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“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” —Dale Carnegie
The idea of living a simple life with less stuff sounds attractive to many.
But often, they begin to feel overwhelmed,
Learning how to declutter your home and (and as a result, decluttering your life) doesn’t need to be as painful as some make it out to be. And the benefits are numerous.
The Benefits of Decluttering Your Life
There are many benefits to owning fewer possessions. Even then, it’s tough to move into action. That is… until the many benefits of getting rid of clutter reveal themselves:
Less to clean. Cleaning is already enough of a chore, but having to clean around things you have zero emotional attachment to (or worse, actively dislike) makes cleaning the house much more stressful.
Less to organize. Finding things suddenly become easier. Things don’t just “disappear” anymore. You can actually move around your home and enjoy the space, instead of moving around things that are in the way.
Less stress. Looking around at the clutter is a nausea-inducing sight once your home becomes cluttered enough. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look around and see a home you love?
Less debt. Spending less time shopping for material possessions and adding to the clutter means your wallet and bank accounts remain fuller, your credit cards’ statements are lower, and your home doesn’t get filled with costly things you don’t need.
More financial freedom. Most American households live paycheck to paycheck (59% according to a recent survey done by Charles Schwab back in May 2019.) Nearly half of those surveyed carry credit card debt. Decluttering, paired with minimalism, will help you build up savings to keep you protected in case of unexpected emergencies.
More energy for your greatest passions. With less debt, more financial freedom, and
Ok, so now you know the benefits of decluttering your life, but you may be getting tripped up by the very next question… where in the world do you begin?
10 Creative Decluttering Tips
If you’re struggling and need guidance on how to declutter, you’ll need to get creative with your plans. Here are several interesting decluttering tips to get you started on decluttering your home:
- Start with 5 minutes at a time. If you’re new to decluttering, you can slowly build momentum with just five minutes a day.
- Give one item away each day. This would remove 365 items every single year from your home. If you increased this to 2 per day, you would have given away 730 items you no longer needed. Increase this number once it gets too easy.
- Fill an entire trash bag. Get a trash bag and fill it as fast as you can with things you can donate at Goodwill.
- Donate clothes you never wear. To identify them, simply hang all your clothes with hangers in the reverse direction. After wearing an item, face the hanger in the correct direction. Discard the clothes you never touched after a few months.
- 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 the 12-12-12 challenge. Locate 12 items to throw away, 12 to donate, and 12 to be returned to their proper home.
- View your home as a first-time visitor. It’s easy to “forget” what your home looks like to a new visitor. Enter your home as if you’re visiting the home of a friend. Write down your first impression on how clean and organized the home is and make changes.
- 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.
No matter which decluttering tip you choose to get started – whether it be one of these ten or one of countless others – the goal is to take your first step in decluttering your life with excitement behind it.
There is a beautiful world of freedom and fresh breath hiding behind that clutter. Deciding how to declutter your home is up to you.
For more decluttering tips, watch this short video we put together. In it, I provide 10 quick decluttering projects, each completable in just 5 minutes or less:
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General FAQ About Decluttering Your Home:
How do I create a decluttering checklist?
Creating a checklist is one of the easiest ways to keep track of what can and still needs to be reduced from your home. We’ve put together a Declutter Your Home Checklist you can use to instantly make a noticeable difference.
Just pick any 5-10 items from the list to start and you will be amazed with how quickly momentum builds up.
Do I need a professional organizer to help me get rid of clutter?
Absolutely not. Getting rid of the clutter in your home can be done by yourself. It can even be a fun family activity when using the decluttering tips found in this article.
How can I declutter quickly? Can it be done in a day?
Removing clutter from our homes and our lives doesn’t need to be rushed or done in a single day. It’s something that can be done over time and may even need to be done on a semi-regular basis. As long as you start the process today, you’re further along than you were yesterday.
Will owning less make my home look empty or boring?
Simple doesn’t mean sparse or boring. The opposite is true. With fewer mess and distractions, your home can become more peaceful. You can view your home as a space for rest and comfort, instead of a source of stress.
What’s the difference between declutter and unclutter?
They’re both interchangeable, though I prefer using “declutter.” The “de-” hints at being complete and permanent. I like to think of decluttering as something that solves the problem forever.
When should I declutter?
This is a personal question. When you find yourself overwhelmed by your possessions and tied down, it usually means you’re ready to start making a change. Note that this feeling is just a broad litmus test. The feeling of overwhelm can be different for everyone.
Declutter Infographic says
I thought you might find this decluttering related infographic useful / interesting!
https://www.becomingminimalist.com/creative-ways-to-declutter/
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pinkangelgirl says
I love finding new ways to make decluttering fun and interesting such as imagining i’m moving to a smaller house or packing the essentials to go on a short holiday. This motivates me to look at the things which are truly essential and valuable in my life right now.
pitbullmom says
Sounds fantastic but I really need a professional by my side. I become stuck or distracted or I shop my closets or decide to have a yard sale or send a ton of denim to third world countries or make a necklace or unpack the suitcase from that 2009 cruise or maybe just walk the dog on my way out as I toss the six wire hangers from the pile of sweaters in the donated pile that has been in the laundry room for twelve years. I need professional help. I want to live the life I live in hotels-bare necessities. I am 65 and I want my life back.
Tina says
That’s why the 5 minute idea is so good. It’s hard to get side tracked in 5 minutes. I sometimes sit with people as they declutter so they don’t get off- track. Not that my condo is perfect but there is nothing on the floor or horizontal surfaces.
Dana says
Love this information, I have found that when I work with clients on healthy eating they typically aren’t letting go of other things are people in other areas of their lives. You advice rocks and I will refer clients to this site often!
Cynthia says
Liz, this is what I’ve done with my batch of photos.
1. Narrow down the overwhelming amount of pics by throwing away ALL the negatives, you have no plans of redevelop them, why keep them?
2. Look through the poses: Throw away ALL of the duplicates, throw away ALL of the same/similar poses of the same thing. In this digital era, we would have deleted them!
3. Sort them by: a) people you know/recognize, b) people you don’t recognize. To me, only the pics of the people *I* recognize is meaningful to me. So, in my case, I threw away ALL the unrecognizable people’s pics. But alternatively, you can offer those up to family members (give them up as a batch!).
4. Lastly, out of all the pics of the people you know/recognize, choose only the nice shots of them, the flattering shots, the intriguing shots. The rest? Throw them out! They wouldn’t have wanted anyone to keep their unflattering shots anyways.
Hope this helps!
Clare says
Another version of the four box from my friend Eva. Keep, throw away, donate, don’t know. I have used ths method and it helps me get through things without getting hung up on decisions I’m not ready to make.
Teresa Forrester says
I just reduced our items last week to a minus 300! This weekend we took out 8 bags of trash (the 33 gallon ones) and about 200 items. This next weekend, more is on the chopping block! My new theme “get used or get out”. Thanks for the inspiration to continue the work for “less is more”.
Liz says
I’ve been following you for about three months, and I’m on the same journey – to simplify my life and own fewer things. But one particular pile of clutter has me stumped because I have trouble calling it clutter.
When my parents died, I inherited the pictures. All the pictures. Hundreds of photos, slides, and albums. Several large plastic bins full of them.
Some of them date back to the late 1800s.
How do I deal with this? I’ve thought of having them all scanned and loaded onto CDs (probably months of work or loads of money), but then what do I do with the actual photos? Is it acceptable to toss them?
Do you or any of your other readers have suggestions?
Cynthia says
Liz, this is what I’ve done with my batch of photos.
1. Narrow down the overwhelming amount of pics by throwing away ALL the negatives, you have no plans to redevelop them, why keep them?
2. Look through the poses: Throw away ALL of the duplicates, throw away ALL of the same/similar poses of the same thing. In this digital era, we would have deleted them!
3. Sort them by: a) people you know/recognize, b) people you don’t recognize. To me, only the pics of the people *I* recognize is meaningful to me. So, in my case, I threw away ALL the unrecognizable people’s pics. But alternatively, you can offer those up to family members (give them up as a batch!).
4. Lastly, out of all the pics of the people you know/recognize, choose only the nice shots of them, the flattering shots, the intriguing shots. The rest? Throw them out! They wouldn’t have wanted anyone to keep their unflattering shots anyways.
Hope this helps!
REPLY
Gena says
Liz ~ I have siblings, but I was the one who lived nearest my mother when she died. Her photos were not organized in any way — just all mixed together in a jumble in an old suitcase with her other paper keepsakes (like the program from her 1933 high school graduation ceremony). Like Cynthia, I found it helpful to batch together all photos with their copies &/or same or similar poses. In each case where one of those batches contained enough photos to permit them being shared (more or less equally) amongst all us siblings, I divided those up & distributed them among envelopes (of which I had one available for each of us). I retained all negatives until I’d distributed all the photos & confirmed with the recipients that there wasn’t some special one of which it seemed everyone should have a copy. Keeping the negatives meant I could easily have copies made if any were desired. (There was, I admit, only 1 photo in that category, but it was nice to have everyone feel included by getting enough prints made of it so that each of us could have one.) My feelings ran opposite to Cynthia’s as far as which of the photos among my mother’s seemed significant after she had died. The ones that intrigued me most were the old photos of people I did NOT recognize. The oldest of those photos in particular were compelling to me: Who were these people in photos my mother had kept all through the years whose identity was a total mystery to me and all my siblings? I couldn’t bring myself to put really old photos in the trash, thinking that discovering one of those might mean a great deal to a great-great grandchild, for example. So, I set up a separate photo album on Facebook (one with limited access), then I gave all my relatives I could find on Facebook whom I thought might have a clue access to that photo album. Every day or few, I would post 1 or 2 of those “Heirloom Photos – Help Requested Identifying Subjects,” with comments inviting input, thoughts, suggestions, guesses. (If I had it to do over again, I would certainly do this via creating a separate Facebook Group.) What happened was really enjoyable: Someone would see a photo & be uncertain about it, so he or she would then involve another cousin or older sibling in the effort to identify these people. Family members liked being invited to see the photos, & commenting back & forth about them. I ended up connecting with several cousins I had not known. A few of those unidentified people in the really old photos turned out to be my grandparents in their very early youth — photos I truly treasure now. This process got me interested in finding out more about my ancestry, & I eventually joined ancestry.com, where I’ve since made it a point to post to my ancestors’ profiles (on my family tree) any photos I found, and to contact a “family tree owner” of a tree that includes people who’ve been identified as subjects in any of those photos — & offering the photos to them. It’s been a long, but very pleasant process, & I’ve learned quite a lot about my family. Good luck to you.
Mohamed Tohami says
To declutter your home you need to start by doing it in a very little time chunks. Your 5 minutes tip is awesome. 5 minutes a day can keep the clutter away. Thanks for the great list Joshua and for being my guest in the Midway Decluttering show.