Do you ever look around and wonder where all the stuff in your home has come from? The new year is an excellent time to clear out the clutter of the past twelve months. Tidying up now helps prepare your home for the growth you’ll experience in the months ahead.
As you start decluttering your home, try these tips to make tidying easier.
#1- Go room-by-room
Rather than trying to tackle a whole house at once, focus on one room at a time to ensure you give enough time to thoroughly deep clean and organize the space. List or map all the rooms in your house. Identify the “clutter hot spots” and give them a grade based on the severity of the clutter. Prioritize those to get the most from your cleaning effort.
#2-Find a space for everything
In the hustle of our daily lives, it’s easy to drop packages on the bench, throw envelopes on the counter, or toss takeout menus in a drawer. Soon empty delivery boxes are stacked by the door, the kitchen counter is piled with junk mail, and you have three crumpled copies of a menu from the same cafe.
Clutter builds up easily, especially when we don’t have a space for the items. We put our miscellaneous stuff in a drawer, corner or pile with the promise to look at later.
Start tidying up by finding a space for everything. Address the areas where the clutter builds first: entryways, mudrooms, countertops, and desks.
Look at each area and organize it so every item has a home. If your takeout menus have a folder, they’re less likely to be tossed in the drawer. The same with handling the items that come in and out of your house: where can packages live until you can open or send them? What about jackets, shoes, and keys?
#3- Curate what’s on display
We all have areas used to showcase our kids’ artwork, vacation memorabilia, or family heirlooms. We cherish the memories behind these things.
Over time, these displays become crowded. Carefully curating what you exhibit helps declutter our living spaces while highlighting the pieces that bring us the most joy. Let those exemplary pieces be present in your home. Give yourself permission to donate or store the other items.
#4- Tips for closet clutter
It’s easy to forget about the clutter when behind a closet door. However, there is something liberating about removing the things you don’t use or see.
Optimize your closet storage with a few hacks:
- Use clear bins to see what is inside.
- Label the bins to make finding what you need easier.
- Turn hangers around. When you wear the clothing, turn the hanger back around.
- Donate anything you didn’t wear at the end of the season or the year.
#5- The before and after
As you go room to room, take a before picture of the room. Spend as much time as you are willing to declutter and clean that area, and then take an after picture. Compare the two side by side and you can see what you have just accomplished.
Sometimes decluttering or cleaning a house can be overwhelming, so taking the images in one small section at a time can help you to feel accomplished even if you did not take the time to clean the whole house.
