and then an hour of the fun stuff.

the hour of decluttering was never going to happen. You were just going to feel bad for an hour and then doing the fun stuff and then feel bad about it. So we did it in really short 15 minute bursts that feel good and looked at very specific things. So she got the plan ready to go. So there was no having to think about it first. We've got that plan ready to go. And that is really important because we looked at what tasks would feel good and tried to have a really good mix of

fun, easy win decluttering and slightly harder decluttering just like one of those three sessions in the week. Because it's got to feel good because another important thing to let you know is not all decluttering feels the same, not all tasks feel the same. So some types of decluttering will give you energy, they feel satisfying, you feel energized by the end of it, you feel clear, right? It feels good. And there is some that will absolutely drain you and it's just something you've just got to get through.

Heather Tingle (09:33.678)
So what gives you energy or drains your energy or change? And that depends on the type of decluttering and how your brain works and what is fun for you, what makes you feel satisfied when you get something done. And it also may depend on what else you've got going on in your life right now and how well your brain is braining that day. for me, when I'm working on myself or my own decluttering, clothing was great. It felt really good and energetic. It felt fabulous. Paperwork.

because soul destroying and it took me forever to do. But there are only certain parts of that paperwork that was soul destroying that took ages and felt like it was never going to get through. There were some in that which was actually quite easy wins and felt really good doing because it was a lot of, that can go, yeah, that can go, yeah, that can go. And there was other stuff that was harder that I'd really got to think about. So within the type of task, that also will change how your energy is as well.

So try not to lock yourself into that. I'm gonna be consistent with this and do it every single day. Because if you wake up already exhausted from life, that 30 minute wardrobe session is absolutely gonna flatter you and you're just gonna get annoyed that none of your jeans fit. Everything makes you look fat or you hate it or you look skinny or it don't go with anything. It's going to make you feel rubbish. Don't want that. But a five minute tidy of a draw might actually feel soothing. All the way around, it might change. And that is.

totally normal, you just got to work with it. So all this comes back to one point. Consistency that is flexible, consistency that can bend, consistency that supports you instead of becoming another chore that you're going to fail at. Daily habits can absolutely work for some people. Don't know many of them, if I'm honest. But for a lot of us, especially if you're neurodivergent, daily habits become chores and commitments and they become prisons.

that we just want to break out of and never look back. So if something starts to feel like a chore, your brain is out, it is gone. No amount of forcing is going to bring it back. So we look at it differently. A weekly total or a monthly total or a project total, not a daily consistent demand because tasks need to match your energy, not a task that they take it. And a lot of permission for life to happen without everything falling apart because at the minute you...

Heather Tingle (11:56.716)
We're getting to the Christmas season, busy season. It is okay if you're decluttering efforts or less, especially when there is lots of bugs going about like cold and flu and COVID and all that stuff. So, you know, be kind to yourself. You know, I really do think that hopefully has given you permission to think about things a little differently. So until next time, remember you're not alone. Be kind to yourself and keep on telling.