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| Organized Kitchen drawer |
Make sure you don't tackle everything in the same time. Clutter by itself is overwhelming and sometimes even thinking about it can be a massive energy draining task before we even start the actual de-cluttering. Before you start, you need to calm down and take it easy.
2. Categorize.
Try not to focus on too many things at the same time. The best way is to categorize the clutter based on the item. For example gather all the books in one spot, all the toys in another , etc...
3. Tackle one category at a time.
Focus only on the category you are working on and nothing else. Go through the items. Discard, donate, repair and organize before you move to the next category. For example go through all of the clothing items, belonging to one of your children. Then go to the second child, then go through the toys of each kid only one person and one category at a time.
4. Reduce and Minimize.
One of the most important parts of de-cluttering is reducing. Before you go out and buy all kinds of containers and organization tools, reduce the amount of your stuff first. The chances are that you never even needed that extra storage to start with. All you needed to do was letting go of some stuff that you never use.
5. Dedicate spaces.
Make sure you dedicate an area to each category. For example Instead of having a book case in each room, have one central location for all the books in your home, regardless of whom they belong to. This will make the de-cluttering a lot easier.
6. Have fun and enjoy.
The De-cluttering process has to be fun . Focus on the final result and try to enjoy it. don't let it overwhelm and stress you. If you do one category at a time, you can enjoy the fruit of your labor a lot faster. Every category you finish, the reward will be noticeable and enjoyed.
Have you started de-cluttering yet?
LOVE this! I just followed this blog from your comment on "Becoming Minimalist". Great tips. I'm about seven months in to decluttering both mentally and physically. I'm a work in progress. :) This helps tremendously.
ReplyDeleteThank you Thia for your comment. This system worked very well for me and many people i helped to declutter. Since decluttering could become a very confusing and frustrating process, taking it slow is the key.
DeleteGood luck on your decluttering process.
Paris
Very good. I love this. I, too, came from Becoming Minimalist. This hit home for me. I can become so overwhelmed so easily! Thank you for this post. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome. Yes. Clutter is a huge source of stress. But de cluttering could be absolutely overwhelming and it is not easy to start. I am glad it helped.
DeleteGood luck and keep going. You can do it.
Paris
A friendly word. You have a typo in your blog title and one in point 3.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your kind comment. I really appreciate it. English, being my third language which I learnt as an adult without any classes, proved to be full of difficulties for me to write. But I still really enjoy writing and having nice people like you as my readers brightens my day. Thank you again. I will fix them.
DeleteThank you for that basic list! I've been decluttering since I divorced (a pack rat) in 2006. It's a fair while ago, but I'm still learning new things.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I love your post, is because that's exactly the basic starting point I used in the very beginning. And so far I have not seen it mentioned in any declutter book or blog. It's so great to read just what it is I did in the beginning to structure my efforts. The system of catagorisation is often what I see in cluttered households as the main point missing in the way the people deal with stuff in their living environment.
I've seen people run their households with a LOT of stuff, but catagorised and everything's off the floor and organised. If you insist on having loads of things, that's the way to deal with them.
In my case, I wanted to both bring order and reduce. I couldn't reduce from a big pile of unknowns. If you just have big piles, everything seems important, because it's a thing by itself. If you see that you have 99 other things in the same catagory, you can select a set that is useful, best quality and fit your purpose and happily let go of the rest.
Such a relief.
Thank you for your post!
Thank you for your nice comment. I agree with you that many people don't know where to start and de-cluttering has proved to be harder than buying and filling our spaces up with stuff. At least for me it was like that. For me, categorizing did the trick. I am glad it helps. :)
DeleteI also forgot to let you know that I love how you mentioned "you can select a set that is useful, best quality and fit your purpose" this is a very important point. Thank you.
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