12 Ways To Declutter Your Life

Are you fed up with the clutter in your home? Are you annoyed at how little space you seem to have? Don’t panic, let me teach you how to get rid of the clutter, break free from the stuff in your home and declutter your life the easy way.

If you have struggled to stay organized you might feel trapped behind clutter in your home and life and need ways to get rid of this stuff.

You might be surprised how easy it can be.

How you feel about decluttering your home will have an affect on the results that you have.

The more open you are to the process and take active steps the easier you will find the transition.

Decluttering Starts With Tidying Up

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The first action you must take is to get rid of rubbish that you’ve got around your home.

The best way is to look in every room in your home, you are looking for the items of rubbish that can often hide in plain sight.

It is surprising how often we can walk past rubbish and just not see it in our homes.

You actually need to put this in the bin before you go any further, don’t leave it by the door with the intention of taking it out later, it must be done immediately for it to have an impact on your home.

You might not notice the difference but it will make a difference when it comes to organizing these areas of your home.

The decluttering process is mentally straining so make sure that you give yourself plenty of time to tackle your organizing project.

Simple Tips To Begin The Process Of Decluttering

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed by clutter in your home, it’s something that can happen over time and you just don’t know how the clutter ends up in your home.

Because it’s difficult and overwhelming for many I always advise to take things slowly, one step at a time is the best possible action you can take.

Where do you start?

This isn’t easy, because everybody is different and no two homes are the same, so where you are going to start decluttering will depend on a number of different factors.

This is always the first question I’m asked with the second being how quickly can I declutter my entire home? I want to stress that decluttering is hard work and if it’s done slowly it can take a while to complete every area.

How much clutter do you have and where is the most important area for you and your family to be clutter free?

Declutter Your Home ( The Beginning Process)

You have to find the place where you are going to start and you are going to do an assessment of the space. You want to look at what is in this space and what you want that end result to be. Have that visual in your mind as you work through this process as it will help keep you focused as you declutter your home.

• I want you to think about the simple actions you can take that would remove something from your home. Can you give something away, you don’t want to add clutter to that person’s life. But something they will love and treasure or perhaps they need.
• Take a moment to think about the items you have purchased that are now clutter. You might have used it in the past, it might be brand new, the most important thing you can do now is not to get angry at your past self for buying these items. It’s about the new you and how less stuff in the future will help you maintain your home easier.

If you change how you think about the items in your home and the items that you want and need, rather than buying something because it’s fashionable. How you look at your possessions will change and you might even start to understand what you need and what you have is no longer serving you.

This is not something that you will change overnight, it is something that will take time.

You will need to process how you feel and work out a plan on changing your life. It is a long-term commitment and one that you will need to look at on a regular basis to see if the changes are matching up to what you hoped for.

Related article: 10 Ways On How To Deal With Clutter

Tackle Each Room Separately (Even Break Up The Room)

First thing you need to do is to take a deep breath. This is a fresh start and it’s going to take time to make your living space a place where you love to spend time. If you bring in a professional organizer they are paid to tackle the job in a set time frame and this is their job so they know what they are doing.

You are going to need so much more time to tackle each area, so give yourself grace when it comes to decluttering.

Don’t think you have to do your whole house and life in one swoop.

Take your time and focus on each section. It is a slow process, but in some ways the slower you go, the higher the chances of this being a success because you will have invested the time and you will see the benefits of decluttering areas in your home.

This is more than just a quick tidy up, you have to think about the items and decide if you want to keep or get rid of them.

Sometimes if you go too quickly when you are decluttering you start to feel pressured and unable to make the right choices for the items that are in your home.

Related article: What To Do With Paper Clutter And How To Deal With It

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Top Tips For Different Rooms

If you are struggling to see your clutter you might just need ideas about what clutter is. Often. clutter hides in plain sight.

Before you start consider setting up boxes for donating and having these labled is also a good idea.

• In the kitchen, look for duplicate appliances and out of date food, check expiration dates, see if you can donate them before throwing them out.
• Newspapers, if you read them don’t forget to throw them away. My mum used to collect them next to her chair in the living room.
• In the bathroom, sometimes this can fill up with empty, or nearly empty bottles of shampoo, shower gel and even cleaning products. Finish these off first and then throw away empty bottles. You might be surprised how many nearly empty bottles you have.
• Don’t let your home office become a dumping ground for items that don’t have a home. Paperwork needs filing and sorting as soon as it comes into the home. Junk mail needs shredding and recycling, and those pens that run out, put them in the bin and not back in the pen pot.
• Clothes that you no longer wear, these can be clutter too. Storing them until you fit into them again isn’t the answer.
• Your online clutter is just as important to get rid of. Have a system in place to help you tackle that growing pile of emails sitting in your inbox right now.

Related article:Why You Need To Drop Your Digital Clutter

Mental Clutter Needs To Go

How often do you have so much mental clutter that you can’t remember what you were going to do?

We all hold information in our brains and sometimes we do need to let this go too, it’s important to declutter your mind too.

• Things that you worry about, yet you can’t control. This causes stress and can lead to other health problems. If you can’t control it maybe you shouldn’t worry about it, let it go.
• Regrets, we all have them in our lives. But unfortunately, we can’t change the past. If you continue thinking about these things it will have a negative impact on your mental health.

Personal Belongings Can Be Clutter Too

We all have personal belongings that haven’t seen the light of day in months or even years, yet they still take up space in our homes. Sometimes, we think we need more storage space when really we just need less stuff.

For example, how many water bottles do you have? You can only use one at a time so having more than you need is leading to clutter in your life. Every little bit helps to reduce the need for more and more things in our homes.

• We all have personal care products like makeup, lotions and creams that we don’t like or we just haven’t finished. It is time to use these or to bin them. They are taking up space and if you never intend to use them again it’s not a waste. If they’ve not been opened you might be able to donate them to a charity.
• Old medicine, this is one that will sit in your medicine cabinet for years. Admitting you didn’t finish a course of antibiotics or those few tablets that are left over is hard and often they aren’t cheap but getting rid of these is important. Take them to your local chemist or pharmacy and ask if they can dispose of them safely.

Family Members Can Help Too

Don’t think that it’s all on you to get the house decluttered and looking amazing, if there are other family members get them to help too. After All they have probably helped with the process of bringing the clutter into the home.

You could designate a small area  to each family member and it’s their responsibility to tackle and reduce the clutter in that spot. Use a chore chart to help family members know what they need to do.

There are so many practical tips and ideas that you can use to reduce the physical clutter in your home.Don’t think you have to live a minimalist lifestyle but just check in with your home and the items that are in it to ensure that you only keep what you need, love and use.

I’m not asking your to Marie Kondo your home, I love her decluttering tips but they go too far for me and too quickly too.

Let’s Recap…

If you are struggling with the idea of decluttering, remember to take it slow and to tackle one area at a time. Why not make decluttering a part of your daily routine

where you take a few minutes a day to either tackle a small project or just keep on top of the hard work  you have already done.

It is not a race on how quickly you can declutter, it is a process and one that you will need to work on regularly to keep your home and mind free of clutter. As the seasons in your life change, so too what you will need in your home. So, by taking simple steps  to put decluttering on to your task list and to look at it regularly to keep these positive changes in your home.