It’s typical for your home to become cluttered if you’re not regularly decluttering it. It’s easy enough to bring stuff into the home, put it into boxes or cupboards and find it a few years later after it’s been forgotten about. It’s therefore worthwhile decluttering your home seasonally in order to keep the space feeling clean and tidy. In this guide, you’ll learn everything that there is to know about how to declutter your home so that it doesn’t feel cramped.
Start small and do a little bit at a time
Decluttering your home is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Therefore, it’s a good idea to start small and to tackle things one bit at a time.
That means going room by room and drawer by drawer. There’s likely to be a lot of things that are in need of throwing out, selling or perhaps organising in a better way. A lot of storage options might be missing when it comes to decluttering and organising the space. Purchasing this storage will ensure you are productive in your cleaning of the space in general.
For example, you might want to purchase some dust-proof plastic boxes that need to house belongings that will be going up in our loft space for the time being. Shelving and open storage might also be needed within certain rooms.
Categorise the clutter
Categorising the clutter is a good way of decluttering because it establishes what you want to get rid of, what you might want to keep and reorganise and what you may be able to sell.
Think about what clutter you’ve got lying around your home and as you go room by room. Categorise the clutter into what you’ll bin, what you’ll sell or recycle and what you’ll keep.
This will make it all more manageable as you navigate filling the spaces. Once you’ve categorised the clutter, start working through what you need to recycle or chuck away. The stuff that you’re looking to sell should be properly documented so that you can sell everything easily on the relevant platforms.
After you’ve got everything listed, make sure to store all of the stuff that you’re selling out of sight and in an organised fashion that won’t have you stressing about it.
Set a timer and take breaks
To help manage the decluttering process so that you don’t end up demotivating yourself, it’s a good idea to set a timer.
Setting a timer can be helpful to manage your time and to ensure you get as much done as you can with the time you have spare. You should also look to take breaks in order to break up the time you’re committing to decluttering the space. It’s often an exhausting job, so the more breaks you take, the more helpful it is when it comes to making it a successful declutter.
Aim for around twenty minutes to half an hour of time dedicated to decluttering. After that, you can then take a break and gear yourself up for the next section of decluttering.
There will be some days when you simply don’t want to declutter, and that’s ok. Park it for another day when you’re in a much better mindset.
Turn decluttering into a habit
Decluttering can take time, and it’s something that you want to make sure to do regularly, and that way, you’ll spend less time over weekends and time you want to spend away from home, clearing it out.
If you’re turning it into a regular occurrence, it then becomes a habit, but as you likely know, habits take time to create. So with that being said, look at where you can fit in a decluttering session every so often.
It could be once a week or a month, depending on how quickly your home becomes cluttered. The amount of declutter that collects is often down to how many people are living in the household, so if you have kids, then you might want to declutter more regularly to keep on top of it all.
Get rid of things that you no longer use
When you’re decluttering, it’s good to be ruthless. The more ruthless you are, the better. That’s why it’s a good idea to look at getting rid of things that you no longer use. You don’t want to be keeping things that no longer serve a purpose or are simply sitting in the space and collecting dust.
As you declutter your home, make sure you’re going through every belonging you have so that you know what you have. Consider what you might want to get rid of that no longer brings any function or joy to your life. It’s good to check in with family members when you’re getting rid of stuff so that you’re not chucking out anything that might be useful for another family member.
Seek help from family members
Why should you be the only one to declutter the space? It’s definitely a good idea to ask family members to get involved in the decluttering of your home. Asking family members to get involved is important not only because it helps alleviate the pressure of doing it all yourself. But because every other family member shares the home with you.
They also have belongings that you might not be aware of and therefore need to go through in order to declutter the spaces properly.
With more hands on deck, you’ll declutter your home a lot quicker, and it will stop any confusion when you’re working out what piece of clothing or belongings belong to whom.
Consider getting professional help
If you’re getting a bit overwhelmed with the task of decluttering and organising your home, you could always get in professional help to declutter your home. There are a lot of people and services out there who dedicate their time to organising spaces on a professional level.
Whether you need a pantry reorganizing or you want someone to help tackle the whole home, consider getting a professional in.
This might be a little more costly in comparison to doing it alone, but it can provide great help for those who might not have the time or capacity to do it all themselves. Even if you’re just wanting something to assist with the organising, then it’s worth paying the money to get them in.
However, it is a good idea to have a sense of what you’re looking for when it comes to what needs decluttering and organising.
Try to change your approach to spending
It’s essential that you switch your attitude when it comes to spending money and contributing to the clutter that forms in your space.
With that in mind, look at how you could change your approach to spending. It could be that you set a rule for yourself where you ask a number of questions that you need to answer correctly in order to justify your expenditure.
Everything you buy ultimately contributes to the household waste. So it’s important that you’re limiting what you spend where you can for the sake of the home and the clutter that otherwise forms.
Decluttering your home can certainly be a challenge, but something that you don’t want to ignore when it’s needed. With that in mind, check the current state of clutter around your home and plan the decluttering process.
A cramped space is something that you’ll want to stay on top of. Especially when you have limited space available. Use these tips to declutter your home successfully.