The Ultimate Decluttering Guide for Your Home
Need some help decluttering your home? Learn about the benefits of decluttering and discover our 3 Step Decluttering Method!
Is decluttering your home on your to-do list for this year? If, like many people, you’re struggling to know how and where to start when it comes to decluttering your home, don’t fear!
It’s never too late to begin and in this ultimate guide to decluttering your home, we share our tried and tested 3-step decluttering method as well as our best decluttering tips to help you get your belongings slimmed down and organised in as little as one day!
If you’re interested in discovering how to declutter your closet, bedroom, wardrobe, kitchen or bathroom or any other area of your home for that matter, we’ve got you covered! This guide to decluttering your home answers all questions revolving around decluttering methods and tips.
5 Benefits of Decluttering Your Home
Before getting into the details of how to declutter, we want to share some of the reasons behind why decluttering is so good for you. A cluttered space has the potential to cause stress, impact productivity and generally make household tasks much more difficult.
No matter how clean and organised a family is, it’s normal to accumulate items over time, which is why decluttering is crucial. Decluttering rooms and closets on a regular basis will help to:
1. Reduce Stress and Anxiety
A cluttered home overwhelms our already overloaded brains with too much sensory information. This can cause irritableness, increased stress levels, and even makes you feel ashamed or embarrassed about your home when guests come round. When your home is cluttered, your mind can become cluttered too - not to mention stressed when you are unable to locate something amongst the piles of things you own.
2. Improve Sleep
The sight of clutter in a bedroom (clothes that have not been put away, laundry, papers, incoming mail etc.) is not conducive to a good night’s sleep. Your brain will be mentally processing all the external stimuli of the clutter, making it more difficult to wind down and settle your mind ready for sleep. An uncluttered bedroom means one less thing to worry about as you drift off. Likewise, waking up in a cluttered environment can be a stress inducing start to the day.
3. Boost Productivity and Creativity
Many people find it difficult to concentrate when surrounded by clutter, for example when trying to work at a messy, disorganised desk. Clutter can have a negative impact on your ability to focus, interrupting your thoughts and making you anxious. All the things around you will be competing for your attention, decreasing your productivity and increasing stress levels. Without all that clutter, concentration levels will increase. Once your head is clear and you are no longer distracted by the things around you, you will get a boost of creativity and often find you’re more productive.
4. Save Money
After decluttering the house, you will likely want to keep your home looking minimalist and beautiful, and not let the clutter build up again. You will have a better idea of what you want your home to look like, and what things you actually need, and what you can do without. Decluttering is a very eye-opening process, where you realise the amount of money spent on things that have been forgotten about, or that you have too many of; clutter often blinds you to what you really own. Sorting everything out and giving your home a good declutter can help prevent you from making unnecessary purchases in the future.
5. Make it Easier to Clean, Tidy and Maintain your Home
The fewer things you have, the easier it will be to navigate your home and keep it clean and tidy. Decluttering is mostly about ridding yourself of excess; items that you simply don’t need. However, It’s also a great chance to organise, tidy and clean your home. And once it looks the way you want it to, where everything has its own place, surfaces are clear and everything is in working order, you’ll want to keep it that way.
We promise that a declutter at the end of each season will make your home calmer and your life easier!
The 3 Step Decluttering Method
No matter the size of the space you decide to tackle or the kind of items there, the process of decluttering is always the same. You can use the following decluttering method to sort out your kitchen, wardrobe, bedroom, playroom, office, garage, bathroom, under-stair cupboard, basement - you name it!
Step 1: Take Everything Out of The Space
In order to truly declutter your home and organise your space, you need to know what’s actually in there and that means taking everything out. For example, if you are decluttering a cupboard, you must empty it until every shelf/rail is bare; this is the way to ensure you’re not missing any items.
Once you have a clean slate to work with and you are able to see all the items together, it will be easier to determine what you want to keep and how you want to organise it.
If you are decluttering a large space or have a particularly cluttered area that you are working on, break your space into more manageable sections; the task will feel much less overwhelming this way.
Step 2: Group Everything by Category
You should review every single item from the space and create as many categories as you need. All items belonging to the same category should be physically grouped, either on the floor or on a worktop. If a category is becoming too big, it might be worth dividing it into sub-categories.
For example, with clothing, the leggings category might need to be broken down between “black leggings” and “other leggings”. It’s only when you are able to see everything you own in one category that you will be able to decide what to declutter and what to keep.
Once you’re done grouping everything into categories, ask yourself if items belonging to the categories you have identified are grouped somewhere else in your house. At this stage, you can either decide to declutter your whole house or to focus on the initial space only.
If you want to keep on decluttering beyond that space, you need to make sure to bring in all items belonging to the categories you have identified. If you’d like to postpone decluttering one category because you know other items are scattered around the house, start grouping them in another location out of your way, that you can come back to later.
Step 3: Decide what To Keep, Toss or Donate
Tackling one category at a time, use bin bags or containers to group items into three sections; keep, toss (or recycle) and donate. Anything expired or broken should go. Duplicates should go. Donate clothes or recycle items as soon as possible, to prevent them sitting in your house where you might be tempted to have second thoughts.
If decluttering becomes overwhelming, it's helpful to understand the difference between life-giving and life-taking items. Life-giving things are belongings you either love, use or need. Life-taking things are possessions that accumulate to the point of stealing your time, money, sanity, energy, or your freedom of movement. Even gifts you have received can be decluttered, following the decision-making process below:
Top Decluttering Tips for Your Home
Get into a regular decluttering pattern, for example at the end of each season.
Get familiar with life-giving possessions and life-taking possessions.
Create categories of items as you declutter; this will help you to see what you have and where you have duplicates.
If you have a large space to declutter, break it into smaller, more manageable sections and complete one at a time. A kitchen might be able to be decluttered in one day but a large, overflowing wardrobe will take longer.
Donate / recycle items as soon as possible after decluttering to prevent second thoughts.
Happy decluttering! And don’t forget, Homefulness is here to help if you feel that you need a helping hand!
