The idea of living a more simple, straight forward life, with less stuff and clutter sounds attractive to many. But often, they begin to feel overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated around the idea of owning less stuff. Let alone where to start even the decluttering process!
Decluttering your home and your life, doesn’t need to be as painful and as difficult as some make it out to be. Once you know how and you get the process started, it can be so simple and refreshing! There are many benefits to owning fewer things. Even as simple as being able to see your beautiful real wood flooring again!
Here are a few of the benefits…
Less to clean
Cleaning is already enough of a chore during your free time, so why make it harder on yourself by adding lots of things you have to clean around. Especially if they are things you have zero emotional attachment to, or worse, don’t even care about or are there…just because!
Less to organise
Finding the things you do want and use suddenly become so much easier. Things don’t just disappear into the abyss of clutter anymore. You can actually move around your home without knocking things over and enjoy the space as it was intended.
Less stress
Looking around at the clutter you have managed to build up over the years can be so nauseating, stressful even. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look around and see a home you love, clutter free.
So now you know some of the main benefits of decluttering your home and your life, where do you begin in this clean up operation? Well, here are a few of our top tips to get you started…
Donate clothes
The best way to declutter your wardrobe and to find out what clothes you do and don’t wear, simply hang all your clothes with their hangers in the reverse direction. After you wear an item, face the hanger in the correct direction. After a few months, if you still have items of clothes facing the wrong way (clothes you haven’t worn), discard the clothes and take them to a charity shop for someone else to love and appreciate.
Create a decluttering checklist
It’s a lot easier to declutter when you have a visual representation of where you need to get started. You can use our decluttering checklist.
Take before and after photos of a small area
Choose one part of your home, like your kitchen counter, and take a photo of a small area. Quickly clean off the items in the photo and take an after photo. Once you see how your home could look, it becomes easier to start decluttering more of your home.
Get help from a friend. Have a friend or family member go through your home and suggest a handful of big items to throw away or give to someone else. If you defend the item and want to keep it, your friend has to agree with your reason. If they don’t agree, it’s time to get rid of it.
Use the Four-Box Method
Get four boxes and label them: trash, give away, keep, or re-locate. Enter any room in your home and place each item into one of the following boxes. Don’t skip a single item, no matter how insignificant you may think it is. This may take days, weeks, or months, but it will help you see how many items you really own and you’ll know exactly what to do with each item.
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