How should you declutter?

You have decided to cut the clutter from a room, or basement, or maybe the entire home.

In this article you will learn how you should declutter.

Plan ahead, if you set the day that you will do operation declutter, the first thing to do, is take a look of what needs to be done, evaluate each room if you are doing the whole house. Take a notepad and write where the clutter concentrates more in each room. If it is only one is easier but the fundamental steps would be the same.

In this planning, you should look for three baskets, you will need them to sort things out, so if you don’t have them, buy them. Look well, you might have them somewhere cluttered.

Label them, one is “garbage”, the other “charity” and the other one can be “storage” or “to sell”.

Once you have written where the concentration of clutter is, see if those things can fit and be stored where they need to be placed. If it does not fit, you might want to take notes that you would need additional storage, but don’t buy them yet. You will get rid off several things and might not need the additional space but it is good to know in advance.

The day of declutter operation is coming and you are ready or maybe not so ready!

First of all, you should have predisposition to do it. I say this because when you see clutter, sometimes is overwhelmed and then you don’t feel like you want to do it, then you procrastinate and never get it done and the clutter is accruing more and more, because clutter attracts more clutter.

If you decided to declutter but don’t have the predisposition to do it, then talk to someone close to you and ask him or her to follow up with you and motivate you, or even better, ask for help. You know a sadness divided by two people is less than if you feel it alone.

This is usually necessary when the house is full of clutter everywhere. I know the feeling, I’ve been there, sometimes you just cry and do nothing, sometimes it is so much that you give up. Even if you feel like that, try to overcome it, try to make the work more pleasant. It works for me to listen music, …happy music when I am doing this, sometimes the music makes me dance but you know, you have a better attitude to do the work. So, ask yourself what makes you feel happy and use it indirectly to do the work. Maybe just turning the lights on and have the place bright might work. Just be somehow motivated.

Look at your notes that you have written previously. If you began in one room, check what you wrote for that room, where are the big concentrations of clutter. Tackle the bigger one.

With your baskets begin to sort things out. See item by item and begin to ask yourself if the item is worth to be kept or not. If not and it’s in bad condition, goes directly to the garbage basket, you should line this basket with a trash bag, so when it is full, go directly to the trash.

If it is something that you don’t want anymore but its condition is not so good for selling, then goes to “charity” or if you just want to give it to charity. Remember one man’s trash is another’s treasure.

If it is something you want to keep, first ask yourself what is the place where should be.

Everything has its own imaginary place, it might be something that belongs to a garage instead of being in your room or kitchen, you get the idea. Put it right away, don’t delay on it. Now, if you want to keep it, but you really don’t have place to store it, put it in the “storage” bin for later use. I said later use, because more than probably you will need to declutter the space where it should go, the drawer, bin, container, or wherever should go.

Now, if you decided to sell items, put them in the bin assigned and when is full, take it to your assigned place where you will have the items for sell.

When there is no much clutter, it is just putting things away where they belong and you will finish with some items on the baskets but if you are decluttering a serious accumulation of clutter, then the baskets will help you a lot.

This is just a few things to consider when you are doing the declutter operation. Remember we have talking about decluttering only, we haven’t talked about organizing yet.

You can read more details to do this shore in my ebook that is featured on the right of this page.