7 Tips for Decluttering Your Home
These 7 Tips for Decluttering Your Home will make your tidying simple and more manageable. Following this simple system will make decluttering more doable anytime.
Even though spending hours clearing up your space and throwing things away may not sound like a ton of fun, putting that little extra effort in this season is guaranteed to pay off in the long run.
Scientific studies have proven over and over again that clutter affects our overall well-being in the sense that it creates stress, ups our anxiety levels, and even has a way affect our quality of sleep.
Whether you’re planning on decluttering your home as a tradition or you’re simply tired of the strain clutter is causing in your life, here are 7 tips guaranteed to make the process a little less overwhelming!
Why Declutter?
- A decluttered space gives a sense of clarity in thinking.
- Decluttering may free up more space in your home, giving you it a more organized and clean look.
- When things are sorted out, it is easy to move around, find things and generally makes it easier to live in a space.
- A decluttered house gives you a sense of focus and achievement. See more reasons why decluttering is important for self-care.
“What I know for sure is that when you declutter — whether it’s your home, your head, or your heart — it is astounding what will flow into that space that will enrich you, your life, and your family.”
Peter Walsh
7 Tips For Decluttering Your Home
1. Make a Plan and Stick to It
Even though you might want to jump right into it once you get the urge, it’s always best to take a little time to make a plan that you can actually stick to. Not doing so will likely result in feeling overwhelmed and stressed, which is very likely to make you not want to do anything at all.
Write down what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, and in what order you’ll tackle the tasks. Only you can decide how much you can do depending on your schedule and what’s going on around you. Also, plan ahead on what you’ll do with your discards so that you can get them out of the house as soon as possible and not have them creeping back in to re-clutter your spaces.
2. Take Your Time
Be realistic when taking on a decluttering task.
Don’t take on more than you can do in terms of your time and energy. The clutter you want to get rid of did not get there in one day, right? Don’t pressure yourself into trying to declutter your whole house in a day or a weekend because you’ll only end up feeling worn out!
Create a realistic timeline. As a rule, it’s best to plan to take a few weeks to finish the decluttering process and set small milestones that will make you feel achieved as you go rather than embarking on an impossible mission.
3. Declutter Storage Areas First
A great place to start any decluttering process is to declutter your storage areas first. This includes baskets, bins, closets, drawers, and storage boxes.
By doing this, you’ll get a ton of things you probably never use out of the way as well as free up space to store things you actually want to keep!
4. Sort Items Designated Piles
Create several piles for where things should go. This can be something like donate, store, sell, recycle, and trash. This is something we tend to do naturally when decluttering, but try to do it in a conscious and organized manner.
Separate the piles in designated spaces and be consistent in sorting and putting everything where it belongs in order to avoid ending up with overwhelming chaos.
As a rule of thumb, get rid of: Tupperware with no lids, expired food and medicines, clothes and shoes that don’t fit, socks without a match, jewelry you never wear, broken tools, dried-out pens and markers, etc.
Another word of advice is that you don’t have to be merciless when deciding to say goodbye to unwanted things. This may be an unpopular opinion, but maybe you should forget about much-repeated rules like the one that says to only keep things that give you joy. It does sound nice, but hey, a bathroom plumb or a hammer might not give us a joyful feeling, but they sure are useful!
5. Give Every Item a Home
A surefire way to declutter and minimize future clutter is to have a designated place for everything in your home. This includes all the things that frequently end up thrown about on countertops and tables.
This does not mean spending a lot of money on extra containers, though, as doing that will end up being counterproductive. We’ll explain this a little later on, but for now let’s just say that a little extra space in shelves and drawers, or a nail by the door for your keys, for example, will do wonders in terms of decluttering at no cost.
6. More Storage For Clutter is Not a Real Solution
Although some extra storage space to organize the things you want to keep is okay, don’t fall into the trap of bringing in lots of containers to store clutter in.
By doing so, you’ll only end up with camouflaged junk. In other words, don’t invest a lot in storage bins, which can be great for organizing, but you’ll probably end up keeping a lot of unneeded objects, including more storage bins themselves!
7. Reward Yourself for a Job Well Done
Keeping in line with the idea of making decluttering a pleasant task you look forward to rather than a boring activity, give yourself permission to pamper yourself every time you reach a milestone.
Plus, if you decide to sell some of the things you want to get rid of, you’ll probably have a lil’ extra cash to treat yourself, so don’t be afraid to spend a little more than you’re usually used to!
Then, as finishing touches you may find ways to add fragrance to your home. Maybe buy some flowers or some house plants. You can even get a new piece of home decor!
I hope you found these decluttering tips helpful and that they inspired you to start cleaning up! Even though it may feel difficult at first (especially if you’re doing it for the first time), the more you do it, the easier the process will get.
Can you think of other ways to make the decluttering process easier? Let me know if you have any extra tips in the comment section below!
