New Year. Time to Purge?

Make Room For Change

Rebecca Scott
CliffView Life
Published in
4 min readJan 6, 2025

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Clean out your closet?

Sure.

But that might not be enough.

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash

A lot of people set New Year’s Resolutions. Lose weight, get healthy, spend more time with family, save money, achieve a dream, buy a house, earn X income, or eliminate the clutter.

Right now there are a lot of blog posts, podcasts, instagram reels, and YouTube videos talking about how to set goals for the year. Or how to clean out your closet.

All of them trying to inspire you to change your life so you can achieve your New Year’s resolution or goals for the year. They are full of advice on how to choose what to keep and what to let go of and how to set up systems in your life to ensure you get to enjoy the changes long term.

Letting go of clothing, accessories, and items that you don’t use is great because it gets rid of clutter. It gives you space to bring in new items that will support you this year.

But cleaning up your home is not enough. Even if that is your goal.

You have to set up systems in your life to create lasting change. So that goal of going to the gym three times a week sticks.

You Have To Believe It Is Possible

How many times has this scenario happened.

You start to clean out that closet. The one that is so full the doors don’t close. 5-minutes later you are baking cookies (scrolling social media, watching a movie, taking the dog for a walk, buying organization items online).

Why did we give up?

Because we did not believe it was possible to clean out that closet.

We use any excuse possible to get out of doing what we know we need to do but don’t want to do. We convince ourselves baking cookies is more important. We think we need to buy more organization items to do the job before we know if we actually need anything.

When in reality you can bake the cookies in hour from now. You can buy exactly what you need later. Now you know you need 1 dozen hangers not 4 dozen.

When you believe something is possible and refuse to allow the distractions in you can achieve your goal.

Systems Help

Find systems to help you reach a goal.

Possible systems include:

  • Set a time limit.
  • Ask a friend of help.
  • Send a before picture to a friend and say the after picture is coming by time X.

We are talking about cleaning out a closet. Yet these can be used for any goal.

Can You Make It A Lifestyle?

Reaching a goal is great. Here’s the reality: can you keep it going?

How do you keep that closet tidy? How do you stop yourself from using that chair as a dumping ground? How do you stop going letting the clutter build back up?

The best answer I have right now is you have to trust in yourself to change.

You have to convince yourself daily that you are not a person who lives out of the laundry basket system. You are a person who puts clothing away. You are a person who puts items back in the correct places. You are a person who drinks water before anything else.

You can’t just rely on friends for you to change. They are not with you constantly. You have to set rules in your life that will support you in creating lasting change. Are you going to eat healthy when no one is watching? Are you going to stick a rule like buy one get rid of one so you can always close the closet doors?

It is easy to choose a New Year’s resolution. It is easy to say these are my goals for the year. It is hard to commit to them.

Find the plan. Set the mile markers. Find the support systems. Support yourself. Commit to changing your life in ways that will support your goal. Be okay with setbacks. Never quit your dream.

Do not quit the dream if you want to reach your resolution.

If you purging is required to reach your goal, do it for you.

Give yourself permission to do what creates lasting change that will bring you closer to your dream.

If that means letting go of things in your life that do not support what you see for yourself in the future do it. Let go of the subscriptions that don’t inspire you anymore. Let go of activities that don’t support you. Let go of the clutter that is holding you back. Set up systems to take the clean out from a reset so you can refill it to a lifestyle change.

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CliffView Life
CliffView Life

Published in CliffView Life

A publication for real life advice, lessons and stories to inspire. So we can all build better lives that inspire those around us.

Rebecca Scott
Rebecca Scott

Written by Rebecca Scott

A Canadian East Coast girl. Working towards my Crazy Aunt Mug while sharing my journey and life lessons.

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