Our home is a place where we should find happiness a lot of the time. It should be a sanctuary; a nest.
However, the same home is the place that houses all that we can call our belongings; the ones we need and the ones we don’t; the old and the new; the working ones and those that have long ceased to work.
We often accumulate these objects over the years, till they become a source of stress just by seeing them around, unorganized; let alone managing them. This has made some people’s home a place where they find lesser joy; a place they instead find lots of stress. “Everything is everywhere” in their home, and they are overwhelmed and don’t know what to do.
What they need to do is simply to declutter.
Decluttering is removing the clutter we have around and is not limited to the home alone. Every living space can be decluttered, even our digital spaces. Fortunately, decluttering has gotten very popular of recent, probably because more and more people are now finding more happiness and satisfaction removing the clutter in their lives.
Clutter can be terrible. It can be a source of stress and frustration having clutter featuring in aspects of our lives and living. So, it is how to declutter we want to teach you in this article, in 21 tips. Interestingly, we have also included a beautiful decluttering infographic at the end of this article. Feel free to print and hang this decluttering infographic, it can help you complete your decluttering tasks faster.
Furthermore, we have included a beautiful video on 10 tips on Decluttering in 2020, scroll down to the bottom of this article to access it.
If you have a lot of clutter featuring in your living and workspaces, and you are finding them overwhelming but don’t know what to do about it, then this article is for you (with the accompanying infographic on decluttering). We expect these tips we want to share with you will shoot you straight from a novice to a decluttering pro.
These are 20 Decluttering tips that may make people take you for a pro! Let’s get started!
1. Make a Pile of “Yes” and “No” Objects
Ruthlessness is required if you want to declutter successfully. First, remove EVERYTHING you think is not in its rightful place in your home (if convenient). Gather them all into a place where you can see them all. Then start sorting them into two piles: a “yes” pile and a “no” pile.
The “yes” pile will be for all objects that you intend to keep (not necessarily in your home) and the “no” pile will be for objects you have decided on disposing or trashing (Note: there is a difference between those two words). You can dispose them by selling them or giving them away to someone else. Thrashing them will involve sending them straight to the dustbin.
2. Group Similar Items Together According to Type
You will be surprised at where you are finding certain objects in your rooms after you have decided to declutter.
Don’t be surprised if you find items meant for the living room hidden in your kitchen, or items originally meant for the bathroom hidden and forgotten in your bedroom!
So what you should do is to start grouping items you will still need together according to type (or according to where they are meant for). If necessary, you should also do this for items you plan to dispose of. This might give you helpful insight into how best to dispose of them.
3. Keep and Donate the Useful. Recycle, Sell and Trash the Useless
You might be overwhelmed when you are confronted with the mountains of objects to be decluttered in your living space, but don’t fret, there is a use for all of them.
After you have gathered and sorted all objects that are not in their rightful place in your home into a “Yes” or “No” pile, among the “yes” pile, further sort them into objects you want to keep and those that you will like to donate (you won’t need everything; others will need them more than you). The “no” pile should be sorted into objects to be sold and those that must be forever trashed (those going to the dustbin) or recycled. You can also consider using organic waste materials to make compost.
4. Don’t Forget Your Cabinets
You have stripped down your cabinet? Removed all unneeded things? Then it is time to make it airy and spacious!
Cabinets are among the most misused furniture in our homes. They are usually the dumpsite for all objects we don’t use often in the home, and they are also the house for objects we might never use. Some kitchen cabinets, for example, have not been opened for weeks or even months! – And the house occupants are doing fine living without those cabinets’ content.
To make your cabinets more spacious is simply to take a critical look at its content and judge if they still needed to be there (after being there for months or years!). Moving just one-third of the content of a cluttered cabinet out will allow much more space for useful things, or a lot of fresh air, of course!
Do not be too surprised to find that your decluttering journey has a strong focus on all the cabinets around the house. Don’t forget the medicine cabinet too! Expired drugs, out!
5. Declutter Your Desk
If you have a home library or office, then it is more than likely that you will have a desk(s). But when last have you reviewed the content lying on your desk, some of them lying there for months or years? Have you critically examined whether you actually need everything lying there?
You know what, the desk is among the most obvious center of clutter in the home, especially to the visitors’ eye.
If you can specially attend to the clutter on your desk using some methods outlined in the preceding tips, you would have cleared a significant clutter out of your home space.
The drawers inside the desk also need to be decluttered.
If you have excess acquired business cards lying all over your desk, simply take pictures of the cards and store them using a memorable name. Then throw the cards inside the dustbin or give them to appropriate recycling agents.
Don’t forget clutter is to the desk as the desk is to the clutter. Declutter your desk like a pro!
6. That Post-Clutter Wall Space Has a Use
Do you know your empty wall spaces can be used to manage clutter?
It is an irony that you will have clutter choking every part of your house or office but a large part of your wall will remain empty. These wall spaces can be highly useful during and after your decluttering journey.
Instead of returning your useful jars, cartons, knickknacks and tubs to the various nooks from where you drag them out, why not build shelves on your wall spaces and put them there. This will not only give you a much better use of space, but it will also enable you to easily keep an eye on them, so they don’t go slipping back to their hiding places and cause more clutter. You would also be able to locate them easily if you ever decide to give them out.
Pro Tip: Use Over the Door or Wall Organizer (with Pockets)
You can use the over the door or wall organizer to store items like toothpaste, creams, baby diapers, toothbrushes and more.
This allows you to neatly store little things that usually litter the floor and you will also save spaces.
7. Wonders Under Your Sink
The space under your kitchen sink can be turned into a neat storage space than you imagine. Because of the plumbing below the sink, this leftover space is usually left unused by many homeowners. Are you one of them?
During your decluttering, the space under your kitchen sink can be used to store kitchen items you hardly use, or to keep a drying rack. Move out small objects from dank kitchen cabinets and put them neatly under the kitchen sink until use calls for them.
8. Hampers Do the Trick
Apart from your laundry hamper, how many other baskets do you have in your home? We guess none.
Hampers are some of the best equipment to save your home from further clutter. You should have at least three other hampers in the home. And there should be a clearly defined use for each one: one for items to recycle, one for seldomly used small items and another as a “rummage” hamper; a basket you can dump anything you can’t find a place for, instead of it constituting more clutter.
What’s more? Hampers are very versatile equipment. It is equally at home in the bedroom as it is in the kitchen or attic. And it can be placed on shelves just as it can be placed under tables.
9. The Palace Below the Bed
When you were a kid, do you remember how you used to hide all the mess in your bedroom quickly under the bed as soon as you hear your parents’ footsteps approaching?
That was a quick solution to a messy problem then, wasn’t it? The good news is that this solution can also work for you as an adult if you do it in an organized way – under the bed still remains a fantastic spot for storage! No matter how much cabinet and cupboards we have in the home.
In your decluttering journey, select some things to be kept under your bed if you haven’t done so before. Beneath our beds is lots of space that easily hides clutter away, and it is good for storing things we want nearby whenever we are in the bedroom.
However, we would recommend that you neatly store things under your bed so as not to create a hidden clutter under it.
10. Leave a Lot of Room for Growth
Decluttering certainly doesn’t mean that you won’t acquire more properties again, it only means that you will acquire them more responsibly so they won’t cause clutter. So while you are decluttering, remember to leave (or create) a lot of room for later growth.
This might mean adding to your chest of drawers, buying an extra hamper for keeping, or moving out old broken furniture so as to create more space inside the home.
11. Detangle Cords and Cables
If you are a fan of electric appliances, then there is a big chance that a small part of your living room and kitchen clutter are tangled cords and cables.
Of course, we need kitchen appliances, lamps, mobile devices and laptops and their accessories – even with their countless chargers. This is why some space in our homes and offices can become a mess of wires.
A decluttering solution is to store wires in a cable box, or you can collect all the cables from appliances in proximity and tape them together as a single bunch, while clearly labeling the user of each wire with another tape. It can quickly make your wire tangles a thing of the past.
12. Tidy Your Closet’s Shelves and Floor
Talking about decluttering, your closet should naturally come first, but we intentionally made it come this later in this article because we know that when they mention “decluttering”, the first picture that will come to most people’s mind, probably, is their closet. But we want them to notice clutter from other areas they might overlook.
However, closets, especially the shelves and floor area are the hallmark of clutter for a lot of people. But luckily, what the clutter in this section of our room needs is just tidiness. Objects in this area should be arranged neatly without being cramped together.
Clothes should neatly be folded and placed on top of one another. There are a number of ways to fold your clothes, you can read the article found here to get started.
13. Decluttering in a Guest-Friendly Style.
Let’s admit it. We are all more likely to declutter for the sake of an impending guest rather than for ourselves. Is it not?
At such times, we may like to move some items out of sight of guests even though the item is not constituting clutter. We should take special notes of these kinds of items when we are doing the decluttering for ourselves.
Ask yourself: Will this object be practical to hide and put back in its place respectively before and after a guest is gone? Is the current location of so and so object guest-friendly? Can it be easily put out of the sight of guests?
Ask yourself these and similar questions to determine how best to treat certain objects during your decluttering activity.
14. Have a No-Clutter Zone.
In decluttering, like every other thing, discipline must go with it if it must succeed in the long term.
It is a good idea to have a no-clutter zone: this is a special area designated to be empty and free of clutter, even when a lot of loose objects are lying nearby.
This designated area can be mapped in your mind or you can use tapes, thumbtacks, pencil markings or any other material to delineate them.
Pro Tip: Make the place that is most susceptible to clutter your no-clutter zone.
15. Set Up Folders In Crucial Places.
If you are the type that takes some office work back home for further work on them, then it’s very likely you will have paper clutter in unlikely places like the bedroom and living room.
Luckily for you, this can easily be controlled by having folders put in strategic places around the home where paperwork is more likely to be done. Whenever you are not sure what next to do with a paper, just file it up instead of making it constitute another clutter in places in the home.
Pro Tip: If the paper is not all that important, take the picture of it and then name it using a memorable name. You can then throw it into the dustbin or give it to an appropriate recycling agent.
16. Be Firm and Purposeful with Every Space/Room
Be firm on the purpose of a room and get rid of anything inside that doesn’t serve that purpose. But when we say “get rid”, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should throw them away. Read on.
First is to identify the purpose of every room or space in your life, and be firm on using it for its purpose solely henceforth! Make the kitchen serve as the kitchen, and the bedroom should not be the attic!
This will surely mean moving things out of the room, which is exactly the goal of decluttering it. What you choose to do with what you move out is your personal decision. Just move them out first!
17. Put Items Meant for Donations in Your Car Trunk
So that you won’t be moved by sentiments and start moving objects you have formerly classified as clutter gradually back into your house, don’t waste time in moving those that are meant for donations (especially) out of the house. We will suggest putting them in your car trunk so it will be safely classified there for its purpose until you are able to drive them out.
At your convenience, after you have driven the objects out to those who need them, you can repeat the same process for objects that are meant to be recycled.
You will be surprised at how much lighter your home will feel after you have moved them out.
18. Teach Your Kids
If you have kids, A very good way to prevent clutter from building up in your home again is to teach them where things belong.
The benefits of this are very obvious. But the most prominent among them is that potential clutter will be avoided, clutter won’t lie around the house for long, and the kids will gain valuable skills in tidiness and space management.
19. Be Forever Conscious of Incoming Clutter
Prevention, they say, is better than cure. If you watch how you accumulate properties and where you place them, there might be no reason for you to declutter in the first place.
We know a single decluttering session might be tedious work, this is why we advise you to watch what you acquire and watch what comes into your home or office after a decluttering session. We know you won’t like to be decluttering, again and again, every day.
20. Take Before and After Photos of Every Decluttering Session.
Do you want to be inspired? Then take a photo of your cluttered space before any decluttering session, and take photos of the space after it too. It’s like giving yourself a handshake for a job well done!
Moreover, such photos can serve as a reminder of where you originally placed certain things, that is, if they ever drifted off again. It will also be a reminder of how better your space looks like without the clutter.
21: Self-discipline is unavoidable
To be a person with less clutter and tidy life, you need some self-discipline. There appears to be no substitute for this. To truly maintain a no-clutter approach in your home, you need to discipline yourself. This is not negotiable.
Why They Will Think You Are a Pro
Decluttering can be attempted by anybody in any manner, but those who are guided might do it faster and better. With our decluttering tips here, we hope you will soon belong to the category of those who are guided. You will attempt decluttering once and everybody will think you are a pro! So, do not delay the attempt!
Pro Decluttering Tips for the Year 2020 Infographic
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<p><strong>Please include attribution to infovoresecrets.com with this graphic.</strong><br /><br /><a href='https://infovoresecrets.com/21-decluttering-tips-that-may-make-people-take-you-for-a-pro-also-include-decluttering-infographic/'><img src='https://infovoresecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Decluttering-Tips-Infographic-for-2020.png' alt='Decluttering Tips for the Year 2020' 540px border='0' /></a></p>Frequently Asked Questions on Decluttering:
How Can I live a clutter-free life?
By preventing the gathering of clutter in the first place
By watching what you buy and where you place them
Teach your family the importance of having less clutter around.
Have a no-clutter zone.
Declutter effectively regularly using our decluttering tips.
Where do I start decluttering?
You can start where the clutter is most affecting your normal activities and mental focus. Clutter can be worrisome and distracting, so start where it is affecting you most and move on to less important areas.
What should I do with excess clutter?
For the useful ones among your clutter, move or rearrange those you want to keep and donate the excess.
As for clutter objects that seem useless, you can consider recycling them, selling them or simply throwing them inside the dustbin.
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