Decluttering with Peace and Purpose

Decluttering isn’t just about randomly getting rid of stuff because you haven’t used it in the past six months. Instead, clearing clutter creates space in your home for the activities you want to do. And creating order in your home also saves you time, money, and stress!
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Learn what steps to take…in what order…and eliminate overwhelm and doubt in favor of calm, intentional decluttering. 

by Susan McCarthy

The most common question I get asked is, “Where do I start to declutter my house?”

And the answer is … by understanding what you want to accomplish and why that goal is important to you. (Ha! Did you think the answer was going to be ‘your closet’?)

The following activity helps you to clarify what you’re decluttering and why. Don’t skip this step because it seems a bit woo-woo. Getting clear on your destination helps you save time, energy, and stress while decluttering.
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Instead of holding onto things just in case you need them someday, you can go to your vision of the life and home you want and know if that item will be beneficial to you.

To better understand what matters to you, do this visualization activity:

1. Close your eyes and picture the life you want. 
2. Next, imagine moving from room to room in a home that supports your life. Pay attention to the details and how you feel just by being in a room. If you can, imagine yourself and the others in your life doing everyday activities in the room. Notice how the room functions.
3. When your image is clear, write it down as a list. Don’t try to organize the details in any order, just be as descriptive as you can. (This isn’t a to-do list; it’s your vision for your home, what you want.)
   
4. Note how these details make you feel. This is your why for decluttering; your motivation.
   
5. On a new sheet of paper, list how you’ll go from the current condition in your home to the organized home in your vision. Be detailed versus simply noting “declutter bedroom.” (You can always type up your list so you can cut and paste actions into a sensible order.) Bonus points if you write your actions as intentions … “I will (specific action) (when - day and time) (where in your home or in a room).”

Starting the decluttering process with a trash bag in hand will only get you so far. You’ll clear away obvious trash and recyclable items. You’ll get rid of duplicates and things that you know for certain you won’t use. 

But chances are you’ll hold onto stuff that you’ll never go looking for … ever. And while you may be thinking that you have the space to store these things, so, what’s the big deal if you keep this stuff, it is more challenging to keep more stuff tidy over time.
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Knowing your goal and the reason why you are decluttering helps you to stay focused while sorting through your stuff. 

Know This Will Likely Take More Time Than You Think (or Hope) It Will

How quickly you can declutter your home depends upon a few things.

1. How much stuff you have. 
2. The amount and frequency of time you can devote to decluttering.
3. How quickly you can make decisions. 
4. How much new stuff that you bring into your home. 

What you have is what you have … that’s why you’re decluttering. However, you have more control over the next three factors on that list. 

Will you devote 15 minutes a day to decluttering or one hour? Will you block four hours every Saturday morning to clearing out the clutter?

Commit to the time you will declutter. Again, set your intention, “I will do (what) (when) (where).” Sometimes your intention can be stated in a single sentence … and at other times you’ll need to write a paragraph or two to get clear on what you expect to get done. 

Do not, I repeat, do not tell yourself that you’ll “fit in” decluttering to your schedule. If you want to get this done, whether your timeline is a month or a year, you will need to make time.

This may mean eliminating unnecessary actions or temporarily cutting back on some desirable activities so you’ll have the time to go through all of your stuff. 

You’ll find a chart in the free download where you can categorize your tasks and actions and see how and where you can make time to clear clutter.

Your next consideration is how quickly you can make decisions about individual items. 

Again, this is why gaining clarity with the visualization exercise is so important. Your vision for your home will tell you whether or not you will need or use something someday. 

While there’s all sorts of decluttering questions you can ask of your possessions, they basically come down to - 

• Will you use this item?
• Will you display this item?
• Do you cherish this item?

Make it easy on yourself and identify the stuff that you know for sure that you use and like. 
And don’t talk yourself into holding onto things that you feel indifferent toward because you feel you should because (insert obligation here).

Finally, avoid shopping faster than you can declutter!
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Buying new bedding and donating your old bedding isn’t decluttering, it’s redecorating. Decluttering removes unnecessary things from your home and life. 

Be Kind to Yourself

Decluttering is difficult work physically, mentally, and emotionally. So, 

• Make certain you get enough sleep. 
• Eat nourishing food instead of going for the quick energy of sugar and caffeine. 
• Drink plenty of fluids, dust seems drying (or is that just me?). 
• Give yourself breaks. Five minutes every half hour or ten minutes every hour. Go outside, look out a window, get food and fluids, check your email and texts, play a quick game on your phone, watch a funny video on YouTube. 
• When you feel tired, that’s an indication that you should have stopped a while ago … not that you can keep going for a while longer.
• Focus on defining your decluttering sessions by time, not task. So, tell yourself that you’ll work for two hours as opposed to committing to go through your kitchen cabinets. Since it can be difficult to determine how long a project will take, you don’t want to push yourself past your point of exhaustion and increase your stress levels because you think you should be done. Instead, set a timer. 

Decide Before You Declutter

Another thing to consider before you begin decluttering is what you will do with the things you no longer want. 

• Will you donate? Where? To what organization(s)? What items will they take? Will they pick up donations at your home or do you need to bring things to them? (What days and times are they open?)
• Will you sell stuff? How? Consignment shop? (What will they take? What are their policies?) Facebook Marketplace? Ebay? Yard Sale? Online app?
• Will you give things away to individuals? Those you know? Those you don’t? How about giving the items to schools, libraries, senior centers, nursing homes, theater groups, local museums? Reach out to learn if those you want to give things to will actually take them?

The reason you want to know what you can do with your stuff in the beginning of this process is so that things don’t pile up in your home. Boxes of stuff that haven’t left your home haven’t been decluttered!

Also, the organization you want to give things to may have such limited hours that it’s too inconvenient to get things to them. Better to learn that early on when you have one car trunk full of boxes rather than when you have a wall of boxes piled up in your garage. 

The easier it is for things to leave your home, the more encouraged you’ll feel.
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Looking for worksheets to help you figure out what to do with stuff … and keep track of the things you are getting rid of? Download this free guide.

Declutter!

With hope, the preparation you’ve done is making you feel confident. Remember, just because an item is useful doesn’t mean that you’ll be the one to use it. 

Check in with your vision for your home and life and ask if you see yourself needing an item to support that future. 

So, you know what you’ll be keeping and you know what you’ll do with the things you’ll be getting rid of. What’s next?

Choose a room to work in. You’ll see more progress if you declutter one room at a time. It doesn’t matter whether you’ll declutter the room in a day or a month, focus on one location. 

1. Grab a trash bag and collect anything that is out in the open that can be thrown away. If you have items that can be recycled, you can pop them in a paper bag, or have a bin handy. Right now, focus on things that are on the floor and other flat surfaces rather than the stuff inside drawers and cabinets.
2. Collect any dishes and glasses and bring them to the kitchen.  
3. Gather clothing and shoes and bring them where they belong. Don’t fuss with organizing the shoes or clothing. They weren’t organized 30 seconds ago. Just get them to the room where they should be. 
4. Have a bin, laundry basket, or box available for collecting any other items that belong in another room. At the end of your decluttering session, you can put these things away. Avoid zipping around your house, putting things away as you find them … this opens you to too many opportunities to distract yourself from the project you want to work on. 
5. Have a box ready for items you’ll donate (or sell, if that’s what you’re doing). 
6. If there is a lot of stuff on the floor, pick it up so you have a safe way to move around.  
7. Think of your room as a group of Little Spaces. Instead of dumping the contents of every drawer, shelf, and cabinet into the middle of the room, empty one of those Little Spaces, sort through the items, and return what you’ll keep here. Then move onto the next Little Space. This is my Minimal Mess Method of Decluttering. If you have two hours to declutter and you run out of time before you can finish going through a room, you won’t have a big mess that will hamper the functioning of the room.
8. Keep working in the room until you are done. If you want to rearrange some things and store them in different places, you’ll have an easier time because now there is less stuff in the room.
9. Move onto the next room. However, remember to give a few moments' attention to your organized room every day so that it stays that way!

Organize!

Organizing has nothing to do with bins, drawer dividers, or any other gadget. If you have less stuff, you might not need organizing supplies. 

Organizing items should solve a problem so that it is easier to retrieve and return the items you use. 

• Retrieve = Find what you need, when you need it.
• Return = Put things away. If you want to stay organized, it needs to be just as easy to put something away as it is to put it down.

When it comes to deciding where something belongs, you want things stored where you use them. And the more often you use them, the more accessible they should be. 

So, the roasting pan that gets used twice a year doesn’t earn prime real estate in a cabinet next to your oven. However, the skillet you use every day should be near the stove. 

Also, keep things that get used together near one another. The tablecloth that only gets used in your dining room can get stored there as opposed to upstairs in your linen closet. 

This is why gift wrap could get stored in your home office … because that’s where the scissors, pen, and transparent tape get stored. Not only can you find everything, you can put things away with ease. 

It’s okay if you don’t get it “right” the first time. If you’ve moved something to a new location and it doesn’t work for you, do some problem-solving and try again. 

If you have more stuff than will fit comfortably in a space, you may need to declutter some more. 

The goal is to have some wiggle room around items so you can both see and reach for items with ease; you don’t have to move something to get to something else (unless it’s a rarely used item); and when you remove something, that area doesn’t fall into instant chaos. 
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And remember, shelves, bins, drawer dividers, etc. all take up space, they don’t create space.

Keep It Organized!

I know, after you organize a space that it will look so good that you’ll turn your attention to the next space you’ll declutter. 
But know that “organized” is just a point in time and “being organized” is a process.
Tidying a space to keep it organized is much easier than doing a full-on declutter and organizing after things get out of control.
Some organizing habits to try. Figure out which one (or combination) works the best for you - 

• Tidy as you go. When you walk into another room, carry something with you that belongs someplace else. Instead of leaving your plate in the sink, put it in the dishwasher or wash and towel-dry it. 

 

• Reset the room. When you are finished in a room, reset the space so that it looks the way you want to find it when you do return. This is the “make your bed and put dirty clothes in the hamper” tasks. For the living room, this could look like folding blankets, plumping pillows, removing shoes and plates, and putting the remote where you want to find it.

 

• Evening tidy-up. Grab a bin or empty laundry basket to collect things that are in the wrong room. Quickly tidy the space by removing what is out of place and putting things where they belong. Move quickly from room-to-room. This task isn’t about cleaning dirt or decluttering items. This can take 10 to 20 minutes.

Staying organized moves out of the realm of decluttering and organizing and into that of habits.
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The habits that you’ll keep are those that are easy, obvious, and satisfying. You should be able and interested in doing the action. The more complicated you make the habit, the less likely you’ll do it.

Develop Systems and Routines ​

Some regular actions are really a series of tasks. Take the laundry. You need to collect the dirty clothing, get it to the washing machine, sort into loads, remember to switch the clean clothing into the dryer, collect the clothing, fold or hang the clothes, put them away.

Laundry, washing the dishes, and cleaning chores support your decluttering and organizing efforts. (And decluttering should make them easier to do.)

And while it might not seem to make sense, owning fewer dishes, glasses, and clothing makes it easier to keep these things clean and organized. 

For one, you won’t have “endless” socks or cereal bowls or food storage containers to use and so you can’t allow dirty items to pile up. You’ll need to clean them more often. 

And while that seems like more work, you’ll have fewer items to put away … and this will take less time to do. 

Also, what are you more likely to procrastinate on … doing six loads of laundry (including putting everything away) or doing one load? 

Another way to streamline your routines … pay attention to how much walking around your home you need to do to complete an action. 

Going back to the example of doing laundry, do you carry clean clothing into your living room for folding and then carry the items into the rooms where they belong? Could the clothes get folded in the room where they’re stored?
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As you do chores around the house, start to notice the distance between where something is stored and where it gets used.

Oh, and a mindset to develop is one that involves less shopping. You don’t want to fill up your home with new stuff, undoing your efforts. You can also try getting rid of something each time you do buy something new so to keep a balance in the number of possessions you have.

Acknowledge Your Accomplishments

Remember those reasons you uncovered for wanting to organize a room? Do them!

Did you declutter your bedroom so you’d have space to do yoga? When your bedroom is organized, do yoga! Don’t tell yourself that you have to wait until you’ve gone through your entire house. 

These incentives will help to keep you motivated. If you never allow yourself to enjoy your decluttered spaces, you’ll start to feel deprived. 

Let’s face it, you’re getting rid of all sorts of stuff. You are changing your identity as you clear out things that you realize you’ll never use again. (When you get rid of the skis, you’ll go from someone who could ski someday to someone who used to ski.) 

Also, as you shift your time and energy to new activities, you’ll craft a new identity. 

So, enjoy the results of your efforts with each accomplishment! Invite your neighbor into your tidy kitchen for coffee. Host your book club. Invite friends to dinner. Enjoy spending time crafting in your newly organized space. 

Celebrate all the work you’ve done, each time you complete a room or space in your home!