It’s common for every household to have some bit of junk and clutter lying around your home. Despite trying to keep your house clean and tidy every day, it seems that clutter can easily sneak in and pile itself up in any random corner or space. While clutter may look harmless as it looks, it’s actually one of the primary sources of stress for most homeowners, and some of you may not even be aware of its adverse effects.
Decluttering your home is a perfect way of showing care not only for your house, but, most importantly, for yourself and your family. Getting rid of the clutter means ensuring that you’ll have a neat, comfortable, and welcoming place to live and stay. Plus, you can maximize more of your space with a clutter-free home and use it for more useful purposes.
Understandably, tackling a decluttering project can be overwhelming, especially if you don’t know where to start. Perhaps, you can think of decluttering as just editing your home, only that it’s a never-ending task. To begin, here are six tips for decluttering your home like a pro:
- Have A Goal
Before you start the project, determine your goal or what you want your house to look like in the end. Having a plan and a goal can help you stay on track with what you’ve started and keep you motivated to finish the whole project. Most often, decluttering is understood as minimalism or keeping a few things as you can. So, decide how much you’re willing to get rid of to achieve your definition of a clutter-free home.
- Divide The Work
There’s no denying that decluttering is a massive job as it means you’ll be decluttering not only one room, but the entire house. To avoid feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to sign up the help of your family members or your friends, if they’re willing. Once you’ve got enough people to help you out, create a list of areas or rooms to be cleaned, then assign one to two persons for each area. The more people will help, the easier and quicker the decluttering process will be.
- Follow The Four-Box Method
It’s time for the actual work. As you go through your things and furniture, you’ll need to get rid of the items that you won’t use anymore and only keep the necessities. To make this process easier and faster, it’s best if you follow the four-box method, in which you’ll prepare four boxes and label each one as ‘keep,’ ‘store,’ ‘donate,’ or ‘trash.’
The ‘keep’ box is for the things you use every day. The ‘store’ box is for the things that are necessary, but only used occasionally. The ‘donate’ box is for the stuff you won’t use anymore, but can still be reused by other people. Finally, the ‘trash’ box is for the things that are neither useable and reusable, and should be disposed of quickly and properly.
It’s also best to contact rubbish removal services, such as dirtcheaprubbishremoval.com.au and others, and have them pick up your trash right away so you won’t have to worry about it for another day of your life. Using this method will motivate you to organize your house as you go.
- Remove Duplicates
If you find multiple duplicates from your things while doing the four-box method, ask yourself if you need all of them. For instance, if you found out you owned three chop boards, it may be best to donate the other two. After all, you may have both the extra two during those times when you couldn’t find your actual chop board. Now that you found them all, it’s best to donate or sell the rest.
- Double Check The Surfaces
Some of you may not notice, but the flat open surfaces around your house are the ones that can quickly accumulate clutter. These may include your coffee tables, nightstands, kitchen countertops, home office tables, and even the top surface of your kitchen cabinets. These flat surfaces are often used as storage spaces for everything you use, like keys, wallets, coins, pens, papers, and more. Plus, you may be doing this unconsciously or, perhaps, out of habit.
To break the cycle, create a small ‘junk box’ and place it in any spot where necessary, such as the living room or your kitchen. This way, you can utilize this box as your go-to storage for any smaller item instead of the flat surfaces around the house.
- Create Some Natural ‘Declutterers’
Look around and figure out which area accumulates clutter often. For most, it can be the living room or the kitchen. Aside from decluttering your home, it’s also vital that you find ways to minimize clutter buildup in the future. For instance, if you have an unconscious bad habit of piling your junk mail on your kitchen counter, resolve this by creating a ‘declutterer’ or, in simple terms, a recycling bin. Set this up beside the area where you sit down and shuffle through your mails so you can directly toss them in the bin instead of piling them up on the table.
Takeaway
It feels rewarding to see that what’s left around your house are only the things that serve you, as well as those that make you happy and comfortable. Because as mentioned earlier, decluttering is like editing. Once you got rid of all the unnecessary things, all that’s left of you are the best and valuable ones.
