Every time my house sees a guest arriving on short notice, I tend to get a mini heart-attack. Not that I’m a bad host, but I’d rather pretend to be busy than showing off my messy home. That’s exactly when instant decluttering comes to my rescue.
As someone who grew up believing that decluttering should be done only when needed, I struggle to keep myself motivated when it comes to decluttering. But instant decluttering is like fighting a quick-fire battle with clutter where you have the opportunity to nail the maximum number of tasks in a few minutes. When you know that you have all of five minutes before the guests arrive, you have no option but to resort to some quick decluttering hacks. Don’t we all have that cupboard where we shove in everything haphazardly to save ourselves from the embarrassment of living in a disorganized home? Well, none of us wants to come across as a messy person. But instant decluttering is more than just locking the mess up in a closet.
Here are some quick decluttering hacks to instantly declutter your home without having to turn into a Ninja:
1. Take Before And After Pictures Of Cluttered Rooms
Sometimes, you don’t realize how big a mess your home is until you get to witness how it looked before decluttering and how it looks after it. So the best way to start decluttering is to take pictures of every corner of your house that needs decluttering. Keep these pictures safe so you can compare them with how different your house looks after being decluttered. This shall serve as a good motivating factor for when you wish to declutter your house next time.
2. Declutter Flat Surfaces
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that flat surfaces form the majority of the pain points for clutter to accumulate. Things like snack jars, newspapers, magazines, mails and stationery items always end up on the flat surfaces within no time. It took a long lesson from my Mom for me to realize that clutter can be controlled if I somehow learn to keep the counters clean. Be it kitchen counter-tops, coffee table, study table or bathroom counter-top, cleaning the flat surfaces can be a quick fix for all the clutter in your house if you are running short of time.
Flat Surface Clutter Rule – Decluttering flat surfaces is something that I have always struggled with since childhood. But the flat surface clutter rule changed my decluttering game ever since I learned about it.
The rule states that in order to keep the flat surfaces clean, you need to decide on a specific number of items that will be allowed to become the permanent fixtures on these surfaces. Everything that isn’t on the list of these permanent fixtures should be kept someplace else. Besides that, the flat surface clutter rule also requires you to clear your flat surfaces of all unnecessary items every time you leave your room.
Now this doesn’t mean that you should resort to compulsive decluttering in order to declutter your home instantly. The goal here is to eliminate visual clutter in the given time frame.
3. Find A Home For Every Object
Sometimes, no matter how big your living space is, certain objects can never seem to find a permanent place for themselves. And clutter cleaning requires that you don’t just keep moving objects from one place to another.
Things like remote controls, car keys, glasses, backpacks, chargers and even towels always end up in places where they don’t belong making your house look cluttered all day long. Well, in this case, a quick fix for all the clutter is to find each and every thing in your house a place to sit in. Make it a habit to put the TV/AC remote back into the drawer immediately after using it. Drill a few hooks in the wall to hang the keys and put the glasses in a drawer after removing them. You can also keep a basket in your living room to keep the things that are used several times a day – car keys, glasses, wallet, etc.
4. Declare A War Against Clutter
This might sound funny but clutter can turn into a home’s biggest enemy if it isn’t tackled with at the soonest. In order to combat this issue, start treating clutter as something that you need to keep fighting against. In other words, get rid of it when it tries to invade your space. Put the dishes back into the sink immediately after having dinner and clean the dirty dishes as early as possible. Put the shoes back in to the shoe rack as you remove them and toss away the dirty clothes into the laundry basket before you go to sleep.
5. Clean The Drawers
Drawers are unarguably the biggest pain point for clutter to set in especially for people who are too attached to their stuff. If you are looking for an instant decluttering tip, start stripping your drawers off all the unnecessary stuff while only keeping the things that you truly need.
6. Make Decluttering a Fun Task
If you are too much of a procrastinator, try decluttering your space by making it eventful and interesting. Set a timer of 5 minutes and challenge yourself to clean as much of your house as possible within that time. Do this again the next day and you’ll be surprised by how much you can accomplish in 5 minutes without getting bored. I promise you won’t procrastinate if decluttering becomes an action-packed exercise.
7. Don’t Overthink
The main reason why you always hold on to clutter is your tendency to overthink what to keep and what to throw away where you always end up keeping the junk thinking that it might come in useful later. Well, trust me on this. You won’t be needing those torn dresses and broken accessories and worn out shoes ever in your life. Besides, no amount of unneeded stuff is worth holding on to if it’s filling up even the slightest bit of space in your house. Remember that you have a lot of important stuff that needs more attention than the things you haven’t used in years.
8. Invite Your Friends Over For A Visit
So this may not sound like a great idea, but having someone to visit over can actually push you to declutter your house quickly in a short frame of time. I’m sure you won’t want your guests to look at your house and think of it as a junkyard. So if you are lacking the much needed motivation to clean your living space, call a friend or a relative to come over for dinner and you’ll be proud of your instant decluttering skills.
Decluttering is good for the soul and anything and there is no better way than cleaning a cluttered house to make it more liveable. Decluttering can be liberating not just for the place you live in but also for your mind.
Over to you now! I’d love to hear how you go about handling the mess when you don’t have enough time to do so. You can drop a comment below or write me at hello@theaestheticabode.com