Decluttering your home is an investment into your future! Less stuff means less cleaning and organising in the future. You will feel happier and find more peace and joy in your home. It’s extremely freeing get rid of things that cause you stress, are eye sores and generally make you unhappy.
I want to help you declutter your home and make it as easy, quick and even fun as possible! I even have a Free Decluttering Checklist for you that goes room by room at the bottom of this post!
What To Remove First When Decluttering?
- The easiest things to remove first when you want to declutter your home is all the obvious garbage. Whatever you can scan with your eyes that is clearly broken, obvious rubbish and anything extremely dirty beyond cleaning like stained clothes or raggedy stuff toys. I find those the absolute easiest to toss!
- Anything that is on the counters. If you want your house to look less cluttered remove things you can visually see that are eye sores. Either toss if it’s rubbish, donate if it’s something you know you don’t want or place it in its proper allocated place.
How To Start Decluttering When Overwhelmed?
Make The Time
Decluttering your home is going to take some time. You can’t get around that so make sure you allocate some time to getting an area of your house done. I like to set a few hours aside to organising an entire room as once you start you get into the groove of it, and it does become faster.
Nothing is more annoying than having to stop halfway through when you’re on a roll. Try and make sure to have some time set apart in your day to decluttering a specific area in your home.
Decide Where To Start
It’s a lot easier on the mind to look at a specific space rather than the whole house. Tackling one room might seem a lot more manageable than trying to declutter and reorganize a whole house.
Depending on how you are feeling I’d go for a quicker area first like a bathroom which might be easier than your kitchen. Something that you can do quickly and get that gratification feeling happening.
Once you feel like you have accomplished an area you will feel more motivated to keep going and slowly tackling larger areas.
Pick An Area In That Space
When you are decluttering a larger or messier area it can be a lot less daunting picking a particular space you will work on. For example, if you are doing a bedroom, you might just want to go through certain wardrobes.
Then the closet, maybe you have a desk or things under the bed you want to sort after that! Tackling smaller areas within a space is still extremely fulfilling. It’s lot quicker and easier than trying to do the whole space in a certain amount of time.
If you are time constraint or feeling overwhelmed just pick one spot you want to work on at a time.
Sort Into 3 Piles
The easiest way to declutter any space is to take everything out from the section you chose. Then sort those things into 3 different piles. Have a trash bag available for your rubbish and another container or bag for your maybe pile.
As you pull things out start sorting them into the rubbish bin, your maybe pile or things you are definitely keeping. Once everything has been taken out and sorted into their 3 piles you will find the pile of things you are definitely keeping are a lot easier to put away and find a place for!
The maybe pile is there so you don’t spend a lot of time contemplating whether or not to keep something. You can put the maybe pile away somewhere else for an allocated amount of time. If you miss anything take that item out. Anything that is left after the allocated time that you haven’t missed means you can get rid of it.
Utilize Storage Containers To Declutter Your Home
When you declutter your home don’t be afraid to utilize or purchase storage containers. I find having nice storage containers or storage boxes for toys in the living room makes for a very easy clean up as it has a specific spot.
Using storage containers keeps things organised and they can be hidden from view. Either under a bed, in a closet or displayed nicely somewhere in the house.
Get Help
If you are finding the whole process overwhelming don’t be afraid to ask a friend or family member for help. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. The other person doesn’t have any emotional connection to your things either so could help you with your decision making on certain things as well.
You might be pleasantly surprised at how happy a family or friend will be to giving a helping hand. Two is better than one and it’s a lot faster and more enjoyable having someone to chat to while cleaning.
Be Realistic
Remember it took you year to accumulate many of the things you have. It’s not very realistic to assume you will have your whole house decluttered in a day definitely if you are doing it alone. Be realistic with how long spaces will take you and allocate some time everyday to work on certain areas.
It will get faster and faster the more often you do it. The first time will be the hardest and longest but after that it’s just 2nd nature. I hope you have found this article helpful and will be able to declutter your home quickly and effectively!
If you want more tips on making your space beautiful here is an article I wrote on How To Make A Beautiful Home On A Budget!
I started the year off decluttering my master bedroom and master bathroom. Thanks for the free printable to keep me on track and motivated for the rest of my house!