How to Stop Complaining about the Clutter (and Take Action)

While complaining about the clutter can feel good in the moment, it can cause stress that makes it difficult to declutter and make decisions about your stuff.

Sometimes, complaining about the clutter in your home feels good because others commiserate with you. Other times, those complaints feel useful because you’re identifying problems. But did you know that chronic complaining can leave you feeling so stressed that you’ll be unable to make decisions about your stuff? Here’s how to flip your attitude and declutter.

Why We Complain

Whether we’re complaining about our clutter, a slow line at the post office, or someone else’s behavior, there can be a few reasons behind our complaints –

• We want to vent our frustrations so we can release negative emotions and then feel better.

• We hope to garner physical or emotional support from others.

• We hope to gain the sympathy of others, validating that our complaints are justified.

• We want to avoid taking responsibility for our actions by complaining about the outside forces that “caused” us to act in a less than desirable way.

• We feel like part of a community by sharing grievances.

• We're stuck. We’ve made the same complaint often enough that we’ve rewired our brain to follow this negative path whenever we think of this topic.

Complaining can feel good … until it doesn’t. When it comes to decluttering, complaining about the piles can feel useful … you’re identifying problems, and you may even feel like you’re motivating yourself to take action about what’s bothering you.

But, ultimately, complaining draws on your energy, making it more difficult to declutter.

How Complaining about the Clutter Gets in the Way of Decluttering

You might not be aware of the self-destructive habit that’s acting as a barrier to decluttering your home. It’s one that kicks in the fight, flight, or freeze area of your brain (amygdala) while taking the thinking and planning part of your brain (prefrontal cortex) offline.

The result? You struggle to regulate your emotions which makes it more difficult to think clearly.

When you complain, you’re telling your brain that there’s a problem in your environment and your brain goes on alert so it can keep you safe. It wants your body ready to react (and get you to safety). It doesn’t need you to plan your actions until the threat is gone.

Unfortunately, the threat isn’t coming from a saber-toothed tiger. It comes from your own inescapable thoughts.

Break the Habit of Complaining

The consistent complaints you have about your home – why can’t I find what I’m looking for, why is this here, what if I get rid of this and I need it someday, why can’t I decide what to do – can wear on you.

Ever feel exhausted before you even start to declutter? The critical thoughts you’ve been having kicked you into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

How to get out of this habitual thought pattern? Imagine that a friend is talking about these same complaints. What advice would you give to them? (I know, how frustrating is it that we can more easily be compassionate to others than ourselves?)

• Can they (you) reframe the thought? (“If I get rid of something and later realize that I could use it, I could borrow or rent it, buy it, or just use something else that I have in the house.”)

• What could they change? (Maybe instead of trying to plan a weekend of decluttering you could clear clutter for 30 minutes each day for a month.)

• What could they let go of or accept? (My schedule is too busy right now for me to declutter. Next month, I’ll look at what I have to do and judge if I can make time then.)

How to Change a Complaint

The first thing you need to do may be the most difficult … catch yourself the moment you start to complain. Chances are you’re so used to running through the same list of complaints that you don’t even notice them because they are familiar.

To pay attention to your thoughts, create a prompt that has notice what you’re thinking. Since you’re focusing on your thoughts about your home, maybe you train yourself to stop and question what you’re thinking each time you enter a room. (You could attach a bright sticky note to the doorframe for a few days to cue this action.)

The next thing to do is to adjust your attitude. Flip your grievance to gratitude (since you can’t feel grateful and stressed at the same time). So, instead of looking into your closet and thinking, “Ugh, I’ve wasted so much money on clothing I never wear.” Consider, “I’m grateful that these items have helped me identify my personal style. I now know what I like to wear and what I don’t.”

Does expressing gratitude feel like a bit of a stretch? Change your complaint by saying something ridiculous. Going back to the closet example, maybe you change your thought from, “I’ve wasted so much money on clothing I never wear” to “On the bright side, I have so much clothing that I don’t have to worry about doing laundry … for two or three months.”

Finally, choose a gentle action that you can take by either handling the situation or deciding to let it go.

With the closet example, you could slowly begin the decluttering process by setting an empty box near your closet and any time you handle something you know you won’t, don’t, or can’t wear, you immediately put it in the box. Even if you can’t set aside a few hours to declutter, you can do this and consistently eliminate items from your closet.

Or maybe you let go of the complaint because you realize that even if you go through your clothing, hang it and put it in order by type of garment and color that you won’t maintain that level of organization … so why waste your time setting it up in the first place?

Shifting from What You Want to How You’ll Get It

To break free of the complaint cycle, you need to catch the complaint, change your attitude about it, and then take an action. Whatever outcome you want to achieve, you need to identify the clear and doable steps that you’ll take. How do you identify an effective action? It’s something that you can (usually) do right now.

If you can’t take immediate action, then you want to consider –

• What do I need to do first?

• Do I need to make the action smaller?

• Do I need more information about how to take action?

• Do I need to plan a time to do the step?

• Do I need something from another person? For example, information or their physical assistance?

Identifying a doable action puts you in control instead of feeling at the whim of emotions that rise when you complain about the clutter in your home. You’re active instead of passive.

Takeaways

Complaining can feel good in the moment. You vent frustrations, garner sympathy or support from others, feel like part of a group when discussing a shared complaint. Unfortunately, when complaining becomes a habit, your thinking can lean toward the negative.

To shift from passive complaining about the clutter to active decluttering, first catch yourself complaining. Next, shift your attitude from grievance to gratitude or stop the complaint by saying something ridiculous.

Finally, take action to resolve the source of your complaint or choose to let go of the complaint.

If you want to reduce the clutter and enjoy a more organized and functional home, ditch the complaints and the accompanying stress in favor of taking action.