Five Steps to Declutter your Home
We all love a clear and calm space. When your house is overflowing, removing some of the mess can help you feel less stressed and more focused.
Decluttering your home doesn’t just make more space in your home, it has other benefits. With fewer items in your home, just think how much easier cleaning will be. You’ll be able to find things when you want them. And as you feel more in control of your home, you’ll sleep better too.
But it can be a big job to get from cluttered to calm, so how do you get started?
Step 1 – Schedule in some time for each room
The hardest thing about decluttering – like any chore – is the first step. To begin, schedule in some time to your week, so that you cannot be distracted or put it off. Decluttering is not a five minute job, so you need to make sure you have enough time to be thorough. But it’s also something that can be tiring, so it’s best to separate your decluttering into sections. Pick out one job at a time – like that one overflowing wardrobe, or a single room.
By separating your tidying into bite sized chunks you’ll find it easier to get through without being overwhelmed. And you’ll be able to see the progress as you go.
Step 2 – Separate your stuff into piles
If you’re a bit of a hoarder it can be hard to get rid of things. You need to take a firm approach to sorting your stuff – and it helps if you know it’s going to a good home. So, set up piles or prepare a box to fill with items – things that you are keeping, things that are useless or broken and need to go in the bin, items that may have some value and are worth selling, and things that can be given to charity.
Step 3 – Identify where you need more storage
For everything that you have decided to keep, make sure it has a designated place. Consider the storage you have in your home and decide in advance what each drawer or cupboard will be used for. Then you’ll be able to clear things up and put them away as you go, instead of making more piles ‘to be put away later’.
Our homes become cluttered because we have more things than space – and once every drawer is full, we start piling stuff on worktops and in corners. It may be that you just don’t have enough storage in your home. Is every piece of furniture fully utilised, or are some items more frivolous than functional? It could be that you need to upgrade an occasional table to a small cupboard, or reconfigure a room to get another bookshelf in.
But you also don’t want to stuff every bit of wall space with furniture – that won’t help your room feel more spacious. So, if you have items that you want to keep but nowhere to put them consider alternatives like your own self-storage unit. It’s a whole extra cupboard that doesn’t take up space in your home.
Step 4 – Make sure each room is easy to keep clear
It’s very easy for a room to descend into disorder again – especially when it’s a well-used family space. But there are easy ways to stay on top of the clutter.
With all the technology we have, our homes are full of wires and cables trailing across worktops and tables and floors. If you regularly put a cable away, just for it to come out again a day later, then try another way. Knowing that the cable in question will be in regular use, find a way to reroute it so that it can stay accessible but out of sight with cable management boxes
In the same way, consider how else your rooms are used. If you keep your makeup in the bedroom but put it on in front of the bathroom mirror, consider putting a shelf in the bathroom to rehome it, or a mirror in the bedroom. That way you’ll be more inclined to put it away as you use it rather than leaving it scattered about between use. Place a bin in rooms where rubbish accumulates, and a basket on the coffee table for remotes.
Step 5 – Don’t leave the last step for another day
As you clear each room, it’s important to take your piles to their new destination quickly as well – otherwise they will just sit there in your newly tidied room until they become the start of a new collection of clutter.
Once you finish, take the rubbish out to the bin straight away. Put the charity box in the boot of your car ready for delivery to the shop, and schedule in another session to start listing items for sale on your preferred online auction or local sales site.
Decluttering doesn’t have to be a hard task. Taken a little at a time, you’ll soon get your house under control and then it’s easier to stay on top of it. And once you do, you’ll have a clean space that you’ll be proud to show off to friends.