Journal Prompts for a Simpler Home & Life: Using Your Journal to Simplify with Confidence

Today’s post is all about how to use your journal as a tool to help you achieve a simpler home and life. Including a collection of journal prompts you can use to create a clear vision for your simplified, clutter-free home and life. As well as help you work through the mental and emotional roadblocks that can make decluttering more challenging.  

Be sure to sign up at the bottom of this post (or click here) for a free printable workbook with these journal prompts for a simpler life.

Journaling for Simplicity: an in-depth journaling guide

And if you’re interested in going deeper and continuing to use your journal to help you create lasting change in your home and your life, check out “Journaling for Simplicity“. An in-depth journaling guide.

“Journaling for Simplicity” offers you over 50 journal prompts you can use to dive deep into your motivation to declutter, your decluttering goals and the roadblocks making it difficult to declutter.  

If you find today’s post and the free printable guide helpful, definitely check out “Journaling for Simplicity”.

How journal prompts can help you simplify

Journaling of any kind is a great way to work through and explore specific topics, beliefs, ideas, emotions, goals, hopes, fears, blocks, etc. in your life. A journal can be a powerful tool to help you work through, process, explore and even challenge these things in a safe way.  

When it comes to simplifying your home and your life, it’s easy to have certain thoughts, beliefs, patterns or fears that keep you holding on to clutter. Or keep the clutter returning to your home, even when you’re trying to declutter.  

Journaling is an effective way to make your decluttering journey easier, less stressful and more successful in the long term. Especially with journal prompts specifically created to help you find the confidence and clarity to simplify with more ease.

Decluttering can feel really hard and overwhelming when you don’t have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Or a specific vision of how you want your home to look, feel and function.  

Knowing that, here are some of the ways your journal can be a helpful tool on your simplifying journey.  

Know your why

Whenever you’re changing your life in a significant way (and simplifying your home is definitely significant!), it’s important to understand why you’re doing it.  

If you want to create lasting change in your home and your life, knowing why you want the change is essential.  

Without having a clear “why” driving your decluttering and simplifying, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details and the work ahead of you. Forgetting the big picture of what you want to achieve.  

After all, it’s not about how many towels, shoes or coffee cups you have. It’s about why you want less “stuff” in order to make room for more of what matters most to you.  

It can be so much easier to let go of the clutter when you clearly know why you’re decluttering in the first place.  

And part of having a clear understanding of your “why”, is knowing, understanding and spending some time working through the beliefs, thoughts, habits and patterns that led to your clutter in the first place.  

All so you’ll be better able to shift your mindset and how you think about “stuff” moving forward. Helping you make lasting change in your life and allowing you to maintain a simplified home in the long run.  

Clear priorities

Journaling can also help you get clear about your values and priorities.  

If you don’t feel clear about your priorities and know what’s most important to you right now, in this season of life, it’s hard to separate what’s truly important from what’s less important. This often leads to the truly important things not always getting the time, space, energy and attention they deserve.  

Your journal is a great place to get really clear about what your true values and priorities are. Allowing you to keep your priorities at the forefront of your mind. Making it more likely to give your priorities the time, space, energy and attention they deserve.  

Clear goals

Journaling is also helpful to explore and clarify the goals you have for your home, your life and your simplifying efforts. Then, as you declutter and simplify, you have a clear vision of how you want your home to look, feel and function. And know exactly what you want to achieve, create and bring to life.  

Not only will clear decluttering goals and a clear vision of what you want to achieve help keep you motivated as you declutter. It can also help guide your decluttering decisions when you’re in the midst of decluttering.  

Having clear goals and a clear vision for your home makes it easier to decide what to keep and what to get rid of with more confidence. Especially in the times you feel bogged down by the amount of decluttering work ahead of you. Or by the sheer number of decisions required to declutter your home.  

Identify pain points

Journaling before decluttering also gives you the opportunity to explore the ways clutter is making your life more difficult, stressful or frustrating. Including how much time and energy the stuff you own is taking from you. And the ways clutter is adding stress to your days.  

Often, once you start to see the ways clutter is making your life more difficult, you become more motivated to get rid of it!  

Identify roadblocks

Decluttering isn’t always easy. And there are many different things that can make decluttering feel challenging.

You can use your journal to work through some of the potential decluttering roadblocks ahead of time. So when they do come up as you’re decluttering, you’ll have already started working through them in your journal. Helping you avoid getting completely derailed when these roadblocks come up as you’re decluttering. Then move past these challenges with greater ease instead.  

Often, once you know why you’re struggling to let go of the clutter in your home, letting go can actually become a lot easier.

Journaling as a reference point

The great thing about using your journal to get clear on your “why”, your values and priorities and your decluttering goals is it can become a reference point for you throughout your decluttering journey.  

Writing down your “why”, goals, values and priorities gives you something you can refer back to later whenever you need a boost of motivation and encouragement to keep working towards your vision and decluttering goals. Helping you not only get motivated to declutter now. But also helping you stay motivated throughout the process.  

Finding clarity with decluttering & simplifying journal prompts

If you’re looking for a place to start, let’s explore some journal prompts to help. These journal prompts touch on 6 important aspects of the decluttering process:  

1. Vision for your home
2. Vision for your life
3. Identifying values, goals & priorities
4. Identifying pain points
5. Decluttering challenges & roadblocks
6. Decluttering motivation

Use the journal prompts in this post to start exploring these 6 aspects of the decluttering process and set you up for decluttering success!  

Want to explore these topics further?

If you’re looking to explore these 6 aspects of the decluttering process further, check out the in-depth “Journaling for Simplicity” guide.  

The prompts in today’s post and free printable start to scratch the surface of these 6 aspects of decluttering.  

But most often, the real value in using your journal as a tool on your simplifying journey is when you dig deep into these 6 areas. Really exploring the beliefs, fears, patterns, thoughts and limiting beliefs that keep you holding onto clutter and prevent you from creating lasting change in your home.  

If you’re seeing the value in using the journal prompts in today’s post, definitely check out the “Journaling for Simplicity” guide.  

In it, you’ll find over 50 journaling prompts, questions and reflections to help you gain a huge amount of decluttering confidence and clarity.  

Especially if you’re someone who already enjoys and sees the value in journaling, or are excited about the benefits of journaling and want to explore a journaling practice more, the “Journaling for Simplicity” guide will interest you.  

Journal prompts for a simpler home & life

With that said, let’s get to the journal prompts in today’s post.  

Don’t forget to sign up at the bottom of this post (or click here) to get a beautiful free printable workbook with these prompts!  

In the workbook, you can work through each of the prompts one at a time. Really thinking through each prompt to get the most out of it. These prompts are just for you, no one else ever needs to see them. So write with honesty and openness to get the maximum benefit from them.  

You can write your answers in the spaces provided in the free workbook or in your own journal. You can even just think through the prompts if you’d prefer.  

After answering each prompt, read over what you wrote and notice what stands out to you. What stands out can often give you an indication of areas you might want to work on or explore further.  

1. Vision for your home

These prompts are all about creating a clear vision you want to achieve in your home after decluttering and simplifying. Think about how you want your home to look, feel and function.  

Holding this vision as you work to declutter can keep you focused and motivated to make it a reality!  

• Why do you want to declutter?
  • What do you want to achieve by decluttering & simplifying?
  • What do you want more of in your home? What do you want less of in your home? (Tangible or intangible)

• How do you want your home to look?
  • Create a clear vision of your favourite design style, i.e. boho, modern, farmhouse, traditional, neutral, colorful, etc.

• How do you want your home to feel?

2. Vision for your life

Now focus on your life beyond your home. Create a clear vision for how you want your days to look, feel and flow.  

Again, clearly knowing the kind of life you want to create can give you clear goals to work towards as you declutter and simplify.    

• What do you want to have more time, space and energy for?

• Think of your ideal day and lifestyle:
  • What are you doing?
  • What are you not doing?
  • What do your days look like?
  • What do you days feel like?
  • How is your ideal lifestyle different from your current lifestyle?
  • What is one thing you could start doing to move towards your vision of your ideal lifestyle?

3. Identifying values, goals & priorities

Clearly knowing what your values, goals and priorities are, in this season of your life, is so important.  

Without clearly knowing your values, goals and priorities, it’s easy to get caught up doing things that aren’t priorities for you but feel important in the moment. Or get bogged down in everyday life tasks and lose sight of what matters most to you.  

• What matters most to you in life right now? (people, activities, work, things, traits, etc.)
  • What are your top 3 values in your life right now?
  • What are your top 3 priorities in your life right now?
  • What are your 3 most important goals right now?

4. Identifying pain points

Identifying specific pain points in your home and your life right now can help you identify areas you want to work on and address with your simplifying efforts. It’s hard to know what needs changing if you don’t identify exactly what’s not working first!  

Try to get specific when identifying pain points. Rather than leaving it at “the house always feels messy”, get more specific. Think about what rooms feel messy most often, or what rooms are the hardest to keep tidy. Then consider what items in those spaces are causing the most mess, clutter and stress.  

• What is currently taking up more of your time and energy than you’d like?

• What feels stressful, frustrating or “too much” in your home or in a specific room in your home on a regular basis?

• What is one thing (big or small!) that you could do today to simplify your home and help your days run smoother?

• What space in your home would benefit most from you simplifying and decluttering it? (Pick a space you use often and spend a lot of time in so you can experience and appreciate the benefits of simplifying it right away!)
  • Break the space down into small, bite-sized tasks you can tackle one at a time to start simplifying it. (i.e. if you identified the kitchen, list each drawer, cupboard, surface and space to simplify)
  • Use this list to start tackling each small task one at a time as time allows. Making steady and consistent progress to clear the clutter and simplify!

5. Decluttering challenges & roadblocks

Working through some of the common decluttering challenges now will make decluttering easier as these roadblocks come up during your decluttering sessions.  

The best place to start is by identifying what is the biggest fear you hold when it comes to decluttering.  

Often, once you know why something feels scary or hard, and spend some time sitting with and exploring that fear, the fear loses some of its power over you.  

• What is your biggest fear when it comes to decluttering?
  • Dig deep into why decluttering feels scary to you. What is at the root of your fear?

6. Decluttering motivation

Reminding yourself of the benefits of decluttering, and why it’ll be worth the time, energy and work, is a great way to stay focused, motivated and on track as you declutter.  

Use these prompts to build up your decluttering motivation now. Then refer back to them whenever you need an extra boost of motivation and encouragement to keep working towards your decluttering goals!

• What are you giving up when you spend more time than you want managing the stuff in your home?
  • How would you rather use that time instead?

• What is the next best step on your simplifying journey?
  • Instead of thinking about everything needing to be done, what is the next best step you can take to keep moving towards your decluttering goals?

Journal prompts for a simpler home & life

I hope you find these journal prompts helpful as you work to simplify your home and your life.  

Don’t forget to sign up below (or click here) for a free printable workbook with these journaling prompts you can work through at your own pace.  

And for more journaling inspiration, check out these posts:

The Benefits of Journaling & How it Can Help You Simplify Your Life

How to Start a Meaningful Journaling Practice + 12 Simple Daily Journal Prompts