How to Declutter Your Home in 12 Simple Steps

Living in a home that is as cluttered as a dump site may give a negative impression of you and your family to others but by the same argument, if you live in an immaculately tidy and organized house then your visitors may think of you along the lines of the 'sign' I mentioned at the beginning of this article and do you want to be thought of as 'dull and boring' – why heck no!

Below are some suggestions for finding a happy medium, where friends will view you in a positive light as a well-organized and tidy household without being fanatical about it.

So let's assume that your house is a total disaster area and you need to radically improve all areas of the whole house. This is going to be a huge task no matter how large or small your house is but the principles to follow are going to be exactly the same.

  1. First make a list prioritizing which room or areas of the house need your urgent attention. Dealing with the worst areas first will make such a positive impact affect how you feel that you will be encouraged to continue.
  2. Work on that area and that area alone. Do not get drawn into starting on a second area before the first area is complete.
  3. Estimate how much time each room / area will take to complete. Do not expect to have everything done in one day. In fact it might take you several weeks to complete all the tasks especially if you have limited time available to spend de-cluttering your home so be realistic with your time scales.
  4. Breaking down each task task will help you stop becoming overwhelmed with the number of tasks that you have to do.
  5. Make sure that you stick to the 'one task at a time' and mark it off your list so that seeing the items ticked off also provides you with a positive feeling or achievement and seeing the ticks get longer and the list of tasks getting shorter will encourage and motivate you to continue onto your next task.
  6. The actual cleaning of the rooms will more than likely be the most time-consuming so I would start with this.
  7. Group items of clutter together and put them straight into piles or bin-liners if possible, by this I mean if you have old clothes put them in one bag all together, put shoes in a separate bag together, the same with electrical items or plastic items and then put papers, magazines or books together in a further separate bag.
  8. By keeping the items grouped but in separate piles you have already saved yourself an additional sorting out job for example any paper that need recycling are already all together and can just get recycled immediately and quickly as can the electrical or plastics and the old clothes or shoes can either be donated or sold.
  9. Do not finish until you have completed that first room or area and you are happy with the results that you have. It's always harder to re-motivate yourself to finish off the last bit on another day than it is to actually start a whole new room or area.
  10. Do not leave these piles or bags hanging around the house causing an additional area to de-clutter, get them away from your house as quickly as possible.
  11. Once you have removed the immediate clutter from the first room / area plan into your diary when you are to tackle the next area.
  12. And finally do not forget to build into your routine time to relax, exercise and socialize as well, after all 'Women who have immaculate homes lead dull and boring lives "and we do not want you to fall into that trap do we!