Since everyone has been spending more time at home lately, it only makes sense that the clutter lying around everywhere has been bothering you. There may be too many trinkets lying around on the bookshelf, or maybe your garage is full of boxes and you’ve even forgotten what’s in them! And no one wants to start the summer with a house too packed with things to let in the summer breeze.
Naturally, you’ll need to declutter a little and get rid of all the junk you’ve hoarded. But once you make that decision, you’ll probably get overwhelmed, and you’ll probably be tempted to put it off until later. Later never comes, as all procrastinators know, and even if it seems hard you should just rip the band-aid off and start working.
You can start small by clearing out useless jars and trinkets in the kitchen cabinets or clearing our space in the bookshelf by taking out the books and things you don’t need to keep anymore. But if you want to clear some space up, keep reading to find out how.
Start Small
If you think of your whole house as a giant project you need to finish, you’ll start panicking in a matter of minutes. To avoid going down that road, think of every single room as a small project or it’s own, or think of the house in terms of milestones.
Clear out a single closet or a messy bookshelf first, and then go from there. This way you’ll be able to keep your calm and make steady progress at the same time.
Stick to the Plan
Of course, first, you’ll have to make the plan, but that won’t be too hard. Sit down with a pen and paper and think about what needs to be done. Do you have too many clothes and not enough closet space? Or maybe your living room is too full of all kinds of bobs and bits to feel cozy anymore? Maybe you feel like you need to clear everything out to deep clean the house.
Whatever the plan is, once you’ve made it, you need to keep going and stick to it. Make the steps and milestones easy to act on. For example, don’t just say you’ll clear out your closet. Break that down into steps like “sort through all the clothes” and “throw out or fix broken jewelry”.
Do You Need to Declutter or Reorganize?
Many rooms start feeling stuffy and small even when there is a lot of room in them. If your dirty laundry is just laying on the floor everywhere, it’s taking up more space than it should. The same can be said for your jewelry and makeup, and even for the layout of your living room!
Maybe the problem isn’t that there is too much stuff around the house, but maybe all the stuff just isn’t stored right. If you feel like you’re already looking for things that should be easy to find, or if your home feels messy even though logically there should be space for a lot more stuff in it, maybe you need to focus less on decluttering and more on figuring out how to store all your things properly. This calls for a little reorganizi1ng!
In that case, you can invest in organizers, Tupperware and containers, and even in some baskets for your dirty dishes and laundry!
Take it Room by Room
When the whole house seems like too big of an undertaking, start by aiming to clean just one room and go from there. This way you’ll be able to stay productive and get some actual work done, all the while not letting yourself get too stressed or overwhelmed.
Only move to the next room when you feel like you’ve done everything you could for the current one, and don’t obsessively start doing multiple tasks in different rooms at the same time. All this is only going to increase the clutter around the house, and it would be even harder to get rid of because now it feels like the work will never stop no matter how much effort you put into it. That’s one rabbit hole no one wants to go down.
Keep, Donate, or Throw Away
When you’re sorting through things like books, old possessions, clothes, or even decoration pieces, it’s best to make three piles. One of them is for all the useless stuff you think no one would need, the other is for the things you want to keep around the house, and the third one is for things you don’t want to keep, but feel like someone else might want.
Donate things that are useful and functional, but are of little value to you and take up too much space. You can take a box to the local goodwill, or even post about them on local Facebook pages. If you want, you can even hold a garage sale and make a few bucks!
Organize the Leftovers
It might be tempting to put everything back in nameless boxes when you’re done clearing out the attic or the garage, but that would only mean more pain for you the next time you decide to declutter. Instead of storing things in the attic and the garage in boxes like that, make sections or organize in one way or another. This will make it easier for you to keep the clutter to a minimum and make sure everything is tidy, and that you’re not storing things you’ll never need to use again, just for the sake of it.
