10 Tips For Decluttering Your Life
When you first moved into your home, you had everything neat and tidy, but then life happened. Nowadays, your house is probably a complete mess, and you cringe at the thought of having any guests over. If such describes your situation, then worry not because you’re not alone.
You could have a spotless house that’s still messy. That’s because there’s no actual correlation between cleanliness and cluttering. Even the cleanest people could have their rooms drowning in clutter.
Decluttering your life is more than having a neat house; it’s also about peace of mind. It’s also a way of getting rid of bad habits like hoarding, which is a mental disorder or symptom of another mental disorder.
Fortunately, though it takes a lot of hard work and commitment, decluttering isn’t impossible. With a few handy tips, you can make decluttering much easier and even fun. In this piece, we’ll show you a few amazing tips for decluttering your life for stress-free living and a neat home.
Why Decluttering Your Life Is So Important
Most people may have their priorities misplaced, but yes, decluttering helps you find your favorite outfits or video games that you lost years ago. Apart from that, there are a couple of other more personal reasons why decluttering your home is so important. Here are a few of them:-
Decreases stress and anxiety levels- Seeing piles of stuff in your room or house reminds you of all the things you still need to take care of. Even if it’s not you doing the actual sorting out, the mess is still your responsibility. Decluttering clears your mind since you don’t have a lot of pending stuff to do.
Improves your productivity- It’s easy to get distracted when you have stuff everywhere. It’s also harder to find whatever you need to get your work done. When everything is in its correct place, you’ll find it way easier to do your work and hence be more productive.
It’s easier to clean the house- If you get rid of all the unnecessary junk, you can clean the home easily and more effectively. That’s because you won’t have a lot of stuff in your way while you’re cleaning the place. Also, without clutter, your house won’t accumulate a lot of dust, which means you have less cleaning to do than usual. Note that too much dust could actually be a health hazard.
You’ll find your lost stuff- You’ll be surprised just how many lost items you can find when you declutter. You may find anything from lost outfits, books, documents, and even cash. So do some decluttering today, and you might be richer at the end of the day.
You can finally invite visitors- If you also restrict guests to one room, you also fit into this category. If you do some decluttering, you can finally let in your guest into your other rooms.
10 Amazing Tips for Decluttering Your Life
Decluttering doesn’t have to be boring, time-consuming, and difficult. For some people, the mere thought of decluttering elicits dozens of reasons why they should do it later. However, decluttering becomes way easier with a systematic technique, so you don’t need to be doing any more procrastination.
Here are a few ways to declutter your home the right way:-
1. Start With the Bedroom
Your bedroom clutters quickly because it’s where you spend most of your lazy hours. That means you don’t really take much time to straighten things out in the bedroom. The situation is worse if you have a tight schedule and a full-working day, so you just collapse on your bed when the day ends.
If you get time, you can do some bedroom decluttering. Start with making your bed first because it sets the tone for the entire decluttering process. After the bed, you can move to the nightstands and remove anything you don’t need.
This may include anything from bedding, finished books used up pens, single socks, among other things. Don’t be too clingy, especially with stuff you don’t need.
Put all these stuff in a pile away from other things. Once you’ve done this, you can now move to the closets.
2. Clean up Your Closet
Clearing the closet is gut-wrenching for the fashionistas and stylish folk, but some old clothes simply have to go. Depending on who you are, the closet could be a nightmare to declutter but not impossible.
Now your closet has all your jeans, shirts, dresses, skirts and whatnot. Tackling them all at once could be very difficult. The best approach is choosing a particular clothing type like shirts, then picking the ones you want to keep and discarding the rest.
From what you have remaining, start arranging your closet. Place your jeans in one section, your shirts in another and so on. Adopt this approach, and you’ll declutter your closet in no time. Remember, many places will readily accept your clothing donations.
3. Get the Bathroom
After you’ve checked the closet, it’s time to get to the bathroom. Decluttering the bathroom isn’t too difficult, because you can’t hoard too much in the bathroom.
Start with the cabinet first. You probably have a lot of empty bottles and containers lying around in there. Select the stuff you want to keep and the ones you want to throw away. Once you’re done move to the shower and bathtub and do the same.
If you give it your all, bathroom decluttering shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. That’s, of course, unless you leave in a mega-mansion.
4. The Living Room
The living room is the highlight of your home. As such, you want to really take your time when decluttering it. It gets a lot of traffic, and so you should be a bit cautious about it.
The trick with the living room is to do regular decluttering. Find permanent storage places for basic stuff like remotes, devices like consoles, and other living room essentials.
Put away anything you don’t need in the meantime before you find what to do with it.
5. The Kitchen
The kitchen is probably the socializing hub of your home. If you like cooking, then you probably have tons of equipment that clutter the kitchen. It will be hard to get rid of some of them, but you have to do it.
For the kitchen, examine the entire kitchen thoroughly. Then rummage around the kitchen and try to find a place for everything you need. If you can’t do so for some items, then set them aside and think about whether they are really necessary for your kitchen.
If they aren’t, then discard them or put them aside for donation.
Having exhausted all the major rooms, here are a couple of other decluttering tips you should try out:-
6. Don’t Throw Away Everything
Group all the non-essential items into five categories, trash, put away, recycle, donate, and sell. You can use boxes to group all your stuff or even large laundry baskets to achieve the same.
If you want to sell a few things, you need to know exactly what to sell. The same applies to donations; you can’t donate junk and expect to win the Nobel Prize.
Adopt this technique, and you’ll whittle down to only the essentials, make a quick buck from your decluttering, and also do something for the community.
7. Find Some Help
You’re never too efficient or able for some good old help. You can find help from anyone, including friends, family, and neighbors. If things are a bit too messy, you can consider professional help, which is much faster and more thorough but will cost you a bit.
However how much help you get; you can never accomplish much without a proper plan. So before you get to work, always have a solid plan for your decluttering. That way, you can get everything done faster and also do a much better job than going it alone.
8. Make a Decluttering Checklist
Since you now know what rooms to deal with first, make a decluttering checklist. Categorize your list into all individual rooms that need decluttering. Make your list when you’re actually in the room so that you can clamp down on all the areas that need work.
A great approach is to pretend you’re a first-time visitor in your home. If you don’t mind the embarrassment, you can bring an actual first-time visitor. When you have a visitor, you can compile a more comprehensive checklist.
9. Take Before and After Photos
Take a photo of the entire room before you get to work. Once you complete decluttering, take another picture and compare the two. Once you see how amazing your home can look, you’ll have the motivation to get started with other rooms.
Remember, you have to do a good decluttering job to get some motivation. If you don’t do so, you might end up abandoning the whole mission altogether.
10. Post the Results on Social Media
Don't forget to gloat to share your home’s new look on social media. After all, it is a monumental achievement. Also, since your house looks amazing, it’s now time to invite some guests over.
Decluttering Is Easy But Takes Commitment
You’ll need a lot of discipline and commitment to declutter your life. Luckily, you can always get some help if need be— it makes decluttering way easier and much faster. Plus, with these few tips, decluttering your life will be a walk in the park.
If you need help with your decluttering and junk disposal, book a visit today and we’ll sort you out.