Home DIY 5 Steps to Decluttering: An Easy Guide

5 Steps to Decluttering: An Easy Guide

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Is decluttering a constant chore in your home?

Clutter can feel overwhelming, but it’s really just a case of balancing what you have with the space you have to keep it in. An effective decluttering effort doesn’t just mean tidying. It means taking a strategic approach to your belongings and preventing the build-up of clutter in the future. It doesn’t need to be complicated, just follow these five easy steps.

 

1- Make a Declutter Map

By this, we don’t mean sketching up a beautiful plan of your home, but you can do that if it will help!

Rather, we mean a list of all the places you want to tackle, and be specific. We don’t just want ‘kitchen’, we want ‘tupperware cupboard’, ‘top drawer of stuff’ and ‘paper pile on the dining room table’.

Once you have your list, rank each part from 1-3 in terms of difficulty and effort. It may only take fifteen minutes to sort through the cutlery drawer, so that is a 1 on the scale. Your wardrobe, however, might well be an all-day job, in which case mark it 3.

There is a point to this, promise.

 

2 – Plan Your Time

Now that you have a list of exactly where the problem areas are, you can figure out when you have time to declutter. Jobs rated a 2 or 3 will need to be allocated time for, but the beauty of the plan is that you don’t have to worry about when, exactly. It is on the list, so it will get done at some point.

Little jobs can be tackled whenever a spare chance arises. The point of the list is to keep you organised, but also motivated. Be sure to tick off each area as you go!

 

3 – Prepare

It helps to have everything laid out before you tackle a decluttering job. This means boxes or bags for items which need to be either binned or recycled. It will be much easier to discard things you have been holding onto for too long if you have already got your bags laid out and ready.

You can also have a box for things that don’t really have a home, yet. If these items must be kept, but they don’t have a logical place to stay, then put them somewhere separate to deal with properly, later.

 

4 – Get decluttering

After all this organisation, decluttering should be easier than you first thought. Approach it with your most practical mindset and take advantage of this time to really reflect on how your storage is working.

There are lots of guides to help if you struggle with parting with belongings that you aren’t using. Try Marie Kondo or The Minimalists for decluttering inspiration!

 

5 – Prevent Future Clutter

Once you have decided what will stay and what will go, it is important to think carefully about what you are going to keep in the newly decluttered area. If you can’t neatly repack the area, then clearly some things need to find a new home in your house. The key to preventing clutter is anticipating what and where it will be, and developing a system to avoid it.

Consider also setting aside a five minute daily time to sweep the problem areas and keep the clutter down long term.

If you find that a lot of your clutter is seasonal, such as holiday decorations or sport supplies, then consider getting yourself a storage unit. If you’re based in Scotland, then have a look at Storage Vault.

 

Thanks for checking out our decluttering tips. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.

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