Do you feel overwhelmed by the state of your house? Whether it's tidy, but crowded or a total mess the answer to making things easier is decluttering. Quite simply the less you have the more spacious your home feels and the easier it is to keep tidy. Getting started on decluttering can feel even more overwhelming, where do you start? Don't stand in your living room looking around at all the chaos. The secret is to get more focused. If you take small steps towards decluttering your home, and keep on top of it regularly, it shouldn’t feel so overwhelming.
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| If you are feeling overwhelmed decluttering can help, but it's also hard to get started |
How To Get Started With Decluttering Your Home
So what small steps can you take in the next few days towards decluttering your home? Here are 5 ideas to help you get started:
1. Start Small: Quite Literally
Small steps towards decluttering your home can really and truly start small. Pick the smallest room in your house and start there. This could be the bathroom, or maybe even the porch. It doesn’t have to be the box room, or utility room, which feel like small rooms but can often become a dumping ground; it can literally be the very smallest room in your home.
By picking somewhere like the porch or a bathroom, you’re also ensuring that there won’t be too much to sort out. These are not rooms that hold huge amounts of items, and you can be ruthless: chuck away any out of date toiletries or half-used items of make up, and go through all of the kids’ shoes that are too small and cluttering up the porch.
Once you’ve started small, it can give you the motivation to start decluttering the rest of your home.
2. And If You Can’t Start Small, Start Smaller
Does a room such as a porch or a bathroom still feel like too big a job to tackle? If so, start with a cupboard.
Try a cupboard in a kitchen or bathroom, or perhaps the airing cupboard, that isn’t completely overstocked with items, otherwise it will feel overwhelming. Start with a cupboard that you know you can tackle and organise well in the time that you have available to you. The satisfaction of this space being tidy should propel you forward.
3. And If You Can’t Start Smaller, Start Micro!
Don’t underestimate the power of decluttering a micro space. By this I mean a shelf or a surface. Even this small amount of decluttering will feel good enough to spur you on.
This is also a good tip for those times when you are itching to organise and declutter your home, but don't have a huge amount of time available; perhaps you only have half an hour on a Saturday morning before becoming the taxi driver parent for clubs and hobbies. If so, this is one of the handiest small steps towards decluttering your home that you can employ regularly.
Micro-decluttering is also a great way of keeping on top of the clutter, particularly items which gets left on surfaces such as table tops to help it all building back up again.
4. Set Yourself A Goal To Donate A Certain Amount Of Items Per Week
A great way of starting small with your decluttering is to set yourself a goal to donate a certain amount of items per week. Set yourself a realistic goal based on how much time you have and how you feel about letting go of items and see if you can work towards your goal each week.
You may also want to start with the ‘one item in, one item out’ rule, whereby every time you buy something new (other than food) and bring it into your home, something that you’ve been hanging on to has to go. This may feel less overwhelming for getting rid of items, as you’re not decluttering lots of items in one go.
5. See How Much You Can Declutter In 10 Minutes
Another good tip for those moments when you haven’t got a huge amount of time on your hands is to see how much you can declutter in 10 minutes. This is a great starting point for decluttering when it feels overwhelming, too.
In 10 minutes you can get rid of a fair amount of items, but it’s not enough time to pull everything out into a bigger space and then become overwhelmed with the task at hand. So why not set a timer, maybe put on your favourite playlist, and start with just 10 minutes of decluttering? You’ll be surprised how much you can do with this small step, and after 10 minutes, if you have more time, you may decide to keep going!
Have you got any more tried and tested small steps towards decluttering your home? Let me know in the comments below what works for you!
