Clutter can start to feel like it’s taking over our lives. It ends up in every room of the house, so before you lose track and start googling things like, “How to stop hoarding,” you can reclaim your home by taking a few simple steps each day to declutter your home.
Have no fear—it’s never too late to start decluttering. If you’re ready to start your decluttering process, here’s what you need to know.
Five Baskets Are All You Need
There are all kinds of tools and even entire stores devoted to organizing and decluttering your home. But you don’t need any extra tools to tackle the clutter in your home when you’re looking to simplify your space—all you need are five baskets. This is one of the quickest, easiest decluttering strategies you can implement because it forces you to sort clutter as you go.
What are these five baskets for? You’ll want to set up five baskets to sort all the clutter you encounter in your space.
- Trash: This basket is for anything that you know immediately can get thrown away.
- Recycling: This basket is used to sort anything that can be recycled, like glass, plastic, old newspapers, magazines, and mail.
- Fix/Mend: Do you have a shirt missing a button or a pair of shoes that need polishing? Put them in the “fix/mend” basket, and then when you are done decluttering, take care of these items and put them away.
- Put Away: This basket is for things that you know you want to keep but are not in their rightful spot. If you find a coffee cup in your home office, it goes in the “put away” basket.
- Donate: During your decluttering, you’ll encounter items that are still in great condition but you don’t need or want anymore. The “donate” basket is where you can sort items that you can give to a charitable organization. These are items you can imagine another person wanting.
As you go through your home, you can use these baskets to sort every item. Working through room by room, don’t skip a particular closet or “save something for later.”
You can use boxes, baskets, bags, hampers for your five baskets—anything you can transport from room to room. Set them up before you start so you’ll be ready to go.
Where to Start Decluttering
Are you wondering where to start decluttering your home? You can start wherever you feel the most motivated, but work only when you feel fresh and ready to make tough decisions about what to keep and what to eliminate from your home.
Decluttering Tips for Your Bathroom
You likely have many, many items in your bathroom that you can declutter right away. We end up with all kinds of hair products, body lotions, and prescriptions, and it’s easy for them to add up quickly.
Here’s what you can get rid of in your bathroom today:
- Unused hair and skincare products
- Gifted bath items
- Old contact lens cases
- Old toothbrushes (replace yours every three months!)
- Unused makeup
- Old shower items: empty bottles, pumice stones, loofahs, razors
- Travel-sized items
- Dingy toilet brushes
- Old or expired medications
A note about old medications: There are certain ways some prescriptions need to be disposed of, so don’t just toss last year’s pills in the trash, and don’t flush them. You can read about how to dispose of medications properly using this guide from the FDA.
Tackling the Kitchen
Kitchens quickly can become cluttered because we do so many different things in the kitchen requiring different kinds of tools. If you store a lot in your kitchen, you may want to declutter one category at a time.
A few decluttering tips for your kitchen:
- Empty each space one at a time, putting things away where they belong and evaluating what you no longer need.
- Start with big storage spaces like the pantry or upper cabinets.
- Decide which gadgets to keep and which ones can go.
- Move items off the counter and put away anything you don’t use daily so your countertops are clear and clutter-free.
Streamlining the Living Room
We spend lots of time in our living rooms, and clutter can amass quickly. Bookshelves can get crowded and go from cool to crowded. Blankets can pile up, and remotes don’t have a home.
You can declutter a bookshelf and make sure it still has personality. You can empty off side tables and consoles and fold blankets and put them away. It’s also a great idea to have a specific place for remotes to live when they aren’t in use.
If your kids use your living room as a playspace, it might be a good idea to let them help you evaluate what toys they’ve outgrown, what’s broken and what can be donated to other children. Recycle or store all their toys. Your living room might need regular decluttering since it’s a room that gets used by everyone, so stay on top of decluttering this space.
Decluttering Strategies for the Bedroom
Before you start decluttering in your bedroom, make the bed first. Clear off nightstands and dressers so they look clean and fresh, and go through nightstand drawers and return items to their rightful place or get rid of what you don’t need anymore.
A lot of clutter in the bedroom actually comes from the closet, so make sure you have hampers at the ready. Do you have a chair in your room that mostly ends up covered in clothes? Maybe the chair needs to go, or find another way to organize your worn clothes!
Clutter in the Closet
Whole books have been written on the art of decluttering closets, and people dedicate their lives to helping others with this very task, so be gentle with yourself here. Your closet will take time to declutter. You may need to find new ways to maximize your storage space.
Put everything where it belongs (no socks in the pants drawer), put dirty clothes in the hamper or the laundry room, and decide what clothes no longer spark joy when you wear them. You can streamline the look of your closet by switching out to matching hangers too.
Go category by category, and take breaks when you need to. Donate clothes that no longer fit. Take clothes that need to be mended to a tailor, or try a little DIY.
Looking for some help decluttering? Why not work with a regularly scheduled professional house cleaning service to keep clutter at bay?
At Clean My Space CT, we have a team of trained, insured professionals who can help you reclaim your space from clutter. We work throughout central Connecticut and have a long list of happy clients to share their experiences.
Let us help you with your clutter. Request a quote today!
