Like many, you might have visited someone’s home that’s meticulously neat and tidy, and left in complete awe over how they do it. Some of us, no matter how hard we try, simply can’t seem to keep our homes tidy and free of clutter. We know it’s not right, but we keep letting the junk pile up and pile up until we’re up to our neck in it! If you’re tired of fighting a losing battle, here are three simple rules to make decluttering easier.
Even though we’re living in an increasingly paperless world, many people still have a steady stream of junk mail and other papers coming into their homes, and causing a colossal mess. This is usually down to us not wanting to deal with them right away, and putting them anywhere that seems convenient at the time. The counter, the kitchen table, the desk, in some drawer we never open. When you actually need to find something, you have to sort through a whole archive of policy updates and takeaway menus before you find it. You can tackle this kind of issue by having a designated inbox or space somewhere in your house. Whether it’s mail, work papers or anything else that could end up cluttering your space, put it in the inbox. Getting into this system will make papers easier to find, and to throw out!
What is clutter, really? Just stuff that’s somewhere it shouldn’t be. It’s as simple as that, and getting rid of it all isn’t exactly climbing Everest! Obviously, if you can’t see the floor in certain places of your house due to the sheer amount of junk you have, it’s going to take a long time to clear the whole house of clutter. However, you can still make a real difference by chipping away at it all in smaller increments. One great way of doing this is setting yourself a de-cluttering rule for every time you leave any room in your house. Before you walk through that door, have a look around and pick up, say, three items which aren’t where they belong. Don’t get distracted, and take them straight to their homes before you do anything else. It can take some getting used to, but rules like this can make things so much simpler.
Image from Pixabay
If you wait until you “feel like it” to get on with a big de-cluttering session, it’s probably never going to happen! However, if you set yourself a firm date somewhere on the horizon and stick to it, you may find the task so much easier. Consider renting a dumpster for a weekend, then sweeping your whole home top to bottom, throwing out anything that’s junk and finding places for anything that you want to keep. If you really, really hate tidying up that much, arrange a treat for yourself at the end of it all. That should help to keep you going!
Main Image: Flickr