I’ve trained for marathons, triathlons, 10Ks, a 13.5-hour challenge, Ubanathlons, and more. But my favorite fitness program isn’t one where you train for a major event.

It’s where you get fit by a thousand little actions.

When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long.

I fold fitness into my life, like blueberries into batter, and it becomes a part of the recipe, not just a topping.

If you haven’t found a way to get fit, try the Thousand Cuts Fitness Program. There is nothing better for those who don’t have the time.

Here’s how it works:

1. Right now, do something that only takes 1 minute. It might be a few pushups, bodyweight squats, an attempt at a pullup, a few lunges. You have time to do 1 minute.

2. In an hour or so, go for a walk if you can. If you’re in decent shape, make it a fast walk. Add some hills for challenges. If you’re not in good shape, just walk. Later, add some spurts of fast walking.

3. Later in the day, do a few more 1 minute activities.

4. Gradually build the 1 minute activities into 2 or 3 minutes. Then 4 or 5 of them. Add more of them throughout your day.

5. As much as you can, turn the activities into play. Throw your kids around. Run through a park and climb trees and benches. Race people. Play a sport.

6. Get a pullup bar for your home. Every time you walk by it, try to pull yourself up. If you can do pullups, do a few, or 10, every time you pass the bar.

7. Get a kettlebell. Swing it a few times a day.

8. Run places. Walk places quickly.

Always be active. It’s not hard, if you do it in tiny bits. You can’t say no to 1 minute, or even just a few seconds. And if you do a thousand of them, you’ll be fit.

Fitness is a part of my life now, but it wasn’t when I started. I did it in little bits, without designating a certain time as “workout time”. My whole life is workout time.

I used to have a lot of bad habits. I still do, but I used to have a lot more. Here’s just a small sampling:

1. I woke up late and went to bed early.
2. I procrastinated on my most important work.
3. I neglected my relationships.
4. I drank too much.
5. I bit my fingernails.
6. I slouched a lot.
7. I picked my nose (no joke).
8. I bought worthless things I didn’t need.
9. I chewed with my mouth open.
10. I dressed like a slob.
11. I ate tons of junk food.

I could go on, but none of that’s incredibly important. What’s important is that I used to have a lot of bad habits, and now I have fewer.

I spent years dissatisfied with my habits and never made much progress changing them. Yes, sometimes I’d make a small step forward, but it usually wasn’t long until I was back to “Old Tyler” again (thanks, procrastination habit).

I’m fortunate to have learned recently that it doesn’t have to be this way.

I always thought I could change things myself — I’m a die-hard do-it-yourselfer — so I never gave a second thought to any other way.

The thing that helped me finally knock out that eleven point list (plus a few other habits I’m too embarrassed to mention here), took a real leap of faith; I let someone help me.

It started as a practical matter. I decided to try vegetarianism and recruited my girlfriend to try it with me so we could eat together. That lasted more than a year before consciously changing diets. We did the same thing to stop biting our nails.

For the very first time, I was developing habits that I created on purpose. It felt great — like I was really in control of my life after years of spinning my wheels.

How could I keep this going?

At the time, I was so fiercely independent that I hardly realized what had contributed to the success. It took a few more heart-crushing failures with other goals before finally getting the picture.

Late in 2010, a friend mentioned he wanted to wake up earlier to get more work done in the morning. I remembered how much I enjoyed waking up early when I actually did it, so I agreed to a six o’clock meeting and accountability report every morning. Almost one year later, we’re still going strong.

It’s pretty amazing what a little accountability can do for your motivation.

Since then, I’ve wised up and started recruiting partners to help me with all of my big goals:

• A small mastermind group that I work on business goals with
• A few local friends to help get my shy ass out of the house once in awhile
• And almost 5,000 companions to keep me on track with some of my biggest life goals.

The difference is incredible.

The secret is that, for some of us, successful habit change is a two-headed beast — not something to be tackled alone. If you’ve struggled with habit change yourself, recruit some help.

But who do you ask? And how do you find the right partners in crime? Unfortunately, not just anyone is a good fit. Picking the right person that will compliment you is just as important as picking someone at all.

Fair warning: Friends and relatives do not always make the best accountability partners.

Through plenty of trial and error, I’ve found a few characteristics that I look for in someone I’m about to partner with to make an important life change. Perhaps they’ll help you find a good fit, too.

• They’re a little ahead of you, but not too far ahead. In a good accountability partnership, one person is usually at least a little bit further beyond the other. Though you’re both helping each other, one person stands out as the more likely mentor. Otherwise, it’s the blind leading the blind. And you don’t want your partner to be too far ahead of you, or the relationship is unbalanced and feels awkward.
• They’re a little bit competitive. You probably don’t want someone who’s looking to stick it to you every chance they get, but you’ll get a lot further a lot faster if your accountability partner isn’t satisfied with self defeat and is willing to actually hold you accountable.
• They have similar goals to you. You don’t have to be working on the exact same thing to work well with a partner — it can be great to work together on separate projects — but there should be an obvious overlap of your big goals. There needs to be something that ties you two together beyond just “wanting to change something.”
• They’re focused. If you agree to meet for 10 minutes each day, but never seem to get anywhere because your meetings are unfocused, first look at yourself. Are you dragging things off course on a regular basis? If not, then it’s probably time to find a more focused partner.
• They’re supportive when you need it.  This goes back to competitiveness. You want your partner to push you and hold you accountable — that’s what they’re there for — but a good one also has your best interest at heart and knows when you need a little lift instead of a scolding.
• They show commitment. The truth is that you can usually tell if a partnership like this is going to work within a week. If your accountability partner can’t even get it together at the very beginning when excitement is running high, that’s a pretty good indication they’re not committed to change. Best to get out. This doesn’t make them a bad person, but it probably makes them a bad partner for now.

If you’ve ever struggled with making an important habit change in your life, then I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and ask for help. If you’re like me, it could turn everything around.

What do you want to change? Who can help?

Tyler Tervooren writes for a team of highly skilled risk takers helping each other do meaningful things in their lives at Advanced Riskology. Follow him on Google+.

It’s something I should have created a long time ago: the Zen Habits Premium Membership, and a mini-course that’s included with it called Create the Habit of Meditation.

The membership is a monthly subscription of $19.99, but really it’s a commitment to changing your life, and the tools needed to do that.

If you’ve been looking to simplify, get healthy & fit, become more effective, do work you’re passionate about, eliminate debt, find contentment, declutter, create new habits … this new program is meant to show you how to do that.

I’ll be sharing the simple methods that have worked for me in hundreds of my experiments, have helped thousands in classes I’ve taught, and have been perfected through trial and error.

While the regular articles on Zen Habits will always be free, with this membership you’ll have bonus articles and videos, along with contributions and interviews from guest experts, live monthly webinars where you can ask questions, regular mini-courses on these topics, the ability to submit questions that I’ll answer in articles/videos, and more.

The membership is $19.99 a month, and for this first month, includes the Create the Habit of Meditation Mini-Course (more below).

The first round of registration for the Premium Membership is now closed, and will be closed for the rest of February.

Read more about the Zen Habits Premium Membership.

We are often afraid of silence, because its emptiness feels idle, boring, unproductive, and scary. And so we fill our lives with chaos, noise, clutter.

But silence can be lovely, and therapeutic, and powerful.

It can be the remedy for our stress and the habits that crush us.

If we want quiet in our lives, how do we create it?

I’ve been exploring this myself. As a father of six kids, I have to admit that I don’t always have silence in my life. That’s not a complaint — I love the messy noise that my family brings — but silence can be a welcome refuge from that noise at times.

I create silence by subtracting, and not filling the resulting emptiness withe noise or clutter.

And so my life is a constant experimentation with subtracting. When I’ve subtracted, and learn to love the empty silence, I subtract some more. Subtraction is a beautiful process.

Prefer subtraction over addition.

Learn to be content with little, or nothing.

Realize that silence is beautiful.

Find yourself in the empty space that results.

Empty a room, and put almost nothing back except that which produces quiet.

Speak less, listen more, contemplate even more.

Walk in silence. Watch the leaves quiver, fall in silence, whisper in the wind.

Sit and do nothing. Listen to your mind make noise in the silence, allow it to subside.

Eschew video, iPods, books, the Internet, mobile devices, social networks, and other purveyors of noise.

Be quiet, so that life may speak.

‘Don’t panic.’ ~Douglas Adams

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Why is it that we cannot break the bad habits that stand in our way, crushing our desires to live a healthy life, be fit, simplify, be happier?

How is it that our best intentions are nearly always beaten? We want to be focused and productive, exercise and eat healthy foods, stop smoking and learn to get rid of debt and clutter, but we just can’t.

The answer lies in something extremely simple, but something most people aren’t aware of:

We don’t know how to cope with stress and boredom in a healthy way.

The bad habits we’ve formed are often useful to us, in dealing with stress and boredom. Consider the bad habits that fit this bill:

• Smoking
• Internet procrastination
• Eating junk food
• Drinking
• Being rude/angry/depressed
• Watching TV or playing video games (if you become addicted & sedentary)
• Shopping (getting into debt, building clutter)
• Procrastinating on finances, paperwork, clutter (too stressful)
• Inactivity (avoiding exercise is a stress avoidance technique)
• Biting nails, chewing hair, clenching jaw

This isn’t a complete list, but all of these habits fill a strong need: they are ways to cope with stress and/or boredom. We have formed them as coping mechanisms, and they stick around because we don’t have better ways of coping.

So what if instead, we replaced them with healthier ways of coping? We’d get rid of the problems of these bad habits, and start getting the benefits of better habits.

Better Coping Habits

How can we deal with stress and boredom instead? There’s no one answer, but the habits we form should be ones that lead to healthier results. Some ideas:

• Walk/run/swim/bike
• Do pushups, pullups, squats
• Yoga/meditation
• Play with friends/kids
• Create, write, play music, read when we’re bored
• Learn to enjoy being alone, instead of being bored
• Take a daily walk and enjoy nature
• Deal with finances, clutter, paperwork immediately, in small steps, so that it doesn’t get stressful
• Take control of a situation: make a list, get started in baby steps, so things don’t get stressful
• Learn to be mindful of your breathing, body tension, stressed-out thoughts
• Get some rest
• Learn to savor healthy food that you find delicious
• Slow down
• Take a hot bath
• Learn to live in the present

These are some good examples. Each habit above will help cope with or prevent stress or boredom. If you replace the bad habits with these, your life will be less stressful and healthier. You’ll have less debt, less clutter, less fat, less disease.

Changing the Habits

The old habits of coping didn’t build up overnight, and they won’t go away overnight either. We built them up through years of repetition, and the only way to change them is also years of repetition.

But an important start is to realize why we do them — stress and boredom, largely — and realize that there are other ways to deal with these two problems. We need to be aware when stress and boredom start to kick in, and instead of being afraid of them, realize that they are problems easily solved by other habits. Let’s take the fear out of stress and boredom. Let’s learn that we can beat them simply, and prove that with repeated good habits.

Once you have that realization, follow the usual Zen Habits steps to changing a habit:

1. Pick one habit at a time.
2. Start very small – just a minute or two, if you want it to stick.
3. Use social motivation like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email.
4. Be very conscious of your triggers, and do the habit consciously every time the trigger happens.
5. Enjoy the new habit. You’ll stick with it longer if you do.

We have been crushed by the habits we’ve formed out of fear of stress and boredom. We can fight back, by learning to breathe, to smile, to go slowly. We can humble these giants that crush us by turning them into mere gnats to be shooed away with a smile.

‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ ~Blaise Pascal

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Think about some of the problems of our daily lives, and how many of them would be eased if we could learn to sit alone, in a quiet empty room, with contentment.

If you’re content to sit alone quietly, you don’t need to eat junk food, to shop on impulse, to buy the latest gadget, to be on social media to see what everyone else is talking about or doing, to compare yourself to others, to make more money to keep up with the Joneses, to achieve glory or power, to conquer other lands or wage war, to be rude or violent to others, to be selfish or greedy, to be constantly busy or productive.

You are content, and need nothing else. It solves a lot of problems.

Can you sit alone in an empty room? Can you enjoy the joy of quiet?

Most of us have trouble sitting alone, quietly, doing nothing. We have the need to do something, to check our inboxes and social media, to be productive. Sitting still can be difficult if you haven’t cultivated the habit.

I’ve been learning. In the morning, as my coffee is brewing, I sit. Even for a few minutes, at first, it is instructive. You learn to listen to your thoughts, to be aware of your urges to do something else, to plan and set goals. You learn to watch yourself, but to just sit still and not act on those urges. You learn to be content with stillness.

You learn to savor the quiet. It’s something most of us don’t have, quiet, and it takes some getting used to. When we’re driving our cars or out exercising or eating or working, we have music playing or we talk with people or we have the television on. Quiet can be amazing, though, because it helps us calm down, contemplate, slow down to savor the emptiness.

An empty room, too, is a luxury. I try to empty my room of clutter, so that it’s fairly bare. That leaves only me, and the room is a blank slate ready to be filled with me, my creativity, my silence. I love a spartan room.

Being alone is another pleasure we too often neglect. When we are alone, we go on the Internet or TV to see what else is going on, what others are doing or saying, instead of just being alone. This isolation is a necessary thing, that allows us to find ourselves, to learn to be content with little instead of always wanting more.

Can you practice being alone, being still, being quiet? Just a little at first, then perhaps a bit more. Listen, watch, learn about yourself. Find contentment. Need nothing more.

‘Everything is practice.’ ~Pele

Post written by Leo Babauta.

When we learn a martial art, or ballet, or gymnastics, or soccer … we consciously practice movements in a deliberate way, repeatedly. By conscious, repeated practice, we become good at those movements.

Our entire lives are like this, but we’re often less conscious of the practice.

Each day, we repeat movements, thought patterns, ways of interacting with others … and in this repeated practice, we are becoming (or have already become) good at these things. If you constantly check Facebook or Twitter, that is practice, and you are forming that habit, though it’s usually not with too much awareness.

When you smoke, or eat junk food, or speak rudely to others, or put yourself down internally, this is something you are practicing to be good at. You may already be good at these things.

What if, instead, we practiced consciously, deliberately, and became good at the things we really want to be good at?

What if you first, above all skills, learned to be more aware of what you are practicing? What if constant conscious action is the skill you became good at?

If you could learn to take conscious action, you could learn to practice other things you want to be good at, rather than the ones you don’t.

What Are You Practicing?

Ask yourself these things throughout the day, to practice conscious action:

• Do I want to practice rushing through my morning, or can I wake a little earlier and simplify my morning routine so that I practice a slow, enjoyable morning ritual?
• Do I want to practice checking my inboxes when I first get to my computer, or can I do something better?
• Do I want to practice leaving dirty dishes out, or can I practice washing my bowl when I’m done with it?
• Do I want to practice leaving clothes strewn about, or papers lying on the counter, or can I take a few seconds to put them where they belong?
• Do I want to speak angrily to my kids or spouse, or can I speak to them with kindness and compassion?
• Do I want to practice complaining and self-pity, or can I practice gratitude?
• Do I want to practice rushing and being busy, or can I practice simplifying and going slowly?
• Do I want to practice eating fried foods, sugary foods, salty junk food snacks, fast foods … or can I practice eating whole foods, vegetables and fruits, nuts and beans and seeds?
• Do I want to practice surfing time-wasting sites, or can I practice clearing away distractions and creating?
• Do I want to practice watching mindless entertainment, or can I practice moving my body and exerting myself in activity?
• Do I want to practice smoking, or can I learn a healthier way to deal with stress?
• Do I want to practice shopping, or can I practice giving?

These are only examples … your life will show you what you’ve been practicing, and you can decide what you might rather practice instead. Or you might be completely happy with what you’ve been practicing.

Some ideas for creative practice from Ali Edwards.

How to Practice

The first step is always awareness. When you are conscious of what you are doing, you can decide whether this is an action or thought pattern you want to practice, or if there’s an alternative you’d rather be good at.

As you go through your day, practice this awareness. It’s the first skill, and it’s the most important one. Be aware, without feeling guilty or angry at yourself, of what you’re doing and thinking. You will forget to to this, but remind yourself. You might wear a rubber band around your wrist, or carry a talisman, or make tally marks on a slip of paper each time you remember.

As you get good at conscious action, start to practice those actions and thought patterns you want to be good at. Start to notice the ones you’d really rather not be good at, and see if you can deliberately practice other actions and thought patterns.

As you consciously, deliberately repeat these things, you’ll get better at them. It takes a lot of repetition to get good at a skill, but you’ve got time.

Important Conclusions

You won’t be able to change all your habits at once, and I’m not implying that you should try. The habit you’re really changing is consciousness, and practice. Other habits will be difficult to change, especially if you’re trying to change all of them, but it’s OK if you mess up. Give yourself permission to make mistakes without guilt, and instead just deliberately practice again, and again.

If something is too hard, and you can’t get it right no matter how many times you practice, you can try it in smaller steps. If you can’t quit smoking, try not smoking once, and instead relieving stress through walking or doing some pushups or meditation or self-massage. If you can’t quit junk food, just replace one snack with a fruit, or add a tasty veggie to your dinner.

I’d like to emphasize that this isn’t about perfection. There is no perfect way of life, and you don’t need to strive to be perfect every moment of the day. I believe you’re already perfect. This is just about conscious action, which is a useful skill to have.

Remember that we become good at what we repeatedly do, and what we do repeatedly can be done consciously. It’s when we’re conscious that we are truly alive.

‘If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.’ ~Dalai Lama

—

The Power of Less, on Sale

As part of a New Year’s promotion by my publisher, Hyperion, my book The Power of Less is on sale for just $3.99 until Jan. 31, 2012.

This is actually a steal, and I highly recommend it.

Buy the book on sale on these sites:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Books
• Apple iTunes

Decluttering is a skill that you learn with practice, just like any skill. And just like other skills, there are many little questions and problems you need answered and solved as you get started.

Those of you taking the Clutterfat Challenge this month are facing these problems, and I’m here to help.

This post is a quickstart guide to decluttering — the most common questions answered. Also see last week’s Clutterfat Challenge post: How to Tackle Your Clutter.

1. Where do I start?
Start anywhere — really, where you start doesn’t matter, as long as you start. You’re going to get to all of it eventually, so pick a random spot to clear, and slowly expand from that spot. Start with a baby step — just one little space. Take just 5 minutes to clear a spot on a counter, and keep it clear. Clear a little more space later today. Tomorrow, clear a little more. It’s not difficult if you do it in small steps. Here are 18 5-minute decluttering tips to start conquering your mess.

2. How do I deal with the piles of mail and magazines? How do I handle paper cluttter?
Make a big pile of your mail and magazines. Now work through the pile very quickly. Take the top piece, and decide: can you toss it? If so, toss it in a recycling bin. If you need it, decide if it should be filed (and file it in a folder right now), or if it needs action — in which case, take action on it if you can do it in a couple minutes. Have an action folder to file things in if they need more than a couple minutes. Toss the magazines — you don’t need them. Work quickly through everything until you finished the pile. When you have more time, make another pile of paper clutter and work through it. Read more: 6 Simple Steps to Make Mail & Paperwork Painless.

3. What do I do if my family is the clutter problem?
Start with yourself. Lead by example. Declutter your personal space, and show how great it is. Start a positive discussion with them about why you’re decluttering, and ask if they want to join you. It’s a long process, educating people, but don’t ever force them or they’ll resist or be resentful. Read more.

4. I tend to keep things just in case I might need them again.
Make a list of your “just in case” stuff — or better yet, put them in a box — and see how often you actually need them in the next 6 months. If you didn’t need them, you can safely get rid of them. If you did, keep them. Read more: the just in case syndrome.

5. How do I deal with things that have a sentimental value, that bring back memories/feelings about a time you might not think about without a reminder.
Realize that your feelings, your love, your memories, are not in those objects. They are merely placeholders. You can easily keep those placeholders on your computer, or online. Some ideas:

• Create a digital photo album of your sentimental items.
• Keep pictures of your loved ones as your desktop picture or screensaver.
• Play photos in a slideshow for visitors, or for yourself.
• Create a digital scrapbook.
• Start a blog or a tumblelog with photos, notes, posts about the things you treasure most.

Read more: Letting Go of Sentimental Items and Getting unstuck from sentimental stuff.

6. I want to clean my clutter but sometimes I’m just too lazy to deal with it.
This is why we’ve created the Clutterfat Challenge — it’s motivation to finally get off your butt! But you can create other challenges: announce to your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter that you’re going to declutter for 10 minutes a day for a month. Or blog about your decluttering journey. Do it with others and make it fun. Make it a game with your family.

7. My biggest issue is getting rid of things that where given as a present by people I care about.
Free yourself of this guilt. Your loved ones gave you the gifts to make you happy, not to burden you for life, not to make you feel guilty. Allow yourself to be happy, and only keep things if they’re making you happy. Read more from Discardia and Miss Minimalist.

8. Where do I dispose of stuff?
I like giving things away to friends and family, charity, Craigslist and Freecycle. Read Miss Minimalist’s great list.

9. I don’t have time to keep things clean.
Create clean-as-you-go habits. These take seconds, and if you do them, you don’t need to do a lot of cleaning later. Read more: Develop clean house habits and 15 Clutter Busting Routines For Any Family.

10. Making time to declutter and follow through with disposal is tough.
It only takes 5-10 minutes a day — declutter one pile at a time, one flat surface at a time. Do it when you get home, and before you leave the house. Put things you’re going to donate into a box each day, and put that in your trunk. When you drive by a charity, drop it off. That takes 5 minutes.

Need more? Here are a few more articles:

• Keeping a stress-free, clean house
• 15 Great Decluttering Tips
• How to Declutter an Entire Room in One Go
• The Minimalist’s Guide to Fighting (and Beating) Clutter Entropy

Every January, people rush out and get a gym membership, set a list of goals or resolutions, and get ready to take on a new year of frenetic activity.

Unfortunately, we don’t often clear space to make room for all this new stuff.

The beginning of the year is a great time for renewal of energy and taking on the things we’ve always wanted to tackle — clutter, fitness, work we’re passionate about, debt, and so on. But it’s also a great time to clear out your life, starting out the year on a blank page that’s ready to be filled.

While everyone’s life is different, I’ll share some of what I do to clear out my life.

• Review the year to think about what I learned, what mistakes I made, what I accomplished.
• Clear my schedule as much as possible. That often means saying no to people.
• Wrap up old projects, end commitments to people, so that my work plate is clearer than normal.
• Toss out old fitness and eating plans, to make room for new experiments.
• Clear my email inbox. If I haven’t answered the email recently, it’s probably not important, so I archive it. Act on or answer other emails, so that my inbox is emptied.
• Clear out other inboxes. That might be an inbox on a social network, or a list of things I wanted to do or read, or any kind of list really. File them away under someday, or delete or archive. Anything that’s taking some mental energy because I know I need to get to it, gets cleared.
• Clear my computer files. Usually this means deleting a bunch of files I don’t need, but I also just consolidate files into one folder or put them in an online archive (like in Dropbox).
• Clear paperwork. I rarely have any papers these days — I’ve slowly turned everything digital. But I still get things in the mail sometimes, so if I have any lying around, I dispose of them to clear out any remaining paperwork.
• Clear clutter. If there are areas that have become cluttered, I clear them out. Often it just means taking a box or bag of things that I’ve been meaning to donate to Goodwill.
• Clear my errands. I’ll make a list of all the errands I’ve been putting off, and do them in one afternoon.
• Clear my finances. I’ll take a few minutes to review my checking and savings accounts, Paypal, investments, etc. and make sure everything is in order. If there are little things that need taking care of, I do them so that my mind is cleared.
• Clear pantry and refrigerator of junk. Old crap that’s been lying around. Junk food if there’s any there (I don’t usually have any anymore, but I used to). Left with just good whole ingredients for healthy foods.

This might take a couple days, working off and on in little bits. For some, it might take longer. But when you’re done, it’s amazing. Your mind is clear and refreshed. You feel like you’re ready to take on anything.

To be honest, I do these things regularly throughout the year, and it’s great to keep a clean slate most of the time. But the new year is always a perfect opportunity to clear everything at once.

So you’ve been putting off tackling your clutter for months, maybe even years. Papers pile up on a counter, shelves are crammed full of books and magazines and other things, closets are stuffed to the point of spillage, clothes pile up on the floor or furniture, boxes and furniture and other miscellaneous things cover your floor.

How do you even get started?

If you haven’t yet, start by signing up for the free Clutterfat Challenge, a 30-day challenge to reduce your clutter. I created the challenge, along with my friend Courtney Carver, to help motivate you to finally tackle the clutter.

But once you’ve decided to dive in, how do you get started?

There are two methods, both of which are great, and you can combine them. Let’s cover all three options.

By the way, last night I held a free Clutter Webinar, and a recording of that webinar is at the bottom of this post.

Also: Courtney has a post today on how to make decluttering fun. Read it!

The Surge

One of my favorite ways to tackle clutter is in a huge surge — set aside a weekend, for example, and take on as much as you can, one room at a time.

Clear your schedule for a day or two. Get some boxes and trash bags. Get excited.

Let’s say you start with your bedroom. Pick one area of the bedroom — one flat surface, such as a shelf, the top of your dresser, a drawer, the floor of your closet. Clear that flat surface, putting everything into a pile.

Then sort, making quick decisions. Take the top item from the pile — it doesn’t matter what it is, and no avoiding certain items. Just pick up the first item in the pile. Make a quick decision to place this item in one of three piles:

1. Keep pile — for stuff you’ve used in the last 6 months and absolutely need and love.
2. Donate pile — to donate to charity, give to family/friends, or recycle.
3. Maybe pile — try not to use this pile if you can avoid it, but it’s for ones you absolutely can’t decide on. Put these things into a box, with today’s date, then put it into storage. If you don’t need anything in that box for six months, you can confidently get rid of it.

When you’re done sorting, put the things in the keep pile back, neatly. Where you place them is now their “home” — you should always put them in that spot. Put the donate pile into a box to donate to charity, perhaps setting some items aside to give to friends. Recycle the items that aren’t good enough to be reused.

Now go through the next flat surface — drawer, shelf, space on the floor, etc. Do it one are at a time until the entire room is done. This could take hours, but it can be a lot of fun. When the room is done, you should feel great. Celebrate. Move on to another room if you still have time and energy — otherwise, plan another surge session.

Chunking

This is the baby steps approach, and it’s just as good. When I started Zen Habits, I had been reading a site called Fly Lady, who advocated starting with a clean sink. I did this: cleared the sink of dishes, scrubbed it until it shined. It was the epicenter of my clutter-free zone.

Then I spread the clutter-free zone, one chunk of space at a time, to the kitchen counters, dining table, kitchen floor, closet, cabinets. And so on, tackling one chunk at a time, maybe taking 10-15 minutes a day.

You can start anywhere, not just the kitchen sink. Your dining table is a good place to start, or a kitchen counter, or an area in your living room. It doesn’t matter — pick a spot, clear it. When you have time, clear another space near that clutter-free spot. Do your best to keep the clutter-free zone actually clutter-free as you expand.

Use the same pile-decision technique I described in the previous section — it works for chunking too.

In Combination

In reality, you don’t have to choose between the two methods above. You can surge and you can chunk in combo. Maybe you start with a surge this weekend, and then chunk during the week. Maybe you have a month filled with various surges and chunks. Whatever works for your schedule and energy level.

Do what it takes to get it done. And enjoy the process.

Clutter Webinar

Last night I held a free Clutter Webinar, where I talked about the benefits of a clutter-free life, why we build up clutter, how to tackle clutter, how to deal with some of the toughest clutter issues, and what to do *after* you’ve decluttered. I also answered clutter questions from readers.

Watch the video below (if you’re reading this in email, go to the post to watch the video):