Even if you are not a regular reader of this blog, you are probably motivated to declutter your home.
After all, we’ve all been spending more time at home this past year, Spring cleaning is right around the corner, and more and more media outlets are covering the rise of minimalism. Younger generations are going to extremes by putting all they own into a van, while Baby Boomers are retiring, downsizing, and choosing to save money, time, and energy.
No matter where you fall on the spectrum, decluttering is a great idea! It will help you feel emotionally lighter and allow you to focus on what really matters. It’ll save time, money, and energy. You’ll love it.
Of course, there are different ways and strategies for decluttering your home. If you’re just getting started, or looking for an approach to help you reach the next level, here are 9 modern voices in the decluttering movement.
Find one that works best for you.
9 Decluttering Strategies To Create a Home With Less Stuff
1. Marie Kondo: What Sparks Joy
Professional organizer Marie Kondo, introduced her Spark Joy strategy to the world with her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. And she followed that up with a popular Netflix series.
Marie’s strategy focuses on decluttering by category (rather than room-by-room). These 5 categories include clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous items, and sentimental items. Her strategy encourages you to bring all your items from a category (clothes, for example) into one room and begin sorting.
When decluttering, Marie focuses on getting rid of items that no longer have value to you. She asks you to physically hold a possession and ask yourself if it “sparks joy,” and discard it if it doesn’t (after thanking it for its service).
Her KonMari method will bring you a clutter-free home that will spark more joy in your life.
2. The Becoming Minimalist (Joshua Becker) Method: Room-By-Room Decluttering
My decluttering method focuses on room-by-room decluttering, starting with the easiest, most lived-in areas first. When you begin this way, you’ll immediately notice the benefits of your decluttered spaces, which will motivate you to work on more difficult areas.
It is the strategy that forms the basis for my book, The Minimalist Home, the Clutterfree App, and my Uncluttered Course.
I have found the Becoming Minimalist strategy to be the most effective for the most amount of people. Needless to say, I’d recommend you start here.
There are 5 main steps to my method, which is heavily goal-oriented and makes sure to include your entire family:
- Set and define goals for your home and specific rooms so you know what you’re working towards.
- Work to include your family in the process and let them know why you’re decluttering. Getting everyone on board is important.
- Start with the easiest, high-traffic room, and then continue to work room-by-room until complete. Starting with the removal of duplicates, handle each item to determine if it can be removed or relocated in the home.
- Take notice of the benefits of owning less as they arise. Decluttering is life-giving and will affect you in a positive way!
- Finally, revisit and revise your goals; looking for greater impact with your home and life. The process is ongoing and evolving.
3. Peter Walsh Method: Declutter Any Room in 5 Easy Steps
There are just 5 easy steps you need to take to declutter any room with the Peter Walsh Method. The main difference here? Remove every single thing from the room you’re working on. When doing so, make sure to arrange similar items together so it will be easier to sort through them later.
Empty the space. Remove everything from the room! Next, declare your intention for the room and create a vision. Ask yourself, “What do I want from this room?” This will help you decide what to keep and what to get rid of. Next, take the items you’re decluttering and donate or trash them immediately. Last, return the items to your room to complete your vision. Peter Walsh uses these simple steps in every episode of his show, Enough Already! to help families get rid of overwhelming clutter.
For the past 20 years, Peter Walsh has been working internationally helping families declutter and organize their homes and their lives. He is the star of the new Australian series: Space Invaders.
4. Fly Lady: Do a Little Every Day
With the Fly Lady method, you declutter in short bursts and use a 15-minute timer. The goal is to avoid burning yourself out, since decluttering can be a mind-boggling task.
Sort your items into three categories: “Give Away,” “Throw Away,” and “Put Away.” When considering individual items, ask yourself if you love the item, and if you’ve used it recently. Remove duplicate items and keep the better one. Also, think about whether an item has sentimental value, or if it gives you guilt and causes sadness when you see it.
Fly Lady recommends moving fast when you’re in a decluttering sprint. By doing a little every day, your whole house will be decluttered in just a couple of months.
5. Colleen Madsen: Remove 1 Item a Day
Colleen Madsen’s site, 365 Less Things, debuted when she made the decision to remove one item from her home every single day. She committed to giving away, selling, or throwing away one thing each day for one solid year as a promise to herself via a New Year’s resolution. This journey continued for Colleen for four years!
Colleen urges you to start a little purging of your own. Whether you choose one item per day with her philosophy, or more than one to increase the speed of your decluttering, the goal is to declutter every single day—don’t overwhelm yourself.
I tend to think you can make faster progress in your home than just one item per day, but there are many people who have found the slower pace helpful and doable (just be sure you’re not bringing more than one item into your home each day).
A similar decluttering strategy is the Minimalism Game where you remove a number of items coinciding with the day of the month. On the 1st day of the month, you remove 1 item… on the 5th day, you remove 5 items… all through the entire month.
6. The Minimalists Packing Party
If “Party” is in the name, it must be fun, right? Why not make your decluttering journey enjoyable? With this decluttering philosophy created by The Minimalists, the packing party invites you to put all of your possessions into boxes as if you were moving. Invite friends over to help and order pizza.
After the party, remove items from your boxes only as you actually need them. These are the things that add value to your life.
After 3 weeks, you’ll find most of your belongings are still packed away in boxes. At this point, you can donate, sell, or trash these items, and because they’re already packed, you’ll find it much easier to part with it!
7. Leo Babauta: A Comprehensive Guide for a Minimalist Home
Leo Babauta, longtime writer at Zen Habits and one of my earliest inspirations into minimalism, offers a comprehensive guide to creating a minimalist home. There are 3 compelling benefits Leo mentions about having a more minimalist home: it’s less stressful and more calming, it’s more appealing, and it’s easier to clean.
A minimalist home will have only essential furniture, clear surfaces, will prioritize quality over quantity, and will still have personal touches with accent decorations. Leo invites you to change your philosophy on possessions and aim for the ideals of a minimalist home. In his guide, he provides 16 simple tips to declutter, some of which include plain visuals, having a place for everything, and focusing on displaying only the essentials.
Leo’s approach may sound too extreme for some. But it’s your home, you apply the principles how you want to apply them.
8. 40 Bags in 40 Days
In 2011, Ann Marie introduced a simple idea: A forty-day period (coinciding with the 40 days of Lent) where you go through your home and declutter one area a day.
The idea immediately struck a chord with many volunteering to do the challenge alongside her. Annually, it results in one of the largest decluttering movements of the year, including a Facebook group with over 80,000 participants.
This year’s 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge started on Wednesday, February 17th. But if the idea resonates with you, I’d encourage you to get started right away.
The strategy is helpful as you choose the 40 areas that you most want to declutter over the 40 days. And the idea of “filling a bag” encourages more decluttering than just 1 item/day, without becoming overwhelming.
9. Hire Some Decluttering Help (NAPO or NASMM)
Don’t want to declutter by yourself? Enlist the help of NAPO: the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals. The organization has over 3,500 members worldwide who are dedicated to help individuals and organizations bring order and efficiency to their lives.
Or, if you are moving, you may consider enlisting the help of NASMM: the National Association of Senior & Specialty Move Managers.
Both organizations would help guide you on how to hire the right professional for your needs, whether you need decluttering help, a professional organizer, a professional mover, or any combination. As you might expect, fees depend on the professional’s experience, your location, and the services you request.
— —
Without overthinking the options, which strategy resonates the most with you? Pick one, and jump in.
No matter which approach you take, you’ll quickly discover the benefits of decluttering your home. You’ll love owning less.
Dana K White also talks about no mess cluttering. Walk around with a trash and a box. Go to an area and start decluttering by putting each item:
1) Away… put the item where you would think to look for it. Not where it “should” go. You have to be able to find it, if you can’t find it, then it becomes clutter, even if it is useful.
2) In a donatable box… keep this box with you as you declutter and then after you finish for that time, put it in the car so you can run it by a donation center the next time you are out.
3) In a black trash bag. If you can throw it out, use a trash bag you and the kids cannot see through so you don’t second guess yourself.
This way, you can stop at any time without being in the middle or having a huge mess.
She also uses the container method – Let your space dictate what you can keep. If it doesn’t fit, then you decide what else to get rid of or if that item is worth keeping. So if the ottoman is where you store your extra blankets, you can only keep the ones that fit. If a cupboard shelf is the space you have to keep your cookbooks, then you can only keep what will fit. Always choose your absolute favorites and then work down from there measuring against those.
Dawn (The MInimal Mom) has been awesome in her whole approach. Basically, you decide what you keep – her way is more about rethinking how you view stuff. If you see it as inventory you have to manage, then you start to understand how functioning in the day to day doesn’t mean hanging on to things because they are still in good shape and understanding how you actually lose money buy buying because something is on sale. (A lot of focus on understanding how marketing is at work all of the time). Forgiving yourself and letting yourself let go (instead of feeling you have to make use of something because you spent “good money” on it and also understanding “Fantasy Self”.
She talks about the Onion Method as someone else mentions and she has also shared about reverse decluttering – decide how much you need of something and choose your favorites and what is working for you. Keep those and then see what you are missing. Especially with clothes. Choose out of everything the best of what is working for you. If an item is something you pass over because it isn’t comfortable, flattering or in some way doesn’t serve you, donate it.
I like the onion method because it allows you to work up your decluttering muscles. After you start looking at stuff with new eyes, it’s pretty easy to understand what can go first. Declutter the easy things first. Then you work your way to more personal and sentimental items, but you also can make another pass in areas you have decluttered as you start to experience the joy of having less and how little you actually need.
Oh! Also her time will tell bins…. for paper and stuff. You throw items you receive in the mail that you may need but aren’t sure about in a small basket. As time goes on, you go through the basket and usually things expire or become clear you won’t need them. But there is no angst and it keeps your pile from growing too much. In that, you look at the pile of paper and know there might be one or two important documents in there – so it all feels important. If you can pull those things out and either throw the rest away or put it in the time will tell bin, then you don’t end up with piles of mail all over the house.
Also with items you aren’t sure about… put them in a time will tell bin (formally known as the quarantine bin). You aren’t sure? No stress… just put it in the bin, better if the bin is donatable and then mark it to check in 6 months to a year. If you haven’t gone to the bin to find any of those items, you can then donate it at that time.
I think her main thing is tackling mindset and sharing tools that have worked for her. She has a workbook that takes people through step by step and holds their hand if they are new to decluttering and another called Decluttering by Faith with her sister where people can actually working through it as a group and tie it to what the Bible has to say about possessions. The first workbook and also another booklet she created actually go through almost item by item in your home to list how little of each item you can actually manage well with. She said she used to look for things like this when she started her journey so created these for that need. Again – her approach is to do what works for you. These are just guidelines.
She and Dana also have a “Take Your House Back” course with another organizing expert; Cas from Clutterbug where they talk about all these things.
What I like about Dawn is she has really worked to help people see how times have changed and old wisdom will not work in today’s world of easy access and extra income. How after you have your basics met, joy and fulfillment are found elsewhere. She works hard to demonstrate the cost of hanging on to something and okay, so what if you make a “mistake” and declutter something you may need again (last week’s video)… make a plan for those moments if they happen at all. But all the benefit of decluttering (and money you save from becoming more conscious in buying) will far outweigh anything you may (if ever) have to purchase.
She credits you a lot for her finding her way to minimalism and I think you have been on her channel, so I’m not sure how much of this would be new to you.
I can say that as someone who grew up with not a lot, with a grandmother who grew up during the Great Depression and who also sees potential in things (how something can be fixed or used for something else) following Dawn’s content has helped reshaped my thinking the most with tangible results.
Also the Nester…. she is another that has had a little but important impact. You bring seasons into the house through scent, sound (music) and other means besides just having totes and totes of decoration. Also that minimalism can be cozy and beautiful – not just stark and cold and it doesn’t mean going out and buying all new. You can still buy beautiful and purposeful items. Items that get used can be part of the season.
I always appreciate all these reminders. Trying to stay motivated as I moved from a 2,400 sf home to one that’s 798 sf.
Oooh I can so relate to your share. Went from a 3/2 to a 1/1; besides what was brought into tye 1/1, the stuff that was in storage arrived after my daughter moved out on her own. I am STILL tending to bins and its been oh gosh, 7yrs(?). Still minimizing.
Dawn, The Minimal Mom, should be added to this list. Her videos have been extremely helpful in keeping me encouraged along this journey. Your memes, articles, and videos have been helpful as well, Joshua. Thanks to all of y’all for showing us how to get it done.
How would you describe her specific decluttering strategy?
Please forgive my ignorant hurried comment. Reflecting back now, I do recall her mentioning your method being a big influence in her own decluttering journey, so I would have to say that her strategy would be akin to yours. If I could delete my ignorant comment(s), I would do so, but not sure how to do that. Blessings to you and yours, and thank you again for the good influence you do have on so many of us who are discovering the importance of “less.”
Joshua, Dawn calls her strategy the “Onion Method”… she goes through getting rid of the most obvious stuff first, then goes a little deeper, etc. like peeling an onion
I work for a senior move management company. That is also a good way to declutter. I would purge and declutter regularly before I started this job 3 years ago. Some days when I leave work, I just want to go home and take off anything on a surface in one big swipe.
Dana K White, a slob comes clean. She needs to be on this list. ADHD, getting easily sidetracked. Can’t do a bigger mess it just turns into another pile.
Dana was the best one for me too. Her two rules make so much sense. Now if only I could get DH to try it!
What are her two rules for decluttering Karen?
i like dana’s approach too, especially for people who are overwhelmed. It results in stuff getting gone without making a big mess.
If I wanted to find this item, where would I look for it? Take it there now. If I had no clue that I had this item, donate it to charity because you will never look for it again. Her key directive is to deal with each item that you declutter without making piles to deal with later.
Dana’s two rules are actually questions:
1. “Where would I look for this?” If there is an answer, take it there and put it away immediately. If you need to trash or donate something else to make room for it, do so, but don’t get sidetracked.
2. If there is no answer, ask “If I needed this item, would I even know I have it?” If not, then get rid of it. There is obviously no reason to hold on to it.
These are simple, non-emotional questions that help you do a little decluttering at any time without getting overwhelmed and without making a bigger mess.
I read Marie Kondo and did my closet straight away. It was so exciting and I’ve rediscovered things l love to wear. I know do 15 minutes every few days tackling areas where clutter has begun to gather and am now really noticing the difference. If I need to use something, it’s in its place and is easily accessible
That is me. Piles everywhere. I get wound up ADHD- and tear into everything. I need to do the one room at a time thing as described in this post. Yes, that will be very helpful!
Cas from ClutterBug and Dana K White from A Slob Comes Clean (YouTube) have a lot of helpful strategies for decluttering with ADHD.
I love the packing party. I take a slightly modified approach though – and it works out to be more practical for me – what’s the point of packing away my toothbrush if I already know I’m going to need it in a few hours, right? So I pack away anything I haven’t used in the last year – i make no hard decisions – it’s not going far. The house is instantly clean and fresh – I can breath and taste the benefit of minimalism instantly: time, energy, space – mental and physical. It’s life changing. The clear mind that follows helps me power through and make changes in my life. Sometimes the ‘bit by bit everyday’ just takes too long.
Joshua,
I have a membership to Simplicity Magazine. I could not log in & asked to change the password. But no matter how many times I tried, it would not take any user name I entered. Please help! I’m trying to read the new issue.
Just use the Contact us form right there on the magazine website: https://simplifymagazine.com/contact/
We can get that all sorted out for you.
Dana K. White’s books and blogs inspire me. I think each individual has to find what works for them. It may be that my personality relates to her more than some others, especially those with “systems”.