When you think about cleaning up a cluttered home, you know you will have to do plenty of physical work. There’s also a lot of mental and emotional work required if you want your cleanup to be successful and long-lasting.
Cleaning Is Both a Mental and a Physical Game
Want to have a healthy relationship with objects? A hearty dose of self-examination is required.
You must take a magnifying glass to why you acquire too many things, dispose of too few things, or both. Without that awareness, combined with the desire to change, you will have trouble maintaining your clean space.
Identify Your Triggers
In my “Things Can Be Different” process, I outlined some steps that I had to work through in order to change my relationship with objects. At the root of the process is the belief that you deserve for things to be better. The next step is practicing mindfulness.
Today, let’s examine another crucial part of the process. It’s closely related to mindfulness and involves taking a deeper look specifically at why we acquire things. In another post, we’ll explore some of the many reasons we keep things.
Here’s a refresher of the “Things Can Be Different” step that I’m talking about:
Identify your own triggers: Why do you buy or salvage things? Why do you keep them? What are your fantasies about how you’ll use them? Are you compelled to buy things on sale? Do you lose control at certain stores? Are you susceptible to buy when you’re feeling lonely/stressed/bored/sad/excited?
Become Objective About How You Acquire Objects
Pretend you’re an anthropologist observing the behavioral patterns of a unique creature. As I mentioned in the mindfulness post, you want to pay attention to the emotions that may be linked to purchasing something.
You also need to pay attention to the other factors related to your buying decisions.
Do you tend to buy things after work because you walk directly past a cute little shop on your way home and you feel you deserve some retail therapy? Do you shop because you’re bored and mistakenly think you have nothing better to do? Do you buy things online because it’s convenient and you’re able to follow through on your impulses in mere seconds? Have I done all of these things? Yes. Yes, I have.
Learn How Retailers Trigger Your Impulse to Buy
I like to know what makes things tick. By breaking things down to their parts and figuring out how they interact, I get a better grasp of how the whole thing works.
You can apply this same technique to your shopping habits. There are resources available to help you learn how different sensory cues and sales techniques will manipulate you to make a purchase. For instance, this article on “6 Visual Merchandising Tricks to Increase Your Sales Per Square Foot.”
Or the British show “Mary Queen of Shops,” which I love for several reasons. First, I love Mary Portas herself. She’s clever, no nonsense, and takes care of business. I also enjoy before-and-after transformations as much as the next gal. Most of all, I find it beneficial to know some merchandising techniques and why they’re so effective at helping stores boost sales. Somehow, knowing the psychological tricks behind it all helps me learn how to be more mindful out in the wild. I can think, “This bright, shiny thing is placed here so they can sell off old merchandise and convince me to make an impulse buy.”
Have you ever thought about how the ubiquitous red “Sale” sign or the BOGO limited-time offer specifically affect you? Are you a die-hard bargain shopper, even if you don’t need whatever it is that’s on sale? Do “70% off” signs trigger a Pavlovian response that leaves you salivating to buy, buy, buy?
Using Psychology to Boost Sales
There’s a huge amount of psychology that goes into merchandising and designing a store so it elicits the most sales from customers.
All of your senses come into play: sight (flattering lighting, colors that soothe or motivate you, bright red “Sale” signs to grab your attention), smell (to make you hungry or remind you of a happy memory), sound (those energetic music playlists that every salesperson has come to memorize and loathe from hearing them too many times), taste (free samples!), and touch (tactile displays so you touch the super-soft sweater that makes you want to buy it immediately and cocoon inside of it for the rest of the winter).
Consider Apple products and their packaging. The whole experience is designed to make you feel as though you’ve received a magical gift rather than spent a lot of money on a commodity.
Search YouTube for “unboxing” and see how many people have recorded and posted videos of themselves unwrapping a product. There are thousands, and some of them have millions of views. Think about that. Millions of people have sat and watched someone open a dang package.
Be Empowered and Enlightened
Knowing these tricks does not give you a free pass in terms of accountability. You’re still accountable for being the one who made the purchase, even if the retailer stacked the deck in their favor.
Like our cartoon buddy G.I. Joe would say, “Knowing is half the battle.” To win the battle, you must adjust your response based on what you know.
Once you can detach and become aware of your personal triggers, it’s easier to spot them and choose to respond differently when you’re tempted.
You can go through your mental series of questions: “Do I need this today or in the immediate future?” “Am I purchasing this to give to someone on a particular date for a specific occasion in the very near future?” “Would I buy it if it weren’t on sale?” “What else could I do with that money that would be more lasting and enjoyable, rather than a temporary acquisition ‘high’?”
There is a great sense of power and enlightenment that comes from identifying what’s at the root of your behavior. You’re no longer at the mercy of something that feels inevitable, and you recognize your own control over the situation.
Many of us don’t like to take a hard look at why we do the things we do. This is even more true if they’re behaviors that cause us shame or stress. But those are going to be the most satisfying behaviors to change.
Things Can Be Different, and you’re the one who can make them that way.
What are some of your triggers? How do you control impulse acquisitions?
