5 Tips To Declutter Your Life For The New Year

The beginning of a new year is a great time to restore your outlook and set resolutions that help you stay productive, happy, and healthy. As time passes and we reach a point in our lives where our physical, mental, and financial wellbeing are a top priority, it is a good practice to create goals that can set us up for success beyond just a single year. Whether it is finding new ways to keep the kitchen clean, changing your spending habits, or starting a meditation routine, there are many ways to start “decluttering” aspects of our life for prolonged benefits.

Resolutions can often be hard to define and even harder to stick to. To help our ACEBSA members set realistic goals to declutter their living spaces, wallets, and headspaces in 2022, we’ve put together 5 tips on where to get started.

1. Consolidate Your Subscriptions

Subscription-based services are a common monthly or annual investment nowadays. Between Netflix, Amazon Prime, workout programs, and food kits, it is really easy to end up subscribed to more things than you actually need – or even remember that you have. Knowing how many active subscriptions you are paying for is important in calculating annual expenses and determining your financial goals.

Set aside time in the first few months of the year to review your monthly bank accounts and be honest with yourself about which subscriptions are still necessary. If you would prefer some automatic assistance, there are plenty of apps that can help consolidate your data for you such as Trim, Truebill, and Mint. Once you’ve decluttered the unneeded subscriptions from your expenses, you’ll have a clearer understanding of your monthly finances and be able to make more informed budgeting decisions moving forward.

2. Clean Out Your Closet and Donate

Cleaning out the closet is a classic New Years' resolution that all too often keeps getting postponed. Whether it's procrastination or indecisiveness around which items you are willing to let go of, it's a goal that is worth completing. Getting your clothes organized and consolidated can not only save you time and money but also put you in a clear headspace each morning so you make more productive decisions throughout the day.

Start by separating the clothes you wear the most often from the items you haven’t worn in a while. How often do you anticipate wearing each item throughout the year? Do you need that seasonal dress from college? Even if you can’t get it done in a single day, making progress in decluttering your wardrobe will make a big difference in the long run.

Lastly, once you have decided which clothes you can let go of, consider donating them to a local cause-worthy thrift store. An item of clothing that once meant a lot to you can still mean a lot to someone else in your community. Organizations like the Los Angeles Mission will redirect your donations directly to the people in their recovery programs ensuring they find use in shops such as LA Road Thrift Shop and The Council Thrift Shop.

3. Remove Apps You Aren't Using Anymore

With the amount that we as a society rely on our phones daily, it wouldn't be far-fetched to compare them to another room of our house. A messy home screen filled with applications you can’t remember downloading, or maybe even paying for, is just as anxiety-inducing as a messy bedroom floor. Decluttering our phones can be highly beneficial for efficiency and mental health.

Freeing up digital space not only helps phone performance but can help you find what you need faster to reduce stress. A simple way to start cleaning your phone is to find the info for each app, see when was the last time you used it, and how much space it is taking up. If the data proves that it's not a keeper, your phone may be telling you it’s time to let it go. There are also plenty of apps you can download to help you with this task. Applications like Smart Cleaner or Quick Heal Optimizer can pinpoint which have been sitting in your app library without being used and which are taking up the most space.

4. Organize Magazines, Newspapers, and Receipts and Go Paperless

While digital clutter can be irritating, physical piles of papers around your home can be even more overwhelming. Almost all magazines now offer online subscriptions and many stores and banks will give you the option to have your receipts sent via email or text. Doing so will help you consolidate all your reading material to stay more efficient and organized. Furthermore, recycling and cutting down on the number of paper subscriptions and receipts you accumulate can help you lead a more sustainable lifestyle and improve the ecological footprint of your community.

Of course, there are some papers that we simply can’t get rid of, like certifications, passports, and social security cards. In these instances, it is important to ensure your files are optimally organized. With the proper equipment, it is easy to keep paper clutter out of the way but easily accessible. Consider reorganizing your desk drawers for better file organization, or grabbing our Hudson Bay Letter Size Folio to safely assemble your important documentation.

5. Set Goals to Organize Your Financial Thoughts

Planning for our financial future can be a stressful task and one that is easy to postpone until it becomes urgent. To avoid an escalated situation and to ensure your future comfortability, start dedicating time every week to think about how you can prepare yourself and your loved one’s financial security. A great place to start is to note down all your current expenses and compare them once a month to your budget. This will give you a clearer picture of what is or could become a problem area so you can start finding the right solutions.

A secure financial future sets you up for a more rewarding life and allows you to put more focus on your physical and emotional health. Fortunately, LA City employees who are ACEBSA members have exclusive access to benefits with insurance companies like Aflac, Colonial Life, and Washington National. Not only can you start scheduling counseling sessions needed to plan more efficiently but you can also receive special discounts to make insurance approachable and ensure your future is more stable.

Conclusion

Decluttering our lives through our digital files, our finances, and our daily headspace can give us the needed boost to prepare for a highly successful year. Reduce your overall stress, make time to prioritize your physical and mental health, and improve your quality of life considerably by setting and achieving these realistic and highly productive resolutions. 

As an ACEBSA member, you have exclusive City of Los Angeles benefits that are designed to help you and your family save money and improve your lifestyle. For more information about our insurance programs, scholarship planning, and ACEBSA discounts, please reach out to our team and we would be happy to assist you.