Declutter Your Home Checklist
It doesn’t take much to transform an otherwise clean home into what appears to be a cluttered and chaotic mess. Irrespective of the size of the home in question, clutter quickly accumulates and has an enormous impact on comfort and convenience.
So for those looking to take a proactive approach to household clutter, we thought we’d share our own take on the classic ‘declutter your home checklist’.
The following tips and tricks making the process of domestic decluttering at least a little less painful:
- If you plan on decluttering your entire home, always focus on one room at a time. Don’t make the mistake of moving on to the next space, until you’ve completed the space you’re currently working on.
- Try to avoid decluttering you home alone, instead bringing at least one other person along for the ride. An extra pair of hands will make the whole thing so much easier.
- Decluttering has a habit of getting rather messy and dirty. To save yourself time and effort later on, keep a damp cloth with you to wipe as you go.
- Use three categories to determine what you plan to do with the detritus you find – bin/recycle, keep, donate/sell. Mixing things up will only leave you with more work to do.
- Don’t try and declutter even a single room if you don’t have plenty of time to dedicate to it. Chances are, it’ll prove way more time consuming than you expect!
- If you’ve a surplus of items and objects you’d like to keep but simply don’t have space for, perhaps consider a self-storage unit.
- Set yourself a rule where if you haven’t used or thought about it in the past year, you get rid of it. Decluttering is not time for sentiments regarding the things you neither need nor have space for!
- Think about how and where you can use vertical space to your advantage. Coat hooks, ceiling wracks for pots and pans, over-the-door hangers etc. – all great for maximising storage space and reducing clutter.
- Go through all the newspapers and magazines that have accumulated over recent months and be realistic as to which you need and which you can give away or recycle.
- Set up as many boxes, bins, hampers and separators as necessary to ensure absolutely everything has its place. You don’t want to run the risk of succumbing to chaos again just as soon as you finish the job!
- Ask yourself whether you really need all of those ornaments cluttering your surfaces. Chances are, most of them are simply gathering dust and making it difficult to keep things clean and tidy.
- On an ongoing basis, set yourself a challenge of giving away or simply getting rid of one unnecessary item every day. Over time, it’ll soon add up to a noticeable difference.
- Last but not least, decide ahead of time exactly how you intend to reward yourself for a job well done. For example, if you’re going to be somewhat brutal with a much-needed closet clear out, surely you can justify treating yourself to a new top or two?
