Decluttering Tips

As the years go by, your house overflows with stuff, and as much as you love this stuff, you’ve got to ask yourself if you really need it? We all know how hard it can be to let go, but decluttering the home can feel like a breath of fresh air. You’ve got to be ruthless, you’ve got to make difficult decisions, and to get organized, you’ve got to be organized, so here are our top decluttering tips to freshen up the home.

Schedule a Weekend

You might try to take every opportunity you can to declutter, the problem with this is that by the time you get back round to any spot, it’s just as bad, if not worse, than before.

Rather than do little bits at a time, it’s best to schedule a weekend to get through all of your clutter. This will help you get through everything in one go. If you’ve too much clutter for one day, make it a Saturday and Sunday event. Put on some music and get through the mountain of mess that’s bothered you for far too long.

Make a Room Map

If You’ve ever tried decluttering before, you may remember that you find it too easy to get distracted by going from room to room. Creating a room map and moving through it will make the decluttering much more logical and therefore effective.

Keeping to this map means that just one room gets messy at a time instead of several rooms around the house, as this makes everything more manageable.

Use Wall Space

If your kitchen cupboards are anything like ours, it’s likely they are overflowing with pots, pans, baking dishes, and more. However, you need most of these for a range of different meals. Instead of trying to balance everything on top of one another, make use of any available wall space to hang them instead.

By hanging your most-used pots and pans, you’ll reduce used-up space, and also make them easier to grab when you need them.

Ditch Expired Products

You will always find some surprises when searching through the backs of cupboards. There’s a chance you’ll stumble across expired medicine, sunscreen, sauces, and plenty of other items that you’ve almost definitely forgotten about. Face it, you will never use them, so there’s no point clinging onto them like that ex who could have been the one, so feel free to empty them out, clean them, and either throw them out or recycle the bottles and containers.

Below the Bed

Storing items below the bed won’t work for everybody, but if you have under-the-bed space, then now’s the time to make use of it. You can use this space to store boxes of old books you won’t read again, as well as any coats or jackets that you’ll not need until the winter. You can buy under-bed storage boxes for pretty cheap from a range of home stores, so this keeps everything organized, even when it’s well out of sight.

The Rule of Three

The Rule of Three is something that applies to organizing any shelves that don’t have books on them. It helps to keep your shelves looking tidy and ensures that you can see everything on it, with nothing obstructed. By sticking to this rule of three, you can create a more appealing overall appearance for your organization, and if you’ve got lots of similar items, such as plants, vases, or miniature figures from your favorite movies, you can put them, all together and create themed consistency throughout the home.

Cord Control

We use so much technology everyday, from laptops to TVs to games consoles and more, and it’s definitely made our lives easier. However, with these devices come cords, and cords can be unsightly, get tangled easily, and generally make your home look untidy.

To overcome this, you can organize your cords by adapting desk drawers for them to feed through, or use clips that keep them in place rather than sprawling all over the floor. You can purchase these clips or make use of DIY alternatives, and it will ensure you never lose your charging cable ever again.

Maybe, Baby

You’ve got to be ruthless if you want to declutter efficiently, but there will be some items that you’re not too sure what to do with. Instead of putting them back where you found them, use a Maybe Box to store them in until you’ve finished decluttering the whole house. Once you’re satisfied with how your home looks, return to the box and go through it again, deciding what you want to keep and what you can discard.

Donate to Charity

While decluttering is all about getting rid of disused items, clothes, and more, you don’t need to throw everything in the trash, and if you have anything in decent condition, consider donating it to charity. You can take boxes of clothes, books, electronics, and anything else you’ve no use for anymore, but someone else definitely will. Not only is this good for you and the home, it’s also good for the environment, saving such items from the landfill.

Get the Whole Family Involved

Decluttering the whole house by yourself is a mammoth and enviable task, so a great way to get through everything quicker is to get the whole family involved. Not only will you move through each room faster, as you can work together or give everyone a room to fix themselves, you can also prevent throwing anything out that they want to keep.

A whole-family declutter can also help you reconnect, especially if you stumble on old memories that everyone had forgotten. You’ll need to wait until the decluttering is complete to reminisce, of course, but once you’re done, you can sit around and browse through old photo albums, share stories, and just have fun chatting together as a family.

A Breath of Fresh Air

It’s never easy to start decluttering, but once you figure out the best way to do so with these useful decluttering tips, you’ll never want to stop. When you’re finished, you can enjoy your home just like you used to with no mess in sight, or hidden away, for that matter.

Sources:

20 Easy Decluttering Tips from Experts – How to Declutter a Room – Good Housekeeping
18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess – Zen Habits