Every once in a while we look at our homes and think: this really needs to be flipped up! Whether that be changing up the furniture, rearranging everything, or just giving it a thorough clean, we just want a change. Reorganizing your home is a great excuse to declutter and finally cycle out the things you no longer need (and why not throw a deep clean into the mix?).
Having a clean home is one thing, but an organized one helps you increase your productivity and be more effective for certain tasks. In fact, studies have shown that cluttered homes tend to cause stress, anxiety and even depression. A study conducted by CELF from 2001 to 2005, which looked at several family homes, concluded that “the American workplace is intense and demanding; when we come home, we want material rewards”, “It’s difficult to find time to sort, organize and manage these possessions. Thus, our excess becomes a visible sign of unaccomplished work that constantly challenges our deeply ingrained notions of tidy homes and elicits substantial stress.”
With spring just around the corner, it’s a great time to start getting rid of clutter! We thought about a few tips that are really useful when you’re going through the process of decluttering your home. Here they are!
What’s Your Goal
To begin, it’s always a great idea to identify the reason that you want to declutter and re-organize your space. Do you want some spaces to be more effective? Do you want to dispose of items you don’t really use, or do you want to start living a more minimalist lifestyle? Think about which benefits decluttering will bring to you so you can have a plan in mind and complete the task in such a way that it’ll have the exact result you were looking for.
What’s Your Plan
To really get to that goal you have to think about how you’ll do it, the best guess is to work in one space at a time. Think about which parts of your home need the most work and which ones are more important to you. Once you have a good idea, you can start tackling each of them in order of priority. Now to do this, you’ll also need a method.
Writing in a planner
How Will You Get it Done
There are tons of ways to start tackling decluttering. We’ve heard of the konmari method, going minimal and keeping only what you need, etc. There are many ways to do this, but the simplest is to pull out all the things you have in a certain space (closet, drawer, countertop, coffee table) and then sort it all. To do that, you can sort them in a “three bin” fashion: what you’ll keep, what you’ll donate/gift/sell and what you’ll throw away. Alternatively, you can sort them by category depending on the items and then look through each of them to see which ones you’ll be keeping or disposing of.
We love to use the six-month rule as well, it’s very simple: if you haven’t used it in six months, it’s time for it to go!
What to do with Unwanted Items
When you decide what it is that you want to have out of your house, it’s time to see where those things are going. Anything that is useless or too damaged to be repaired should go in a trash bag. Then, see what could be repaired and decide whether you’d like to keep it after it’s working again. If not, you should put it alongside anything that you would be donating or selling. Remember: someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure.
Stressed woman doing laundry at home
Reorganize Everything Immediately
Finding the most effective ways for you to organize certain spaces in your home is the best way to maintain order. Look for what best suits you and try to really stick with it, that’s the secret to keep your home how you really want it to! Some of us look for ways to make our spaces more functional, others simply want it to look more put together, and others want to optimize their storage. Depending on what you’re looking for, you should always plan ahead and see if your current systems are effective or if they should be changed.
Implement Long-Lasting Change
It’s one thing to declutter and organize as a single act, but keeping it that way may not always be so easy. Making the lifestyle change to a tidier, scaled down home takes consistent practice. Some recommended reading to help adapt these changes over time are, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and Declutter Your Way to Success, The Key to Organize Your Life by Terri Savelle Foy. These reads will help you maintain the mindset of a decluttered home.
Remember that having fewer things equals less cleaning, it’s in your best interest to only have the essentials. Keep what’s useful and what brings you joy!