Before you get started with organizing your clutter, have a look around your home to discover the spaces where you have a lot of clutter. Is it on table tops, kitchen benches, on shelves, in drawers or cupboards? You will be surprised to find that most of your clutter will be contained to a few main areas in your home.
After you’ve identified the clutter, figure out why it’s there. Is it a pile of papers because you don’t have a designated place to but your bills before you pay them? Or is it because the designated place for the bills is inconvenient to access, or too congested to hold more bills?
Are your children’s toys messy and all over the place because there are too many, or because there is no proper organization system, or not enough storage options for them to be put away neatly.
You can now work through the rest of your home and determine why the clutter is there. Once you have been through your house and determined what the problem areas are, you are ready to battle your clutter and on track towards a clutter free home. As you now know where the clutter is and why it’s there, it will be quite simple to plan how to get rid of it.
Tips to declutter and organize your home.
- Plan– Once you have identified where the problem areas are in your home, you can now make a plan as to where to get started.
- Piles– When getting started find a clear area, for example a spare room or the garage floor, then remove everything from the area you wish to declutter to the area you have chosen. Then sort your things into the different piles, things you wish to keep, rubbish to be thrown out, give away pile and one with things to sell.
- Everything in its place-The best way to organize clutter is to make sure every single item in your home has a designated place. The bills won’t pile up on your kitchen bench if they have a convenient and designated storage spot. The scissors will never go missing, if everyone knows where they belong and return them there when they have finished using them.
- Storage solutions– While storage containers do not themselves organize a home, they do serve a purpose in helping you to organize clutter in your home. Once you have identified the important items that you are going to keep and you have a place for them, appropriately sized storage containers are a good choice to further organize those items. Having a container for receipts and one for warranties ensures that you will be able to find what you need quickly without any fuss. You could organize a lot of things around the house like this.
Know when one is enough-While getting organized, you may realize that you have multiples of items (like 5 pairs of kitchen scissors). Is this really needed for your family? If not, get rid of the extras.
- Know when one is enough-While getting organized, you may realize that you have multiples of items (like 5 pairs of kitchen scissors). Is this really needed for your family? If not, get rid of the extras.
- Label– Once you have decided on dedicated places for all of your items, label that place. Label the containers, your cupboard shelves, the inside of drawers, everything. Make sure that you label everything with nice big letters so that it is clear and everybody is able to read them easily.
- Keep sakes– You may have a lot of trouble with this one step while organizing the clutter. You may have crafts that your children have made for you and other items that hold great memories for you and you don’t want to part with these so maybe storing them together in a clearly labelled container would be a great solution. You could have one container for each of your children to organize all of their keep sakes.
To summarize–
The hardest part of organizing clutter is just getting started! Once you have made the decision and actually get started you will be surprised how motivated you will become to complete the task. When you have achieved your desired result, you will be overcome with a sense of satisfaction and relief. This will give you the incentive to organize clutter in the remainder of your home.