I was seven when I first came across the word ‘decluttering’. As a family of six living in a tiny house, we quickly realized the need to keep our home junk-free in order to make the best of the limited space that we had. Several years later, when we got ourselves a spacious home, it took us no time to realize that clutter is something that isn’t going to leave us anytime soon. The need to declutter only increased with the size of the house.
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A house, big or small, can start looking like a junkyard if no efforts are made to keep it clutter-free. Decluttering isn’t just another name for ‘clearing the mess’, but it’s also a way of self-care that has the potential to keep you happy and contended in life.
I sometimes go anxious with all the visual clutter that piles up in my room if I delay cleaning it for a few hours. What’s more stressful is that for a space to look totally clean and tidy, it takes more than just a few minutes of work. Little things like cosmetics, books, bills and clothes lying out of place can make a room look completely messy and unorganized. The need to declutter never ends – you have to be clearing the mess on an everyday basis in order to be able to breathe and live your life with intention.
You’ll be surprised by how happy and energized an organized home can make you feel. If you have been thinking to declutter your living space but don’t know where to start, here are some very useful tips that can help you declutter it now:
1. Just Get Started
Sometimes, just getting started seems like the hardest thing to do. The mess piling up in the house can make you go overwhelmed so much so that you find it easier to just not do anything. In order to get your space back, you need to start somewhere even if the task undertaken is small.
Get to your closet and start rearranging it, or pick up a piece of cloth and start dusting the decor and light fixtures in your living room. If these tasks seem too overwhelming, you can simply take a basket and start putting in things like toys, utensils, papers, books, magazines or anything else lying purposelessly on the floor and tables. Remember that the most important thing is to take that very first step.
When I got my house renovated a month ago, I remember feeling so demotivated seeing all the mess that I couldn’t bring myself to deal with it. Well, that’s what decluttering does to you.
Decluttering is hard. Decluttering is exhausting. But decluttering is good for the soul. And as soon as I realized that living in a messy house was not an option, I picked up my decluttering tools and started dealing with the clutter lying next to me. There were big suitcases of clothes that were required to be decluttered and organized and it took me a good couple of days to ace that job. Dusting and cleaning alone took 3 days in spite of all the help that I got from my family. But considering the positive energy that I can feel sitting in a clean and organized home, I promise you that decluttering is totally worth it. You just need to get started.
2. Seek Help From Someone
You don’t have to clean your space all by yourself if you can seek help from your family or friends. Ask one of your friends to come over for an hour or two to help you declutter the home, or get your kids or spouse to lend you a hand when they can. Ask kids to get through their toys and tell them to keep all their things where they belong. Even a tiny help offered in the cleaning or the organisation department can help ease off a lot of your stress.
As someone who has trouble making decisions on what to keep and what to let go, I always prefer having my sisters over to help me in that department. They make the job of decluttering keepsakes a lot easier for me. There were times when I wanted to hold onto a lot of things that didn’t add any value to my life and my sisters helped me get rid of them.
3. Make A To-Do List
When your house starts looking like that of hoarders and pack-rats and cleaning it seems to be the only option, make a To-Do list of the tasks that you need to be doing. Take one task at a time and dedicate a time frame to complete it. Your To-Do list can look something like this:
- Rearrange that pile of papers
- Get through the bills and put them in their proper place
- Throw out the lidless containers
- Dust the ceiling fans and fixtures
Make sure that you follow the list without putting it off for later. Don’t attempt to accomplish all the tasks within a day. Go slow until your home starts looks organized and tidy again.
4. Get Rid Of The Visual Clutter First
When the house looks messy and the idea of decluttering seems too overwhelming, start with the clutter that’s visible rather than moving directly to the drawers and cupboards. Pick up the things lying on the floor, declutter the tabletops and make your bed to get rid of the visual clutter before you move forward to decluttering the hidden corners of the house. You’ll feel a lot better simply by getting rid of the visual clutter as it’s the first thing anyone would see when entering the house.
Visual clutter isn’t just random items lying out of place. The extra wires around your television sets, the crooked decor items on your shelves and the slightly bent paintings hanging on your walls are all visual clutter that can be a lot distracting even if you’ve decluttered all other areas of the house. Visual clutter makes your house look messy, even if it’s technically not. Therefore, getting rid of visual clutter is more important than you think. If you’re looking for a detailed post on eliminating visual clutter, here’s one that I wrote recently.
5. Make Quick Decisions
The biggest dilemma that you’re going to come across is to decide what to keep, which items to sell and what to toss in the donation box. In order to ease the process, you can take three bins to sort out the stuff lying around in your house. I usually do this while decluttering the old clothes and books and I make it a point not to overthink about what to do with the items. Just pick the things one by one and think about whether you’ll be needing them in the near future. Keep them if the answer is yes and Sell/throw/donate if the answer is No.
I always follow a 5 second rule while making my decluttering decisions. So if I’m decluttering my closet and need to sort through the many tops and jeans lying in front of me, I give myself 5 seconds to decide if I can keep/sell/donate a particular item. If I’m unable to make a decision in 5 seconds, the item is kept aside to be dealt with later. The 5 second rule helps me in going with my initial instincts and helps in making the process of decluttering a tad bit easier.
6. Find A Home For Every Thing
Keep everything that is lying around in its proper place and get rid of the things that you can’t find a place for. Don’t leave the visual clutter lying around or it’ll make the house look messier than it actually is. Make it a habit to keep things like scissors, clothes, chargers and remotes back into their place after using them and say Goodbye to the things that are simply keeping your house unorganized. You can have these wall hanging baskets to keep things that are needed several times a day, like the book that you are currently reading, reading glasses, car keys and phone chargers.
7. Organize As You Declutter
When I keep organizing as I declutter, things become easy and quick to accomplish. Every time you start cleaning, don’t just get rid of the clutter but also make sure that you organize the space properly. While decluttering your closet and deciding on what and what not to keep, rearrange the clothes properly to make it easier for you to find them later. You can save a lot of time once you get used to organize as you declutter.
8. Get Rid Of The Duplicates
You might not realize it but your home might just be filled with duplicate items that have gone unused for years now. Look around your house to find and ditch those items that are duplicates. Things like kitchen utensils, toys, clothes and accessories are some of the many things that might have their multiples lying purposelessly in the house. You can ditch them to free up some space to be able to organize your stuff better.
9. Clear Off The Flat Surfaces
Clearing off the flat surfaces is undoubtedly the most effective way to make your house look less cluttered. If you’re a procrastinator who believes that decluttering should be done only when there’s a guest coming over, you can opt for this option to declutter your home in the quickest way possible.
Decluttering kitchen countertops, bathroom counters, nightstand, coffee table, dining table and other flat surfaces won’t take much of your time but can make your home look breathable. All you have to do in order to declutter your flat surfaces is pick up everything that doesn’t belong there and put them in their rightful places. Items like electronics, water bottles, snack jars, keys, eatables, daily medicines, books, reading glasses, etc. often end up creating counter clutter that needs to be cleared on a regular basis.
I recently realised that the easiest way to tackle counter clutter is to make sure that every thing in my house has a home to sit in. I have a key hanger installed at my entry door for the house keys and the car keys. For the electronics, remote controls and similar items, I’ve kept a basket in every room of the house in order to eliminate any scope for visual clutter. I’ve recently bought a small cabinet for my Dad’s health monitoring equipment and medicines because they were always lying around on the flat surfaces.
If you have a few hours to do a complete declutter of the flat surfaces, here’s a detailed post that can help you get rid of all sorts of counter clutter in the fastest way possible.
A decluttered home not only frees up some space to walk around, but also paves way for the time to focus on things that truly matter. A decluttered living space has the power to give you that much needed energy to go about your day happily. There’s a reason that more and more people today are adopting minimalism as a way of life. There’s no rocket science that can make your home look clean and tidy. All you need to do is to find the motivation to throw away every piece of junk sitting in your home to make it liveable.
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