One Step at a Time: 4 Effective Decluttering Strategies to Get Things Done as Soon as Possible

Decluttering can feel like a daunting task. There are hundreds of websites, blogs, and businesses dedicated to helping people tackle the clutter in their homes for a more peaceful atmosphere and lifestyle. The key to getting anything done is to take that first step and just get started. Try these four effective decluttering strategies to get going.

Store What You Need, Donate What You Don’t

Store away situation-specific or holiday-specific items. Storage space can be in the home, in a garage or other outbuilding, or offsite. Storing items like camping gear or holiday decorations keep the home from feeling cluttered and protect items from damage looking at urbanclarity.net, they suggest storing items in specialized boxes, rather than just stacking things on shelves or putting them in old cardboard boxes. They also suggest labeling everything and then labeling the shelves or other storage space too, so there’s no rummaging around wondering what’s behind this or that box. If labels won’t work for the storage space, keep a storage list in a day planner, in email, or on a phone.

Donate or otherwise get rid of stuff that isn’t being used, or that doesn’t “spark joy”. This is the key philosophy behind the KonMarie method: only keeping things that create happiness. Her method also advocates tackling the entire home at once in a step-by-step approach, rather than a “little-by-little” approach. This method may not be appealing to everyone, and that’s all right. No matter if it’s a tiny step every day or a whole-house approach, the important part is finding a method that gets rid of things not in use As long as it works, the method doesn’t matter so much as the results.

Find Motivation to Organize What You’re Keeping

Organize the stuff that’s staying. Storing and donating items cleans up space in a home, but the space will only become cluttered again without organization for the stuff staying. Find a place for everything. Like decluttering, there are hundreds of resources for how to organize a home, but the key isn’t reading all of them, it’s picking something and getting started. Try easy methods like grouping similar items together and creating spaces for specific items – a small junk drawer for odds and ends, or an area by the front door with bins or baskets for mail, hats, keys, etc. An article on Forbes suggests assigning and labeling entryway buckets or bins for each member of the house.

Stay motivated. All the tips and tricks in the world won’t get a home decluttered if there’s no motivation. Try setting goals, like working through one room every weekend for a month. Also, don’t be afraid to know when you’re beaten. Ask someone outside the home for help, be it family, friend, or a professional. There are decluttering and organizing businesses with people who do this every day. These people wouldn’t have jobs if everyone in the world found it easy to declutter and organize.

Try these tips today, right now. Take ten minutes and assign some deadlines on a calendar, or make a list of items that need put in storage and supplies needed to do that. Or if the day is open, pick a room and get started. The quicker things get started, the easier it is to keep the ball rolling toward the end goal of decluttering as soon as possible.