Category: Organization

Overcoming Declutter Paralysis in 3 Easy Steps!

You look at a space and can’t even bring yourself to start decluttering it. Declutter Paralysis has kicked in and you don’t know what to do.

You know you need to declutter this space. It’s stressing you out. But you just can’t. You don’t know where or even how to start. Even if you did know, it’s just so overwhelming that you can’t bring yourself to start on it.

I’ve been there before. It’s tough to bring yourself to get past decluttering paralysis, but once you do, things start to get easier. But first you’ve got to get over that hurdle and that’s where I come in.

What is Declutter Paralysis?

Before we get started in trying to overcome Declutter Paralysis, we have to understand what it is. Declutter Paralysis is when you get so overwhelmed by decluttering that you can’t bring yourself to start decluttering.

This can often happen if you’re already stressed out and you’ve got a space that is very cluttered and disorganized. It can also happen if the space is very large or the task is monumental.

My goal is to provide you some easy steps to overcoming declutter paralysis and help you achieve your goals of a decluttered space.

Step 1: Redefine Your Decluttered Vision

Declutter Paralysis is largely a mental state. Half of getting past declutter paralysis is removing that mental block that is preventing you from starting.

I’ve had to clean up some gnarly spaces. The mental thought going through my head that was a little voice saying “I don’t want to do this. I know I have to do this, but this is going to suck. So nope, I’m not going to do this.” This can be an extremely difficult voice to ignore.

One thing I chose to do is redefine what my vision of the decluttered space looked like. So many people get caught on “picture perfection”. Don’t guilt yourself into thinking that you have to have this picture perfect home.

Houses are to be lived in and you are just setting yourself up for failure to try and make it picture perfect all the time. So eliminate that thought right away. You can make it better, but striving for perfect will just set you back where you started.

Step 2: Make it More Manageable

I hear you groaning right now. “Yeah, if it was more manageable, I’d do it already.” Part of declutter paralysis is that most people don’t know how to make the task more manageable. It’s more difficult than it sounds.

Take a look at the space that needs to be decluttered. Start by remembering, you don’t have to do this all at once. Even if you’ve only got a weekend or a day to do it, you don’t have to do it all at once.

Break it Down into Sections

If it’s a big area you are trying to declutter, like an entire room, break it down into sections. It doesn’t matter how many sections you break it down into, just break it down into something that is manageable to you. 

I remember decluttering what is now the kid’s playroom. I needed to have it decluttered and organized by the end of the day because we had guests coming over that night and I’d been working a lot. I’d taken the day off to declutter it.

Declutter paralysis had set in hard. I did not want to tackle that room and it had just gotten worse month after month.

It was a mess. Boxes everywhere from moving. It was the catch-all storage area for everything for years. I ended up breaking it down into 12 different areas to make it more manageable because it was so overwhelming.

Those areas ranged from a single shelf on the book case which was just loaded with stuff to a 10 square foot corner piled high with boxes.

By breaking it down it changed the mindset from “I have to do all this work! It’s never going to get done, I don’t even want to start.” To “I can get this shelf done in the next 30 minutes, it’s small and manageable.” or “I can get this box done in the next 15 minutes and then take a 5-10 minute break.” Once you’ve gotten into this new mindset, you’ve made huge progress in overcoming your declutter paralysis.

When I was decluttering my old home, There were seriously days when all I could bring myself to accomplish was one 2 foot long shelf on a bookcase.

But if that was all I could bring myself to accomplish that day without getting overwhelmed, so be it. I made progress!  As a bonus, once it was decluttered, it remained decluttered. 

Step 3: The Multi-Pass Method

Once it’s broken down into sections, I go through each section on different passes. These different passes are just different levels of effort required to declutter.

First Pass: Low Effort

The first pass is doing the lowest effort work first. The things you don’t have to think about. Start by just eliminating anything that is just garbage. Garbage has no use, no sentimental value, it’s easy to get rid of.

So just bring your trash and recycle bin over and anything that fits into that category, just eliminate right off the top. There! It’s gone! You’ve already made progress! It always amazes me how many items when I am decluttering are just garbage. You may not initially think there is any garbage in the spot you are decluttering, but there probably is.

Second Pass: Items that Make you Feel Bad

For the second pass, I get rid of anything that makes me feel bad or upset. If this reminds you of the KonMari method where she asks ‘Does this Spark Joy?’ It’s because it’s a similar concept.

These items I might get rid of are dead plants because I have zero ability to keep plants alive as I always forget to water them, unfinished projects that you are realistically never going to finish, clothes that you dislike, or even expensive items that make you feel guilty for never using them. 

Third Pass: Items You Don’t Care About

On the third pass, these are things that you don’t really care about. They may still be useful, but you really don’t need them anymore. For example, this might be books and movies that you are never going to read or watch again, items that you’ve replaced with something nicer like old phones, worn out food storage containers, or small appliances. All of these are prime candidates for disposal.

Fourth Pass: Send Things Home

On the fourth pass, I start placing things in their proper home. For example, I decluttered a window sill the other day and I realized I had a tape measure there that hadn’t gotten back into its home after I hung up a coat rack because kids cause chaos and I forgot I had left it there.

This was clearly something that I needed and used, but it was causing clutter by not going to its proper place. Just putting things in their proper home can generally clean up a lot of space.

By the time you’ve gone through all four passes, you should have decluttered the whole space. If you are still cluttered in that space, then go through it again.

Tip and Tricks to Deal with Declutter Paralysis

If you’re still dealing with declutter paralysis, there are lots of ways to deal with it. Here are a few of my go-to tricks that help me get through the process easier:

The Container as Limits Method

One of the big mental blocks I dealt with that caused declutter paralysis was that I have a lot more of something than I actually need but the items are still useful. In this case, it’s helpful to use the container method. Make the container the enemy and not your mind.

A quick example is pens. I have a lot of pens. Do I need 100 pens? Probably not. So I put them in a pen holder and it only held 30 pens. So I took out the 70 pens I didn’t like, that never wrote correctly, were out of ink, etc and left only the 30 I liked.

It was still a lot of pens but I didn’t feel bad about getting rid of those 70 pens anymore because the space only allows for 30.

Take Pictures

If you are still having problems overcoming declutter paralysis, take a picture of the space. Then take 5 minutes and declutter whatever you can in that time. Once the 5 minutes is up, leave the space for the day. Clear it from your mind. Then go back to it the next day and declutter for another 5 minutes. Repeat this until your space is decluttered.

There might be days you only declutter 1-2 items, but at the end you will have a decluttered space. If you are feeling overwhelmed on any day, go back and look at that before photo. Compare it to the progress you’ve made. 

Choose Visible Spots to Declutter

If your whole house is cluttered, then choose the spot that is most visible to you. Sure, your closet in the hall might be a mess, but if you spend 4 hours cleaning it out and then you never look at it, you aren’t ever going to feel like you’ve accomplished anything.

But if you declutter that space that you see every day as you walk in the door, you’ll see your accomplishments and this will help to overcome the declutter paralysis. 

Items You Feel Guilty Getting Rid Of

Are you feeling guilty about potentially getting rid of stuff that was gifted to you? Maybe an item was somewhat valuable or it has sentimental value to someone who gave it to you. So you feel bad getting rid of it.

This is your permission to get rid of it. Acknowledge the guilt associated with getting rid of items and understand that you have the right to let go of things that no longer serve you, even if they were gifted or have sentimental value.

Give yourself permission to release the burden of these items. Remember, once they are in your possession, you have the power to decide what stays and what goes. Embrace the freedom that comes with decluttering.

In conclusion, overcoming declutter paralysis is not only achievable but also empowering. By simply taking the first step, whether it’s tackling one small area or setting a timer for just a few minutes, you can break the cycle of feeling overwhelmed. This initial action serves as a catalyst for further progress, helping you regain control over your environment. Remember, the journey to a more organized and peaceful space begins with that first decisive move. Embrace the process, and you will find that clarity and calm are within your reach.

How to Declutter Your Home Part 2

In part of our series on how to declutter, I want to discuss steps 5-8. I touched on them in the the Article How to Declutter Your Home Part 1, but now I want to go more in depth.

As a quick recap of of the first for steps in process of learning how to declutter, you did the following:

  1. You identified where you want to start.
  2. You broke your area down into manageable tasks.
  3. You started decluttering.
  4. You made a list of projects that came from your decluttering.

If you haven’t done those steps yet, go back and read How to Declutter Your Home Part 1. Then go through that process. Once you’ve done that, come back and let’s start on the next steps.

How to Declutter Your Home Steps 5-8

The next 4 steps in decluttering your home are as follows:

  1. Organize.  
  2. Execute your projects you identified.
  3. Reorganize based on the completion of projects
  4. Declutter as maintenance.

Now that we know all the steps, it’s time to work through each one so you can have a truly decluttered home.

Step 5: Organize

The 5th step in the process of learning how to declutter your home is to organize your space. Depending on the size of the area and how much you have leftover after decluttering, this can either be a very quick process or a very long process.

Organization is broken down into a few basic steps:

  1. Sort and categorize your items that you are organizing. While you were decluttering, you probably already started this process. This means that if you’ve got pens, they all go together. If you have cleaning products, those all go together too. Categorize in a way that makes sense.
  2. Identify storage solutions for your space if needed. For example, organizing my bookshelf I didn’t need storage solutions, I just needed to put my books in place in a manner that made sense. For the top shelf of my desk, I just needed to ungroup things so they looked nice. When it came to organizing my closet, I needed storage solutions for the various seasonal decorations, air mattresses, and other things stored there.
  3. Label as needed. Labels are extremely important in organization. Especially if you have storage solutions. These ensure that you always know what is in any given storage container and only the items that belong there, end up in that container.

It’s extremely important when you are learning how to declutter that you figure out an organizational system that works for you. You will want to ensure it is well thought out. Otherwise you will end up with a cluttered mess again.

Step 6: Execute the Projects You Identified

So you identified some more projects to take care of. Now that you’ve decluttered that space you were working on, it’s time to start executing the other projects you wrote down to take care of.

During this phase, you are going to start back at step 3, the decluttering phase. For each of the projects that you identified during your previous decluttering steps, you are going to prioritize and execute them in whichever order makes the most sense.

For example, let’s say when I decluttered my desk, I still had that jar of pens that I needed to go through, a now neatly decluttered stack of papers, and a disorganized storage tub that has a bunch of old computer parts in it.

I would then prioritize each of these items in a way that made the most sense for me. The paper was going to be the most time consuming and least visually impactful. The pens wouldn’t be visually impactful and it would be quick. The storage container was going to be the most visually impactful, but emotionally consuming.

In the end, I chose the storage tub of computer parts and started going through that process to start on. This goes back to my previous statement, when you are trying to figure out how to declutter, there is no right or wrong way.

While I opted for the most visually impactful, you might choose the path of the most time consuming just to get it out of the way. Both are perfectly fine.

Step 7: Reorganize Based on Project Completion

Now that you’ve executed your other projects, you will need to reorganize. This is important because a lot of times when you organize other things, you may find that areas you already decluttered either now look more cluttered because you found things that actually belong there. Or maybe you got rid of things and now it doesn’t look as organized anymore.

In this step of the how to declutter process, you will make sure that you aren’t taking step backwards. By reorganizing, you are ensuring that things stay neat and orderly.

In the process of learning how to declutter, this step tends to be more aesthetic but still important. What good is a decluttered home if it still looks bad?

For example, I decluttered one of my counters and I had project that came out of it to go through a bunch of bottles for when I home brew. At the end of sorting through all of them, all of which did belong on that counter I ended up with everything shoved in a corner. A significantly smaller amount of bottles, but they were still shoved in a corner. So during this reorganization step I made it look nice and fit in with the rest of the aesthetic of the counter.

Step 8: Declutter as Maintenance

Step 8 in the process of learning how to declutter is to declutter as maintenance. Decluttering as maintenance means that you are consistently going back to a space that you decluttered to ensure that it remains decluttered.

Depending on the location, you may want to go back to it monthly, weekly, or even daily to ensure that it remains decluttered.

For example, our kitchen counter where mail from the day frequently lands, I will clean off and declutter daily. We have a table that always seems to collect kids stuff throughout the week. I tend to declutter that weekly. Other places like my closet I declutter every 6 months or so depending on what fits and what is worn out.

As you complete these 4 steps, you will start seeing a change in how cluttered your house is. Keeping your house clutter free will result in less stress and anxiety and ultimately it will help improve your life.

How to Declutter Your Home Part 1

Do you need to learn how to declutter your home? Don’t worry, I had to learn too. It’s not as difficult as it seems. Let me tell you a quick story.

Around 3 months into the pandemic, I was starting to feel overwhelmed. I’d already been working from home since 2019 but now I was stuck at home.

I had all this stuff around me and I came to a realization: a major source of my anxiety was clutter. Thus began my decluttering journey.

Let’s be honest here, trying to figure out how to declutter is a daunting task. It seems like a never ending chore. There is some truth to that. That is why it’s so important to remember this mantra:

“Decluttering is not a task, it’s a journey.”

I tell myself this a lot when I start to get overwhelmed with the clutter. Unless you live alone, never have anyone over at your house, and have complete 100% control of anything that comes in and out of your house.

Clutter is going to creep up on you. Even when you live alone, it can still start to take over. All it takes is a few days of being overwhelmed at work and not having time to clean up. You tried making something new and now you’ve got extra supplies in your cupboard that you may never use. Suddenly you’ve got clutter.

Don’t despair. Clutter happens and once you’ve gotten it to a manageable state, it’s easier to get back into that manageable state. If clutter starts to take over again, just remember, it’s a journey. 

How to Declutter in just 4 Steps!

The overall process of decluttering can be broken down into the following major 4 steps:

  1. Identify where you want to start?
  2. Break it down into manageable tasks
  3. Start decluttering
  4. Identify projects that come from the decluttering, but don’t complete them.

Now step 4 may sound counterintuitive. For example, what if I find that I have 50 pens that I’m not sure if they work or not? Wouldn’t I want to go through them all to declutter them?

Yes, but that is a time consuming project that takes away from what you are trying to do. It’s better to put them all in a single home and tackle that later. 

How to Declutter Steps 5-8

Wait! I thought there were only 4 steps! So why do I have steps 5-8 here? These aren’t all directly decluttering steps. If you really want to know how to declutter, you will want to do these steps afterwards.

  1. Organize.  
  2. Execute your projects you identified.
  3. Reorganize based on the completion of projects
  4. Declutter as maintenance.

Now Step 5: Organize may seem like it’s out of order. It’s not. Some of these projects may take you days or months to complete. Do you really want to put the declutter on hold while you wait to complete those?

Step 1: Identify where you want to start

Now that we have covered that there are 8 steps total in our ‘how to declutter journey’, let’s go back to Step 1. Where do we begin with this? Depending on the size of your house, this could be a very tough question. 

I’m blessed or cursed depending on how you look at it to live in a fairly large house. Blessed because it gives plenty of room for my kids to run around, that I have my own space, and things aren’t cramped. The downside of it is that there is a lot more room for ‘stuff’. And boy does it pile up quickly. 

As a general rule, when you are choosing where to declutter you want to choose a place that is visible to you. Sure I could start with the closet under the stairs and get that all organized. But do you know how often I open that closet?

Roughly once a week. I could spend all afternoon decluttering it and cleaning it out and at the end of the day I will pretty much never see the work I did in there.

A bit part of learning how to declutter is mental. So you don’t want to start in an area where it will seem like you didn’t do anything at all. 

So, choose a spot that you see every day. That way when you look at it, you see the work you put into it and are more motivated to keep going instead of decluttering being an endless drag that never seems to accomplish anything.

Why do you want to declutter?

When you are trying to figure this out, take a look around you and try and figure out what do you see everyday that is causing you to want to declutter. Perhaps it’s an endless collection of shoes and coats that pile up by the door. Maybe it’s the dining room table that just always seems to be covered in papers and never actually usable for dinner. 

Narrowing It Down

You may have to take a step back to figure it out. I knew that I had anxiety from the clutter, but I was having problems figuring out what it was that was causing that anxiety that made me want to declutter in the first place.

Was it that my office was a mess? That it was always difficult to find what I was looking for in the kitchen and now suddenly we had ants? Was it the fact that we’d been living in this house for almost 3 years and we still had boxes that had never been unpacked from when we first moved here in the ‘storage room’ or as I called it, the junk room.

As I thought about it, the two logical answers were the kitchen and my office. The kitchen was an obvious choice because the ants were getting out of control and I really really hate ants.

My office was the alternative answer because it was where I spent most of my time during the day and it was where I would likely see the most visible impact of my decluttering process. 

What Can I Act On?

With that narrowed down, I asked myself a new question: What is within my ability to act on? Just looking around the house, I realized there was a lot of things that belonged to my wife.

Especially in the kitchen since when we moved in together she already had a complete kitchen full of pretty nice things, so I got rid of most of my kitchen stuff years ago. If you want to know how to declutter, you have to know the golden rule:

“Don’t get rid of someone else’s stuff unless you have permission.”

Now that’s not saying you can’t move their stuff, it’s just saying don’t get rid of it.

So I decided to start in my home office. This room is mostly my domain with just a small corner that my wife’s desk is in. Also being that I work from home, this was the area of the house that I spend the most time in, so this looked like an ideal candidate to start. So now that I had the room figured out, it was time to begin Step 2.

Step 2: Break It Down

The second part of learning how to declutter is learning how to break down things into more manageable tasks. Depending on what and where you are decluttering, these tasks could be as large as “this quadrant of my garage” to “this shelf in my bathroom”.

My office had three major areas that were cluttered. My desk, my bookshelf, and the closet. Looking at my desk, yes it was cluttered but it didn’t affect my ability to work every day.

I could tell it wasn’t the source of my anxiety in the room. Looking at the closet, it just seemed far too overwhelming to start with. So I decided on the bookshelf.

Just a simple bookshelf with 5 shelves on it. It was kind of a mess. The books weren’t really organized on it, there was random stuff on the shelves. It was visually unappealing.

Especially since this is what people would see if I turned on my camera for work because it was directly behind me. This was an embarrassment and it needed to be fixed.

Rules of Decluttering

Before I began working on this, I made a a few rules for myself. 

Rule #1: It’s OK to keep things.

Especially if you are just starting to figure out how to declutter, the whole process can be very overwhelming. Just remember, this is a journey. Personally, I tend to do a major declutter about once every 6-8 months.

Just because I kept it this time doesn’t mean I will keep it next time. When I was learning how to declutter, I found that often times it was just too difficult emotionally or mentally to figure out if something was worth keeping.

That is perfectly fine. Decluttering is a highly emotional process. Keep that book, that cable, whatever it is. This isn’t the last time you will be decluttering, so it’s OK to keep it.

Rule #2: Get Rid of Anything Broken

Sometimes things are just not worth fixing. If that is the case, just get rid of it. A big part of learning how to declutter is knowing when to let go. This was difficult for me because I grew up in a household where we saved absolutely everything.

I knew I had items in the house that would cost more to repair than replace them. For example, I have some battery powered lights that are part of holiday decorations. A new battery was going to cost $5 for them. Not bad right? Until I realized I could replace the entire light for $1.

Sometimes there are items that actually wouldn’t cost too much to repair. In those cases, you have to be brutally honest with yourself. Are you really going to fix it? The vacuum that I spent $500 on, yeah I probably would. That kids toy that needs the wiring fixed on it, probably not.

When you are learning how to declutter your home, it’s important to learn the mantra of Elsa. “Let it go!”

Rule #3: Everything Needs A Proper Home

When you are learning the rules of how to declutter, this is the absolute most important rule. Everything needs a proper home. And not just tossing it in a pile somewhere. It needs a legitimate home.

This means that it should go in a place where it makes sense to find that object. If it is just tossed into a junk drawer, that isn’t a proper home. That is procrastinating and forcing you to deal with it later.

Maybe that home is a storage tub, maybe it’s properly displaying something on a shelf or a wall, or putting it in a drawer with similar items. Those are all acceptable.

I’m going to use twist ties for an example because people love twist ties. If you are putting twist ties in a box with other organizational tools then that is acceptable and it counts as a home. If you are just throwing them into a random drawer to get them out of the way, that does not count as a home.

Step 3: Start Decluttering

This is where the action takes place. This is also where most people get overwhelmed. As you learn how to declutter, it’s important to know that there are two major paths that you can take to decluttering a space.

Path 1: Take Everything Out

Your first option is to take everything out of the spot and put it in spot where you can sort through each item one by one and get rid of things you don’t need.

The major benefit of this method is that you see absolutely everything that you have in that single space. The downside is that if you don’t have time to finish decluttering, you are going to be left with a mess until you finish.

Depending on your lifestyle, this may or may not work for you. I am a parent of young children. This means anything left out is subject to be grabbed and walked off with by little fingers. This method works only in spots of the house that are off limits to my kids, which there aren’t very many of.

For that reason alone, I very rarely use this method. Also, in general I find this method more helpful when organizing than decluttering.

Path 2: Leave Everything In Place

Your second option is to leave everything in the space that it’s in, then sort through the items. In this method, you are going to leave the bulk of the items in place and declutter one by one.

I know a lot of people struggle with this method when they are trying to figure out how to declutter a space, because this method makes it harder to see everything that you have in a particular space.

This is especially true when you are working in spaces like pantries or closets. However, the upside of this is that if you have limited time to declutter, you aren’t left with a mess afterwards that causes more stress.

As a parent of young children, I often have to use this method to tackle spaces. Sometimes my decluttering time is limited to 15-30 minutes and taking everything out of a space to declutter it just isn’t feasible. The kids will wake up and then I’ll have to deal with a mess and kids who think everything from a cardboard box to that expensive vase is a toy.

In the end, choose the method that works best for you. Part of learning how to declutter is learning about yourself and how you function. There is no right or wrong way to declutter as long as it gets done.

Step 4: Identify Projects from decluttering

Sometimes when you are decluttering you’ll find other projects that need to be completed. Now it’s very tempting to start in on those right away. Don’t do it! Part of learning how to declutter is learning restraint.

You don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of half finished projects. Then you will be in a cluttered and probably messier spot than you started with. Instead, write down the project so that you don’t forget to tackle it later.

Let’s take pens for example. I have a pen jar with probably 50 pens in it. Going through and making sure each one works is a tedious task. Some of them were good for sure, some of them were specialty use.

But the pens were all contained and I actually had room for more. Going through the task of sorting through all the pens, while it was a necessary task, it didn’t need to be accomplished right at that moment.

Sorting through them would be counterproductive to the decluttering processes. So rather than sorting through them, I added them to my decluttering project list and kept decluttering the spot I had designated to work on. This kept in on my radar but didn’t stop me from completing my task.

Now keep in mind, you’ll be performing Steps 3 and 4 at the same time. Keep working on getting rid of things. Once you’ve gone through all the items in that area, congratulations you are done! You’ve got a decluttered area!

Yes, it’s that easy, but it can still be daunting. Fortunately, if you still need help with learning how to declutter, I am here to help with Part 2!

Part 2 of this series will cover Steps 5-8 that I listed above.

5 Tips to Declutter A Garage

“Go clean up the garage.” Those are five very dreadful words. Everyone hates trying to declutter a garage. For whatever reason, the garage always seems to become a mess.

It becomes a catch-all for everything from random seasonal stuff to unfinished projects to cardboard boxes. Oh so many cardboard boxes. I just look around my neighborhood and see all the cars that are in people’s driveways because they won’t fit in the garage. 

If you are reading this, it’s likely because you are trying to figure out how to declutter a garage. Trying to declutter a garage is unique challenge though because it tends to be an area where the solution tends to be less about decluttering and more about utilizing your space in a better manner.

This is because unlike other rooms in the house, the garage doesn’t tend to have furniture. It’s generally a large empty room that you put cars in. 

As I looked at our garage, I realized almost everything in there belonged in the garage. I’m not going to store power tools in the living room where I’ve got shelves!

The bikes took up a lot of room too. Most everything actually belonged in the garage but it just looked horrible! Now our garage is neat (most of the time) and we can always park our cars in there. So how did I do it?

Steps to Declutter A Garage

Step 1: Take Inventory and do a Primary Purge

The first step to declutter a garage is to take inventory of what you have. Now I don’t mean create a exhaustive physical list, but at least get a good idea of what you have. Power tools, lawn maintenance equipment, car maintenance tools, bikes, outdoor kids toys, the whole 9 yards.

When you are taking inventory, this is a great time to do what I call ‘The Primary Purge’. This means that as I am doing an initial look over of what I’ve got in the garage, if I see broken or useless items or things I never use, I just get rid of them on the spot.

In some cases this means putting things in the garbage, in other cases it meant putting things in a donation bin. You can’t declutter a garage unless you know what you are working with. It’s also a whole lot easier to organize a garage if you have less stuff to work with..

As I was taking inventory and getting rid of things, I realized that largely everything out there belonged out there, but without any proper storage solutions it was a giant mess.

Step 2: Identify Usable Space

The next thing to do when you declutter a garage is to identify how much usable space you have. Usable space was whatever space you have leftover after the garage is utilized for what you want it for.

In my case that was to park my cars, but maybe that is your workout equipment or even a workbench that you use for your hobbies. This is especially important when you’ve got large items that need to go in your garage, as you may need to work around them.

Once I figured out what kind of useable space I had, I went on to the next step.

3: Visualize Your Space

When you declutter a garage, you really need to visualize the space. I put this step in here because it really helped me figure out a plan for how I wanted to utilize my space.

For example, I realized that the way I was using my space was very poor. If I parked the car in closer to the garage door I’d free up a ton of space. From there I started visualizing the various things I had and how I’d want to store them using the space I had. Which lead me to an important thing I wasn’t thinking of previously:

Step 4: Figure Out How to Utilize Space Vertically and Above

The garage represents a unique space where it’s not necessarily an issue to add in shelving that is hanging from the ceiling. When you declutter a garage, often times the issue is less about having too much stuff and more about not having a good organizational system.

Unlike other places, the garage is not as likely to be a space where you are trying for aesthetics. So this is the perfect place to put hanging storage.

Depending on the height of your garage, you can use this to gain back space that would be otherwise wasted. For example, we keep a chest freezer and a refrigerator in our garage for long term food storage. Due to their size and shape, we could put wall shelving above them.

Enter the ceiling shelves. With those, we were then able to utilize all of that space for storage. It made an ideal spot for all of our holiday decorations and things we really only needed to access once or twice a year.

One thing I will note is don’t put this type of storage above your vehicles. You don’t want to risk anything falling on your vehicles, especially if you don’t properly install them.

For vertical shelving, look at things like pegboards and shelves you can hang on the wall. For example, we found a tire rack that hangs about 8 feet off the ground for our winter snow tires. This works great because it freed up all the space on the ground while looking nice and giving us way more room.

On this same train of thought, we realized we could save room by hanging our bikes on the wall and installing hooks for things like brooms, shovels, rakes, and even our folding chairs.

While it might not be super aesthetically pleasing, we wasted very little space on our walls to ensure that we had maximized our space so that as new and often times temporary items came into the garage we didn’t have to rearrange everything to accommodate.

So for example, right now our kids have PoweWheel trucks. With our upgraded storage we had room for them so we didn’t have to rearrange the garage.

As you are implementing storage onto your walls and ceiling, take a moment and ask yourself if the items you are going to be putting up there are worth the time and effort. Use this as an opportunity to get rid of things that you just don’t want to store.

Step 5: Utilize Standardized Storage Containers

Mismatched storage containers are the bane of my existence and not because they don’t match. When I organized my garage, I picked up a ton of those Black and Yellow Costco Storage tubs. Why?

Because when you have mismatched storage containers, you end up wasting a lot of space. The pile of clear plastic containers that had various tools or Christmas items in them took up far more room than a single Costco Storage tub and held significantly less items. Also when you have to remove them from the shelves, these all stack nicely. 

Even when taking stuff off of shelves it is far more efficient to use standardized containers. The amount of times that I had to dig through a stack of boxes to get to what I was after because it was on the bottom was absurd.

Then the boxes ended up either in a very wobbly stack on the garage floor or spread out across the garage floor to avoid them falling. Then you have to put all of them back! It takes forever!

So, I organized things into the appropriate tubs, labeled them, and then put them all up on the shelves nicely. The result was very little wasted space and a neat and clean looking garage area. 

While you are doing this, this is an ideal time to do a final purge of items. When you declutter a garage, you want to make sure you aren’t putting things back into storage that you don’t want or need.

Key Takeaways to Declutter a Garage

Overall it’s pretty simple to declutter a garage to get it clean and organized. The key items to remember are as follows:

  • Inventory and remove items that don’t belong. 
  • Identify space that could be better utilized and visualize how you want to use it.
  • Install storage on the walls and above or even additional floor shelving if you have room
  • Standardize your storage containers.

Once you’ve gone through this process, your garage should be a neat and orderly place!

How to Declutter Your Kitchen right now

Trying to declutter your kitchen can be a massive undertaking. Depending on the size of your kitchen and what kind of things you have in your kitchen, trying to keep everything in a clean and organized state can seem like an exercise in futility. 

I’ve lived in places with tiny kitchens and large kitchens. They each present their own unique challenges. Fortunately, there are ways to declutter your kitchen and maintain it, even when everything seems hopeless.

Declutter Your Kitchen Counters

This is the thing you are going to see the most when you look at your kitchen. If your countertops are a cluttered mess, this is going to set the tone for the whole kitchen. So when you declutter your kitchen, start with the counters. This is also where you are likely to be preparing food, so maximizing the space and cleanliness here is an absolute necessity.

Dishes

Start simple. Do you have dirty dishes out on the countertop? Put them in the dishwasher or wash them and put them away. If you’ve got clean dishes out on the counter, put them away. Just that little bit of maintenance can make a big dent in your quest to declutter your kitchen. 

Garbage/Trash

Next it’s time to deal with garbage and trash. Perhaps you are lucky and don’t have actual garbage on the counter. However, if your house is like our house, decluttering your kitchen meant getting rid of garbage.

I know it’s not uncommon for us to have trash on the counter. We have young kids and our trash cans are locked behind child-safe locks on cabinets. So when you’ve got kids screaming and you don’t have time, suddenly the garbage ends up on the counter. Do a cursory clean of all those items and throw them away.

Paperwork

For whatever reason people love to keep paperwork in the kitchen. It’s a huge pet peeve of mine. Generally I think it’s because the kitchen tends to be a spot where people land after they get the mail. When you declutter your kitchen, get all the paperwork out of there. It doesn’t belong in the kitchen.

Take a look at the paperwork in your kitchen, if it’s a bill or an actionable item then put it in a spot where you can take action on it outside of the kitchen. If you’ve already got an organizational system in place for paperwork, then use that system for this paperwork.

If not, then take a look at my system for organizing paperwork. For anything that is junk, put it directly in the recycle bin. Get it cleared off the counter. For the purposes of cleaning up paperwork to declutter your kitchen it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Don’t get hung up on setting up an organizational system elsewhere in the house for your paperwork. One job at a time. Just get it out of the kitchen to a spot that is closer to where it belongs.

Small Appliances

Now you’ve gotten the basic maintenance items out of the way. If your kitchen is still cluttered, you may have to look at additional solutions.  It can be helpful to declutter your kitchen appliances.

Look at the appliances on your countertop. Most people have several ranging from microwaves to coffee makers. Are there any appliances up there that you absolutely never use? If so, consider finding new spots for them or getting rid of them.

I know in my old apartment I used the toaster approximately twice over the course of 3 years, but it was occupying precious counter space in my tiny kitchen. So I opted to get rid of it and free up that space.

You may also want to declutter your kitchen appliances that only serve a single purpose. For example, our rice cooker would live on our countertop. So would our InstantPot. Since the InstantPot doubles as a rice cooker, we got rid of the rice cooker and just kept the InstantPot, thus freeing up valuable counter space.

Expensive Items

Now you might be asking, what if an item cost a lot? When you declutter your kitchen, don’t get caught up in the cost of items. If you aren’t using them, then you aren’t getting any value out of them.

Space on your countertop has value and you need to decide if the value of losing the counter space is worth more than the value of the item. Maybe things like a KitchenAid Mixer are worth it, but that toaster isn’t.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide the value of that item in reference to the space it takes up. Remember, you don’t necessarily have to completely get rid of the items off your countertop.

Going back to the KitchenAid Mixer, we don’t use it that often, but it does get used every other month or so. We realized that didn’t warrant the amount of space it took up on our counter. So we found a spot in the cupboard to store it when it wasn’t in use.

Misc Items

If you’re like me, we still had a variety of other items on the countertop that were taking up space. For example, we had coffee pods, chopsticks, fruits, and bread. When you declutter your kitchen and see these things you might think “Wait, these things all belong here!” However, it looked messy and cluttered. So, we introduced the container as limits system.

If you’ve read any of my other articles, you’ll know I’m a big fan of the container as limits system. Which is to say, that you put things in a contained spot and if they don’t fit then you get rid of things until they do. In this way, you are letting the container be the enemy.

For example, we put all of the chopsticks in a coffee cup. After all was said and done, we still had 6 pairs of chopsticks. Because we didn’t have room for those last 6 pairs of chopsticks, we got rid of them. They didn’t fit in the container allotted for them, which meant we had more than we needed.

For the coffee pods we got a little jar that was perfect for holding a box of coffee pods that we got from the store. The pods always end up in that jar as soon as we open the box and they are never spreading across the countertop anymore.

For the fruit and veggies and bread, we put a box on the counter that contains them all. We never buy more than will fit in the box and it keeps them contained and from creeping across the counter.

Keep looking around your counters as you declutter your kitchen. Ask yourself, what else is taking up space and cluttering your counters and what can be contained or gotten rid of?

With young kids, their items take up a lot of room. Especially when they were in the bottle phase. We ended up getting a small set of plastic drawers that fit on the counter easily for all of their bottle items.

With that we were able to contain the mess of all the bottle items that were constantly all over the counter and get them in an organized. When we realized we had too many of something, we got rid off it. 

Once you have containerized and prioritized the items on your countertop, you should have a pretty decluttered and hopefully decently organized countertop. Now it’s time to tackle the cupboards. 

Declutter Your Kitchen Cupboards 

Cupboards are a beast of their own. So often we have items in there that we rarely use but still hold onto for various reasons. Again, let the cupboards be containers and act as the limiter to how much space things can take up.

It makes the cupboards the enemy and not your emotions about whether or not you should keep things. For us the big things that seem to always multiple like rabbits are coffee cups, pint glasses, and storage containers.

Glassware

The way I approached this was to think about how many of each of the coffee cups and pint glasses that was the maximum we’d ever really need.

Figuring in that we are a family of 4 and we’d frequently have 2 guests over, we figured that 6 of each was a good amount. Then we saved our favorite 6 of each one and got rid of the rest. This worked out well because this was approximately how much space we had on the shelf for the glassware. 

Storage Containers

For the storage containers, these I went through and checked to find out which ones didn’t have lids, which ones were cracked, which ones were oddly shaped and never got used, and which ones I knew I hated because they leaked. Anything that met that criteria, I got rid of.

Then I changed my storage method. My goal was no longer to store the maximum amount of things in there, but to store only useful items in there. So rather than stacking them together, I put lids on each container and then stacked them with the lids on.

This also mitigates the unfortunate side effect of if there is just a little bit of moisture anywhere on the glass containers, they will stick together like concrete. 

While this method ultimately took up more room in my cupboard, it’s important to remember that the idea isn’t to fit as many things into the cupboard as possible.

The idea is to declutter it and remove anything that isn’t useful. So by doing this, I forced myself to remove any of the items without lids, the ones I never used, the ones that were chipped, the ones that weren’t microwave safe, etc. 

Pots and Pans

When it came to the other cupboards like pots and pans, I did the same thing. I made sure sets were together, then I stacked them so that I had to analyze whether or not I actually wanted them.

That Wok with the broken handle. Gone! Why do I have these glass pots? I never use them and they are ugly. Gone! I kept using the space of the cupboard as my enemy that decided what stays and what goes and I repeated this through every single cupboard until I had much much less stuff.

Declutter Your Kitchen Drawers

Now in the drawers, I had a lot of single purpose items. Some of them were useful (Like the lemon squeezer) other items like the banana slicer I scratched my head and wondered why we even had that.

For anything that we never used that was a single purpose type of item, I got rid of it to free space for other things. Now one thing to remember, when I say single purpose, I am talking about things that have a purpose that could easily be accomplished by other tools in the kitchen.

Going back to the banana slicer, I could easily accomplish the same task with a butter knife, but a set of measuring spoons is also single purpose but it would be difficult and annoying to use other tools in the kitchen to accomplish what those do. So I kept them.

Final Thoughts

Once you’ve gone through all of this, your kitchen should be a lot less cluttered. You will still need to perform regular maintenance on your kitchen to ensure it doesn’t get cluttered again, but now that you’ve gotten rid of all the extraneous items, you shouldn’t need to declutter your kitchen again.

If you struggle to keep your kitchen clean still, I have some handy steps on how to maintain your kitchen. Remember, it’s always easier to keep your kitchen clean if it contains less clutter.

8 Tips to Organize Your File Cabinet

If you are like me, the thought of having to organize your file cabinet absolutely filled me with dread. Our file cabinet was a mess of disorganized paperwork that was never really sorted through in the first place.

To make it worse it was the combination of two households who had very different and still not very organized filing systems. Basically, the file cabinet is where anything that was ‘this paper looks sort of important’ went to die.

It took a bit of work, but we were eventually able to conquer the file cabinet. Now before you do this, if you have a spouse or significant other who may want a say in how your organize your file cabinet, so make sure that you get them to sign off on it.

This is really important because otherwise you may end up in a situation where they decide they don’t like your new organizational system and it will all fall apart.

And yes, if your file cabinet is really bad, you will need a new organizational system. I’m going to assume that your file cabinet is as bad as mine was and you will need to organize your file cabinet as well as declutter it. If you just need to declutter it because you’ve got all the organization in place, then you are ahead of the game.

Before we go on, I am assuming that you have a file cabinet. However, this system will apply to whatever you use to store your paperwork. For a long time I kept all my items in hanging file boxes rather than a file cabinet because they cheaper and easier to move. Assume I am talking about any place that you store your paperwork when I say ‘organize your file cabinet’.

Items You Need to Organize Your File Cabinet

Before you get started, you will want to get the following items:

  • Hanging file folders
  • Double Pocketed folders
  • A Stapler
  • A Document Scanner
  • A Paper Shredder
  • A USB Thumb Drive
  • A Recycle bin

None of these items are strictly required, but they sure make your life easier. A little up front investment can help a lot as you organize your file cabinet. Each of these items has a very specific purpose in our organizational system.

Hanging Folders and Pocketed Folders

In most cases when you organize your file cabinet, you will need both Hanging Folders and Pocketed Folders. Yes, it may seem redundant to have both, but there is a method to my madness.

At a minimum you will need hanging folders. Keep in mind that I am assuming that you are using a File Cabinet that takes hanging folders. If you are using something like a bankers box for storing your paperwork, pocketed folders may work better for your needs. Use whichever one makes the most sense.

If you live alone, you can probably get away with just the hanging folders or the pocketed folders. However, if you live with other people or have a family, just having hanging folders will cause your organizational system to quickly break down and you will end up having to organize your file cabinet all over again.

So why do I recommend both hanging folders and pocketed folders to organize your file cabinet? It seems redundant doesn’t it?

I found for each person in the family, we will have similar information. For example, my wife and each of my kids has medical records. So I use a hanging folder with the label ‘Medical Records’ on it, then for each member of the family I have an individual pocket folder for all of their medical records.

This means when I have to go look something up for one of my kids, I can just pull out their folder rather than go through everyone’s stuff looking for the file I need.

The Stapler

When you organize your file cabinet, you are going to need a stapler. The use is pretty self explanatory. If you want to ensure that certain documents always remain together, use a stapler.

Not paper clips, a stapler. The 2 seconds of stapling them together can ensure you save a ton of time later trying to piece together multiple pages that got out of order.

The Document Scanner

Get a document scanner to organize your file cabinet. Most people when I tell them this look at me like I’m crazy. The document scanner was a great investment.

While this piece of equipment is optional, the function it serves is not. So I highly recommend it. This was a critical tool for me.

With the document scanner, I was able to scan in documents that I didn’t necessarily need physical copies of but the information would be nice to have in a pinch.

For example, I had some old medical records that maybe would be useful someday, but I didn’t want to hold onto the physical copies. So I scanned them into my computer.

While I recommend a document scanner, if you don’t want to buy one and store it, which I totally understand, your phone has one built in. It’s more time consuming, but it works in a pinch!

If you do choose to buy one, the scanner doesn’t even have to be expensive. I got mine used from a University Surplus Store for cheap and it works great! That’s also where we got our file cabinet because why spend several hundred dollars on one when you can get one that has some scuffs on it for $15?

USB Thumb Drive

You are going to use the USB thumb drive in conjunction with your document scanner. I didn’t really want these documents I scanned in on my computer, so after I scanned them in, I just put them directly on the Thumb Drive and put the Thumb Drive in a safe location.

Document Shredder

The Document Shredder is one of the most essential tools when you organize your file cabinet. You should just have one of these because if you are like me, I am constantly getting mail that could be used for identity theft and for personal identifiable information. This is just good for a peace of mind so that when you dispose of files, they can’t easily be used to have your identity stolen.

Recycle Bin

When you organize your file cabinet, you are going to probably find a lot of stuff that you don’t need. Envelops and advertising that can just go straight into the recycle bin. Make sure you have a bin or bag handy for all of these items.

It’s time to Organize your File Cabinet!

Once you’ve got your supplies, it’s time to start organizing. Now I recommend setting up a staging area for this. I used a card table that I was able to setup in my office for a couple of days because I knew that it wasn’t going to be quick to get though everything.

Then as I pulled things out, I sorted everything into piles. Yours may differ from mine depending on what paperwork you have, but my general piles were as follows:

  • Mortgage/Housing
  • Medical
  • Auto
  • Retirement
  • Household Expenses
  • Taxes
  • Pets
  • Miscellaneous 

When choosing your initial piles, try to keep it very broad. Otherwise you end up with a ton of overwhelming smaller piles of paper. If while sorting through things, you find that you have a lot of a certain category that doesn’t fit neatly into one of these broad categories, create a new pile for it.

As you are sorting through the paperwork, if you find stuff that you don’t need you can dispose of it immediately. This is where the paper shredder comes in handy. If it required shredding, I just shredded it on the spot.

Other items I just tossed directly into the recycle bin. For example, I didn’t really need a receipt for my Internet from 12 years ago when I lived in a different state. Keep in mind if you are getting rid of receipts, most receipt paper cannot be recycled.

The 2 Second Rule

During this initial sort, I made it a point to not spend more than 2 seconds on any piece of paperwork. If I wasn’t sure about it, I just sorted it into what looked like the most correct pile.

By limiting yourself to 2 seconds, you keep yourself moving and you don’t overthink it. Remember, you are trying to organize your file cabinet, not get stuck in sorting paralysis.

Noticing Trends

Be careful with that miscellaneous pile. That one can quickly get out of hand. If while you are sorting you start seeing a lot of a certain type of paperwork going into that miscellaneous pile, you should consider starting a new pile for that type of thing, even if you’ve already sorted out a bunch of those items already. 

While you are doing your initial sorting, try to keep a mental note if you see any kind of trends and categorizations that you may want to separate out later. For example, each of my kids had a lot of medical bills and reports from all the various doctors appointments that you have to go through as infants.

Since each child has differing medical needs and results, I knew I was going to want to split those up into their own folders. Not because I necessarily had a lot of paperwork for them, but I knew that over time they were going to need their own folders. Trust me, your future self will thank you for this.

As a voice of experience, when I was a teenager I had to find some medical paperwork for a trip I was taking. My parents had put the medical paperwork for me and my siblings all in one single folder and it was a struggle to find what I needed.

By separating it out by kid, when I needed some specific information for one of my children last year, I just went to their folder and was easily able to locate it.

Organize Your Categories!

OK, you’ve got all your paperwork sorted out into piles. You now have a table of small stacks of paperwork that is at least sorted into broad categories. Now it’s time to sort through and organize those categories.

Sorting through your individual categories of paperwork and scanning them are going to be the two most time consuming parts of the process when you organize your file cabinet.

Subcategorization

Hopefully you were starting to notice trends in your paperwork when you were doing the initial sort. That will come in handy here. During this subcategorization you will want to sort each stack of papers into smaller piles depending on what it’s related to.

For example, when going through the medical paperwork, I put the medical records for each of my family members into their own piles. For our pets, I split it into two piles. One for each dog that we have. Then all the training, insurance, and medical paperwork went into the corresponding dog’s pile of papers.

I went through every pile of paper doing this. We had 18 years of stuff to go through, so it took several hours to do.

Declutter As You Go

A big part of the process to organize your file cabinet is to get rid of things you don’t need. As you sort through each of these piles, make a decision as to whether or not you really need physical copies of those items.

For example, all of my billing history for things like water, power, etc was available online. I could easily go onto the website for any of my utilities and get that data so there was no reason for me to keep physical copies of any of that paperwork.

It was just causing file cabinet clutter. Other things I found in there were owners manuals for appliances and electronics. All things that are easily found online.

Similarly, I can get bank statements going as far back as I needed from my bank’s website. There was no need to keep any of that paperwork either. Since anything that had personally identifiable information and I didn’t need I shredded. 

Scan what you need

Some of the paperwork I came across and I realized that it may be helpful to have at some point but I really didn’t need the physical paperwork. For example, there was paperwork from the sale of our previous home.

We probably didn’t need it but since this information isn’t easily obtained online I opted to scan this data onto my thumb drive using the document scanner. Once that was done, I was able to shred that paperwork and free up a ton of space in the file cabinet.

Other things that I did similar things to were tax documents. I had over a decade of tax documents. For the record, according to the IRS website, you only need to keep 3 years of tax documents except under special circumstances in which you need to retain 7 years of tax documents. So I kept 3 years, scanned in years 4-7, and shredded the rest. 

Extraneous Paper

While I was doing this second round of sorting, I noticed we had a lot of extraneous paper in with the important items. The number one cause was items in envelopes.

Folded items in envelopes take up more room and are often stuffed with other paperwork you don’t need. If you need to keep the physical paperwork, take it out of the envelopes and dispose of the excess paperwork that comes with it.

Only keep the items that are actually needed. Our insurance provider was notorious for having 2-3 pages in every envelope with ‘terms and conditions’ and ‘this page intentionally left blank’ on it.

Neither of those things are useful to hold onto and you’ll find that it will slim down the amount of stuff in your file cabinet.

When you are pulling this paperwork you want to keep out of the envelopes, if you have multiple pages you should staple them together. As I mentioned earlier, this can save you a lot of time later on.

If you are against staples, use paper clips, but keep in mind those generally take up more room in the file cabinet.

Labeling Folders

One key when you organize your file cabinet is to ensure you have good labels. At this point you should have everything sorted, scanned, and disposed of and you are ready to put thing in their proper home.

Put each of the subcategories into their own pocketed folder. Then put those pocketed folders into a hanging folder. This ensures that like items like medical records are grouped together and easy to find.

I put the broad category I mentioned earlier on each of the hanging folders. So I had a medical folder, I had a retirement folder, I had a pets folder.

For the pocketed folders, I used a naming scheme like this: 

  • Medical – Child 1 
  • Medical – Child 2. 
  • Taxes – My Name – Year. 
  • Taxes – Wife’s Name – Year
  • Taxes – Joint Filing – Year

When all was said and done, I had maybe a quarter of the original amount of items in my file cabinet and everything was much easier to find.

Final Thoughts

When you organize your file cabinet, you are likely to come across a few gotchas. First, forms for mortgages are unreasonably big. To get around this I ended up dedicating an entire drawer to just mortgage information. It’s not efficient, but with all that space freed up it made sense.

Second, when you organize your file cabinet, don’t put things in that don’t belong in there. For example, I found a jewelry box in our file cabinet and some tools. Only put paperwork in there. Everything else belongs in a proper home.

Finally be mindful of what you put in there. Before you file things in there, ask yourself if you really need it. If you do, can you scan it and keep it on the thumb drive? With maintenance, your file cabinet will remain organized.

The 12 Month Declutter Challenge!

Decluttering your home sounds overwhelming right? What if you could spread out the process over the course of a year? With the 12 month declutter challenge, you can do just that! With the 12 month declutter challenge, you can tackle clutter systematically, one space at at a time.

What is the 12 month declutter challenge?

The 12 month declutter challenge is designed to be a transformative journey to help you declutter and organize your home without overwhelming yourself. In the process, you can create a more serene and functional living space.

By dedicating just a little time each month to decluttering, you can achieve significant results and enjoy the benefits of a clutter-free space. The benefit of doing it this way is that you don’t have to tackle the entire house at once. You don’t even have to tackle an entire space at one time. You can tackle it over the course of the month!

While I know a lot of people love to start this in January, this can be started at any time. Personally I like to start this in late winter or early spring because it’s dark and dreary outside and I have more motivation to clean out in the house where I’m stuck. So let’s dive into the challenge!

Month 1: Wardrobe Clean-out.

For the first month of the 12 month declutter challenge, focus on decluttering your wardrobe. This means sorting through your clothing, your shoes, and accessories. 

This is a great opportunity to get rid of clothing that is worn out, faded, or no longer fits you. If there are items that you haven’t worn in a long time, this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of it. 

Don’t be afraid to donate, sell, or just throw away things that you don’t wear or love. Just because you spent money on something or because someone gave it to you, doesn’t mean you have to keep it. 

Month 2: Kitchen Organization

For month 2 of the 12 month declutter challenge, it’s time to tackle your kitchen. You are going to tackle a few different areas here: countertop, the pantry, the cabinets, and the drawers.

I recommend tackling each of these areas in their own small sections throughout the month rather than trying to do it all at once. Otherwise, it’s going to get very overwhelming, very fast. I also recommend that you do them in the following order:

Countertop

Start with the countertops. This is going to be the place where you most visually are going to see a difference. To keep motivated, you want to declutter where you will see a difference.

Get rid of anything that shouldn’t be there or doesn’t get used. This includes things like trash, small appliances that don’t get used, decorations that you don’t like or are difficult to clean, and anything that detracts from the overall look of your kitchen.

Pantry

Next, tackle the pantry. Get rid of all expired food items. If you’ve got stuff in there that you are never going to eat, consider donating it to a food bank. This is a good time to go through your canned food and make sure that it hasn’t gone bad. 

Cabinets

The cabinets should be third on your list. I do these after the countertops and the pantry because otherwise you get the temptation to just shove those things from the countertop into your newly decluttered cabinet space.

In your cabinets, get rid of things you don’t like or don’t use. You probably don’t need 25 coffee mugs. I chose to get rid of a bunch of plates and dishes that we never used but ‘they look nice’. Looking nice wasn’t enough to justify the space in the cupboard. Anything chipped or broken should be disposed of.

Drawers

Be prepared, the drawers are probably going to take up the most time of anything. Use this time to get rid of single purpose kitchen utensils that never get used. For example, we didn’t need a banana slicer, a knife works just fine.

If you’ve got things that are broken, rusting, worn out, or you have tons of duplicates of, get rid of them. I realized we had 11 baking sheets. Now some of them served specific purposes but many of them were just old and gross looking. We reduced it down to 6, keeping the 2 general purpose ones, the 2 that I use specifically for cookies, and the 2 we use for grilling.

Month 3: Do the Paperwork Purge

For the third month of the 12 month declutter challenge, it’s time to do the paperwork purge.

If you are lucky, you’ve got all this contained to a specific section of the house. If you are unlucky like me, it was spread through several rooms depending on where we could find quiet time to get things done while the kids were napping.

Sort through bills, receipts, and files, and shred or recycle any unnecessary paperwork. I also like to use this time to scan in any files that are ‘nice to have’ but I don’t need physical copies of. 

Month 4: Living Room Refresh

For month four of the 12 month declutter challenge, declutter your living room. If you have excess furniture, get rid of it. Declutter those old electronics that you never use and are just collecting dust.

If you’ve got decorations you don’t like, donate or sell them. This is also a good time to get rid of an extraneous physical media that you don’t use anymore like CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Ray discs. 

Declutter until you’ve made your living room into a cozy and inviting space, leaving only things that have a purpose or that you enjoy.

Month 5: The Bathroom Makeover

For the fifth month of the 12 month declutter challenge, you are going to declutter your bathroom. Or bathrooms depending on how many are in the house. 

If you have expired or empty toiletries, get rid of them. This includes things like old lotions, shampoos, creams, expired medicine, and makeup. 

If you have old towels that you don’t like using, get rid of those too. Leave only the ones you like or use.

Organize each drawer and cabinet so that everything is easily found and accessible.

Month 6: The Bedroom Retreat

For month six of the 12 month declutter challenge, it’s time to turn your bedroom into a relaxing retreat. 

Clean out any storage you have under the bed so that it only contains what needs to be there. Get rid of old bedding you never use. Declutter your bedside table so that they look nice and only contain the essentials.

If you’ve got extra furniture in your bedroom that you never use, like that chair that only seems to collect laundry, get rid of it. 

Create a serene sleep environment by keeping only the things you need in the bedroom and nothing else.

Month 7: Home Office Cleanup

For month seven of the 12 month declutter challenge, declutter your home office. If you don’t have a home office, this might be an easy month for you. Instead use this time to take care of the space where you computer is or where you generally do any kind of administrative work for your home like paying bills.

For this month, organize any paperwork you might have. Since you did a paperwork purge a few months earlier, you should have less to organize at this point. 

If you have electronics that you never use, get rid of them. If you have random cables for things that you aren’t sure what they are for, get rid of those too. If you haven’t used them by now, you probably never will. 

For the rest of the cables, make sure they are organized and bundled together to look neat and tidy. I use Velcro cable ties, but twist ties will often work just as well.

At the end of the day, you want your home office area to be a functional workspace that promotes productivity and creativity.

Month 8: The Great Closet Overhaul

For month eight of the 12 month declutter challenge, it’s time to tackle your closets.

Take the opportunity to go through every closet in your home. Clear out any seasonal clothing. Get rid of old shoes you don’t wear. Declutter those shoe racks and get rid of those uncomfortable shoes you never wear. Organize your accessories for easy access.

Month 9: Storage Space Simplification

For month 9 of the 12 month declutter challenge, we will take on storage space. This means, places like the garage, the attic, the basement, or that one closet you avoided last month because it’s a storage space rather than an actual closet.

Get rid of anything that is broken. If you’ve got unused or duplicate items, sell or donate them. This is also a good opportunity to declutter decorations you don’t like or don’t use. 

Month 10: Sentimental Items

For month ten of the 12 month declutter challenge, it’s time to go through Sentimental items.

These are things like keepsakes, photos, and memorabilia. Especially if you’ve traveled a lot, you may have a lot of random touristy things you’ve picked up over the years. Get rid of items that you don’t really care about. Only keep things that hold significant meaning or bring you joy.

Month 11: Digital Clutter

For month eleven of the 12 month declutter challenge, we are going a bit more abstract and we are going to get rid of digital clutter.

Digital clutter needs management just as much management as your home. Use this month to organize and clear out files on your computer. 

On your phone, evaluate the apps that you use and get rid of ones that you don’t ever use. If you are like me, you probably have a million tabs open on your phone. Close them out and only keep open the ones you need.

This is also a great opportunity to clear out and unsubscribe from any email newsletters you don’t want clogging your inbox.

Month 12: Final Touches and Maintenance

Wrap up the declutter challenge by completing any remaining tasks and implementing maintenance routines to keep clutter at bay. Set aside time each month for regular decluttering and organization to maintain a clutter-free home.

Final Thoughts!

12 months is a long time to be working on decluttering, but you did it! Congratulations on completing the 12 Month Declutter Challenge! By dedicating just a little time each month to decluttering and organizing, you’ve transformed your home into a more serene and functional living space. Enjoy the benefits of a clutter-free environment and continue to maintain your organized home for years to come. Cheers to a happier and more organized life!

7 Steps to Declutter your Bedroom Fast!

In just 7 steps, you can declutter your bedroom fast and live a less cluttered and more organized life!

Is your bedroom a cluttered mess? Growing up, mine was, but it didn’t have to be. I eventually figured out how to tame the clutter and I want to help you declutter your bedroom too!

With my bedroom being the only space I could contain all of my stuff and keep it away from my siblings and have me time, my room was usually a mess. Especially since my room was the smallest one in the house. Not quite Harry Potter closet under the stairs small, but it wasn’t big. 

Declutter Your Bedroom? Why is it so hard!?

If you have a messy bedroom, trying to declutter your bedroom can seem like a daunting task. Especially if you have a lot of stuff in a small space. Quite often when I see people with cluttered bedrooms, they have too much stuff, a lack of organization, and even clothing on the floor.

This makes for a frustrating place to live. It’s not good for your mental health and quite frankly it causes a lot of people stress just thinking about the idea of having to clean it up.

The more stuff you have in your room, the messier it looks, the more difficult it will seem mentally to clean it up. I assure you, this is purely a mental blocker. Actually decluttering your bedroom is easy!

Step 1: Assess The Situation.

The first thing you will want to do is assess the situation. Why do you want to declutter your bedroom? What is it that is making your bedroom seem cluttered?

Is it that you have large furniture in there? Do you have laundry that needs to be put away? Are your shelves overflowing with stuff? Do you have stuff on the floor?

Make a list of the problem areas in your room and divide it up into sections so that we can tackle them.

Step 2: Get rid of the garbage. 

Now if you are lucky, you don’t have any garbage in your room. Consistently having garbage in my room that wasn’t confined to a trash bin would probably be grounds for divorce in our house.

But let me tell you, it’s not uncommon. I was a slob growing up. I grew up with hoarders and it took a lot for me to break from their habits and form my own.

As it turns out, the ability to walk through my room without stubbing my toe on things is something I really value. If you’ve got garbage in your bedroom, start by getting rid of it. 

Now when I say garbage, there are a couple different kinds. First is the kind like candy wrappers on the ground. Hopefully you aren’t that big of a slob. Maybe you are and no judgement, I’ve been there.

There were a few times when I had to throw out old bags from fast food restaurants growing up because it was growing something unidentifiable because I’d gotten so lazy I just didn’t bother to throw it in the garbage. So if you have that type of stuff, start there.

The second type of garbage is things that you really don’t need but aren’t purely trash. Things that can be recycled, trashed, or donated.

For example, I used to do a lot of my computer hobby work in my bedroom before I got a home office. Due to that, I had busted computer parts, notebooks full of things I’d written down for my computers and things I was trying to figure out, old electronics. It was a lot.

So as I started decluttering garbage, I started getting rid of those types of things with reckless abandon. I had to be honest with myself. No, that hard drive with the bad sectors is never going to be useful again. I don’t need a Network switch from 15 years ago that will bottleneck my entire network.

Now granted, I’m using computers as my hobby here, but whatever hobby you have can fit in that same space just as well be it photography, playing RPGs, or knitting.

Just make sure you get rid of that garbage and you will go a long ways in the process of decluttering your bedroom.

Step 3: Identify Things That Don’t Belong There

This is common whenever you are decluttering. Things tend to show up in various spots that don’t belong there and then they just kind of live there…forever.

Case in point, there was a screwdriver that was living in my home office for the better part of a month. It didn’t belong there. I’d been using it to replace one of the drives on my home server and then the kids woke up and I forgot to take it back downstairs where it belonged. Every day I looked and it was still there. Things like that happen…a lot.

So it’s up to you when you declutter your bedroom, to look through your clutter and put things back in their proper home. Immediately. Don’t pass go. Don’t collect $200, just put anything that is out of place in its proper home.

Step 4: Identify Reoccurring Problems

Now I call this reoccurring problems because it could encompass a lot of things. But lets face it, most of the time this reoccurring problem is laundry. People hate doing laundry. I hate doing laundry.

There was a period in my life where I would do my laundry, dump it on my bed so that my laundry basket was empty, then I’d move it from the bed to my chair so I could sleep in the bed, then from the chair back to the bed so I could use the chair.

Repeat until the laundry was all back in the basket and needed to be washed again. I’m not proud of that and it was not efficient. So I made a rule. When I did laundry, it got put away as soon as I pulled it out of the dryer no matter what. Every single time.

Reoccurring problems are most often the cause of not budgeting your time to do something. Whether that is because you don’t want to do it or you find other stuff to do, like rush off to work.

It all has to do with time management. The solution to reoccurring problems is scheduling. I can hear you groaning now, but this really does work.

Much in the same way that I schedule myself to do dishes and reset the kitchen and living room every night, I schedule myself to clean up problem areas in my bedroom. Once a week, the laundry gets done and I always throw it on the bed. Old habits die hard right?

The difference is now as soon as it lands on the bed, I start folding and hanging it. I realized that I can generally get my laundry and my wife’s laundry folded and hung in about 10 minutes. 15 if I make the folding really nice.

The kids laundry is another 20-30 minutes because toddlers go through a ton of clothes. In any event, I have this time built into my weekly schedule to fold the laundry and suddenly that problem area is gone! I no longer have to worry about piles of laundry when I declutter my bedroom!

But that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be other problem areas. I used to pay bills in my bedroom so there was always a pile of mail. Again, scheduling time to get rid of the mail fixed the issue. Schedule! Schedule! Schedule! Scheduling is a key part of the maintenance process to declutter your bedroom and keep it that way!

Step 5: Remove Large Useless Items

I’ve caught some flak from people on this before, but it’s time for real talk. That treadmill that is in your bedroom and hasn’t been turned on for 3 years. It’s time for it to go.

If you’ve got large items that really don’t serve a purpose in your bedroom anymore, don’t be afraid to get rid of them. Just because they might be nice things, don’t get pulled into sunk costs. It’s time to live in the now.

I called out the treadmill because I was having a conversation with someone just last week where they were complaining that the treadmill in their bedroom took up so much room but they hadn’t used it in years. Realistically if you haven’t used it in a year, you aren’t likely to start now. Get rid of it.

That chair, do you ever use it or does it just collect laundry and jackets? If it never gets used for its intended purpose, it’s time for it to go. You’d be amazed at how much you can declutter your bedroom and free up space just by getting rid of large things.

Step 6: Take Advantage of Existing Storage

If things are out and about and you don’t want to look at them, take advantage of the existing storage in your room. I started keeping my headphones and a few other items in a drawer on my nightstand because I don’t like the clutter of looking at them.

This visually cleaned up my nightstand so that it only had things in that I wanted there and nothing extra. For my watches and watch bands, I didn’t need those out. So I hid them away in a drawer.

Anything that didn’t need to be out and I knew I wanted to keep, I found homes for. Even if that meant displacing something I cared about less so that item could find a home. Focus on visual things when you declutter your bedroom, then find homes for them in your existing storage.

Step 7: Let Things Go

This is the hardest step. You’ve cleared out a bunch of stuff already, you’ve made more room, but you’ve still got a bunch of stuff and it still looks like you need to declutter your bedroom.

If you are still above your clutter threshold, it’s time to start letting things go. I like to use the container method for this. I had too many books for my bookshelf so I went through them and used the shelf as a container for them. I only allowed myself to keep the books that would fit on the shelf and everything else had to go.

The solution was not to go out and get more shelves. That would only serve to make the room look more cluttered. Remember, the goal is to declutter your bedroom, not make it more cluttered. Use the space you have to your advantage to help yourself cull down the items in your bedroom.

Make the container is your enemy. So if things don’t fit in there, it’s not your fault, it’s the container’s. Now I love hats. I have a few dozen ranging from beanies to top hats. I was running out of room.

So when I was decluttering, I only had room for 20 of my hats. I put the hats in their home based on what ones I wanted to keep and I had 5 leftover. 5 hats that I really liked.

I liked them better than some of the other hats up on the shelf, so I swapped them out. The 5 that were left, I got rid of. Not because I didn’t like the hats, but because there were others I liked better and I didn’t have room for them all.

The container was the enemy and I put the blame of me getting rid of extra hats on that container, which made me feel better about my decision.

Some things you just need to take a hard look at and ask yourself if they provide any value to your life that they are worth the space. Are you holding on to it because it was an expensive gift?

Maybe you liked it at the time and you don’t care about it now. Prices others paid and just because you’ve had it a long time aren’t good reasons to keep it. Take a picture of it if you really want to remember it, then get rid of it if you don’t like it.

Think about your present you and not who you were in the past or the future you. That will keep you grounded to only keep things that you care about. Elsa was right. Let it go.

Once you’ve completed these 7 steps, your room should be looking better. You can’t organize your way into a less cluttered room. So when you declutter your bedroom, only you can decide if the room is still cluttered or not. 

4 Steps You Can Take Immediately To Declutter Your Living Room!

Your family room doesn’t have to be a mess. In 4 steps I will help you to declutter your living room.

The Living Room. The Family Room. Whatever you want to call it, this is the place where you spend time with your family. Where you entertain, where you bond and make memories.

So when this room is a cluttered mess, it really messes with your head. Trust me. I get it. While I would never expect this room to be spotless, if it’s got too much going on then it becomes less of a pleasant place to spend time and more of a headache. In this article I am going to go over some way to declutter your living room and make it more livable.

So How Do You Declutter Your Living Room?

Step 1: Start Small

Seasonal Decoration

As you look around your living space, try to identify small things you can eliminate to make it less cluttered and more of a space you want to live in.

Removing leftover seasonal decorations is a quick and easy way to declutter your living room. When I was going through this process, I was asking myself: why did we still have stuff out from Easter? Easter was a couple months ago. Things like this are an easy fix to declutter your living room by just putting things away to free up space.

Actual Trash

Being that we have two very young kids, trash tends to get left on flat surfaces. If you’ve got kids, you know how it is. If you don’t have kids, then you aren’t aware that they will pick up random things off the ground and call them ‘trash’ and hand them to you.

Or you will be in the middle of opening something for them and then have to sprint across the room to go prevent the other child from getting into something they shouldn’t because you realized someone left something down that they shouldn’t have.

Then that trash gets left behind. These are all easy wins when you are trying to declutter your living room.

Things You Don’t Like

If you’ve got things in your living room that you don’t like, get rid of them! Just because you own something, doesn’t mean you have to keep it. Getting rid of things you dislike can go a long ways towards decluttering your living room.

For example, we had all these ceramic vases and figurines that had been gifted to us. Neither my wife or I liked them and with kids they were increasingly becoming a safety hazard.

They were a ton of small items but eliminating them meant that we suddenly not only had physical space free but we also were a bit more free mentally because we didn’t constantly have to worry about toddlers breaking them.

Blankets and Pillows

Next we tackled blankets and pillows. For whatever reason we collect blankets and pillows whether we mean to or not. And with toddlers they inevitably end up on the floor. Daily.

I realized we don’t need 6 pillows for a single couch. We need 2 tops. So I chose my favorites and the rest went away. Blankets that weren’t in regular use got the same treatment. Folded up and put away, donated, or in the case of some of the really destroyed ones, they went into the trash. If you want to declutter your living room, get rid of all the extra blankets and pillows and just keep what you need.

Kids Toys

Since it’s a living room, there were a ton of toys as well. There is nothing wrong with having kids toys in your living room. It’s a place where the family spends time and interacts together. However, you don’t need every toy in the world in the living room.

So, when you declutter your living room, toys are easy to eliminate. I spent an evening after the kids went to bed and cleared out a ton of toys that were no longer age appropriate for them and that they never played with.

I was lucky that our neighbors down the street had new grandchildren and were looking for toys in the age range of stuff we were getting rid of and they eagerly took them off my hands. But donation places or your local buy nothing groups work just as well.

Dog Toys

Don’t underestimate how many dog toys you may have when you are decluttering your living room. I made it a point to go through the dog’s toys and eliminated a bunch of things that they had absolutely destroyed.

Our dogs don’t need more toys than our kids. I wasn’t about to get rid of my dog’s favorite toys, but they certainly didn’t need that 10 year old dog toy that looked like it had been through a trash compactor twice.

Other Items

Other things we eliminated were puzzles, games, candles, mail, and random things that had never made it back to their actual home. When you declutter your living room, get things back to their proper home.

Clearly we had an issue with putting things away at night which is something we figured out how to accommodate with daily schedules. All these small things that were just taking up space in our living room were leading to additional stress and making our home look cluttered. These were easy things to get rid of to make the living room more livable.

Step 2: Tackle Your Stressers

Once you’ve gotten rid of the small stuff, take inventory again. When you declutter your living room, you want to tackle the items that are causing you stress.

Now stressers can come in all shapes and forms, so properly identifying them is key. When you are going through the process to declutter your living room, make sure that you look at everything objectively so you can get a clear picture of what actually is causing you stress.

Physical Media

When I was going through this process, I didn’t realize it at first, but one of my biggest stressers was the movie shelf. It was so full and so cluttered. And when I say shelf, I mean bookcase.

I love movies and I have a vast collection of them. But with the advent of streaming I can’t remember the last time I turned on our Blu-Ray player. I’m pretty sure it’s been at least 4 years. So I’m left with this massive bookcase full of DVDs that I don’t watch and that don’t look nice in the family room.

So, I boxed all of them up except for a select few and put them away in storage. I like to keep physical copies because I don’t trust digital services to not yank the titles away after I’ve paid for them as I’ve had that happen to me multiple times before, but that is a different topic.

But since most of what I had was widely available on one of my streaming platforms, there was no use in keeping a massive wall of movies. That alone cleared up a ton of stressers for me.

Then I looked at my cabinet of CDs and records. I don’t even own a CD Player or a record player, so why was I holding onto these? Away they all went! This was even more space decluttered!

Remember, when you declutter your living room, just because something has value doesn’t mean you have to keep it. Physical media does have value to a lot of people, but if you aren’t using it, there is no reason to keep it.

Declutter Your Living Room Furniture

Don’t be afraid to make bold moves! I made a bold move and I decided to get rid of furniture. I had furniture that had followed me around since college.

Some of it looked like it came out of the 70’s. It was bulky, it was ugly. And I hated it. I put it up for free online and within a couple of days it was gone!

You have no idea how freeing it was to not have that big ugly furniture in my living room. The living space is more open and less dark. And I have less to dust!

Now I recognize that not everyone is going to be able to part with furniture. It’s big, it can be expensive to get rid of, and maybe you actually like your furniture. But I put it in there because I want to prove a point.

Just because you’ve got something in your home, even if you spent a lot of money on it. Just because it’s been around a long time, that doesn’t mean you have to keep it. I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s true.

If it stresses you out, get rid of it. Who knows, maybe there is a better option. We realized we didn’t need an entertainment center. Our TV could be wall mounted, and thus out of reach of little fingers and most projectiles that might be thrown by said little fingers.

With the movie collection digitized I no longer needed a bookshelf to hold all of the movies, instead we just have a simple ladder shelf now that holds family photos and our AppleTV. The whole thing is so much less cluttered and takes a fraction of the time to clean.

Step 3: Tackle the Remainder

You’ve decluttered all of the easy things. You’ve moved things back to where they are supposed to go. You’ve taken care of items that directly stress you out.

Your room should be looking pretty good right now. But can you be doing more? Well that’s up to you. As I assessed my space, I realized there were still areas I could improve on.

Yes, I’d cleaned up the clutter but it was still kind of disorganized and that was leading to still causing some stress. So I decided to do a few more things to help reduce the cluttered look.

Declutter Your Living Room Electronics

First, I made the decision to get rid of the Blu-Ray player. It hadn’t been touched in years and we have a gaming system that will play them. It’s slightly less convenient but clearly the convenient option hadn’t made a difference so away it went! 

I also had a Fire Stick and a Wii. Neither of them had been touched in ages. I decided it was time for them to go. The Kinect attached to our X-Box hadn’t been used in ages. So it went away too. Remember, If you aren’t using your electronics, it’s OK to get rid of them.

A Little Organization Goes a Long Ways to Declutter Your Living Room

Now when we talk about decluttering, I usually separate out decluttering and organization. With that said, sometimes you’ve decluttered and it still looks bad.

When you declutter your living room, try to identify the focal point of the room and then make sure that area is free from clutter. For us, our focal point was the TV.

The cables coming out of the TV looked like spaghetti. Having a rats nest of cables coming out of your TV, especially when it is highly visible is not good for a decluttered look.

Cable ties are cheap. Or if you don’t want to spend money on those, twist ties from the various things you’ve purchased over the years always come in handy.

I know that even though I am pretty good about throwing twist ties away, we always seem to have at least a half dozen floating around the house at any given time. 

Once I was done, all of our cables were organized, wrapped, and grouped so that they looked uniform. Instead of a mess, I had a nicer looking single strand of cables coming out from the TV.

Pro Tip: Pre-Run your Cables for future devices!

Your future self will thank you for this. Inevitably things get swapped out or added. That new game system, maybe a receiver for your cable. When that happens, this means undoing all that work and running new cables.

I hate this. I know what ports the back of my TV has and what is supported on it. It’s 4 HDMI ports and 2 RCA ports. So I ran cables from all the ports from the back of the TV to the shelf where my electronics live.

Even though I don’t currently use all the ports, this has come in handy many times. The next time I added a device to my shelf, I just plugged it in and I was already setup with no need to mess with the cable organization.

It was also great when we dug out our old Nintendo 64, we just plugged it in temporarily and everything was all setup. Or when my cousin brought over her Nintendo Switch, we already had everything setup. It was just plug and play. All without ever having to touch my cable organization.

I also labeled them,so that I knew which HDMI port each one belonged to.  The label maker is my best friend. This will help you when you are selecting the device on your TV so you don’t have to scroll through the inputs to find the one you are looking for.

Finally since I still didn’t like the look of the cables, I took one of my bigger framed pictures and put it up on the shelf in front of the surge protector for the power. Now instead of looking at cables, I’m looking at a picture. All I see of the cables when I look over towards the TV is just a neatly wrapped bundle that goes from the TV behind a picture.

Declutter Your Living Room Pictures!

I rather dislike pictures on shelves. To me, it gives a cluttered look. They have their place and we absolutely have them in our house, but it’s not my preference. A big part of that is small kids.

When you declutter your living room, look at your wall space. I realized that we had a lot of wall space and with kids, things on tables and shelves were ripe opportunities for the kids to break them.

So, I moved a lot of pictures to the walls. The results were actually very nice. We used a non-uniform hanging method so that things didn’t have to be lined up with each other and we could add or remove pictures whenever we wanted.

This meant as the kids grow older we could add things without it looking lopsided or weird. This also meant that we had less physical clutter on the tables and shelves.

We also got rid of several of the pictures on the wall. There were things up that we didn’t really care about. Art that we’d gotten just to fill the space so the house didn’t look so bare. Just because you have pictures on the wall, doesn’t mean you have to keep them.

Books!

I don’t know who invented the idea of the ‘coffee table book’ but I hate it. It just looks like clutter. In fact, I hated the coffee table so it went away with other furniture I didn’t like.

Books can look nice in moderation. Too many and you get a cluttered mess. This can be an uphill battle with kids, so you may have to do several passes on the books to get rid of them all.

Most of the books we had got donated. Travel guides from places we had been to before a decade ago were outdated and if we ever did travel to those places again, we’d need updated information. So those went away. We kept the books the kids liked to read and then removed the rest. 

Do Another Pass to Declutter Your Living Room

Hopefully by this point you’ve gotten your living room into a decluttered state. If you’re still feeling overwhelmed by it, it means you are still above your clutter threshold and you need to look through it again and see what else you can declutter.

Keep in mind that if you don’t live alone, trying to keep below your clutter threshold can be a lot of work. My wife’s threshold is higher than mine so I see things that bother me and it won’t bother her at all. I also had to adjust my expectations when we had kids. Some battles just aren’t worth fighting.

Step 4: Maintenance

Now that you’ve gotten it decluttered it’s time to figure out how to maintain this newly decluttered space. It’s easier to maintain with less stuff. The way I do it is through schedules.

Every single night I go through and I pick up things and put them in their proper spot. If you’ve got kids that are old enough, you can try to make a game out of it and see how much you can get put away in 5 minutes. This helps with kids toys.

I do a quick pass every night just to make it so that this doesn’t become a huge time sink. Then at least once a week I vacuum and eliminate anything that doesn’t belong in the living room.

This ensures that my wife gets to look at the weekly ads so we know what we are going to meal prep for the next week but nothing stays for too long. 

Also, we invested in a robot vacuum for our downstairs. We found one at Walmart for $100 and it has been a game changer. Aside from the occasional annoyances of it getting lost or stuck in random places around the house, we can see a noticeable difference in the cleanliness of our living room.

It picks up a lot of dog hair and crumbs that the kids might have had on their clothes and we missed and it goes on a daily basis. I just incorporated emptying the bin from it into my nightly reset routine. It takes 10 seconds and has made my life so much easier.

I also try to wipe down surfaces in the living room at least once a week. This keeps the dust down. It is possible to have a clean and decluttered living room, it just takes a bit of work. However, once you’ve gotten it clean the work goes down to maintain it.

Free Yourself and Get rid of those empty boxes!

It’s time to get rid of those empty boxes!

Somehow we all have it. A little pile of boxes sitting somewhere in our house for our laptop, our phone, and various other electronics. I have a pile like this, my mom has a pile like this, why does this exist?

So let’s talk about this little pile of boxes. If you haven’t been told this already, let me tell you now.

Get Rid of Those Empty Boxes!

That’s right, you can get rid of those empty boxes! I’m specifically looking at your electronics boxes that seem to stick around forever. You don’t need them.

Nor do you need the box for your toaster oven, your coffee maker, or any of those million boxes from Amazon. You just don’t need them. Get rid of those empty boxes! Free yourself!

Get Rid of those empty boxes for your electronics!

For whatever reason, conventional wisdom for the last 15 years or so has been that you need to keep the boxes for your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and basically everything else because it helps with the resale value. Maybe 15 years ago that was true, but it doesn’t really hold true anymore.

Sure maybe you will find one or two people who are impressed that you still have the box for it but they aren’t going to pay more for a box that does nothing to improve the device you are selling. 

Now I’ll be the first to admit, I have one of these little piles myself. Well, had. In a fit of annoyance I filled up the recycle bin with all of the boxes for laptops, tablets, and various other things I’ve collected over the years.

I gained a huge chunk of space back in my closet from doing this. I also discovered in the process that I had 4 pairs of wired headphones, 3 charging bricks, 4 lightning cables, 2 lightning to 3.5 adapters, and an extender for the power cable on my laptop. So make sure you check those boxes before you chuck them! 

The 30 Day Limit

I do still have one of these piles of boxes for things, but it’s not like before. I subscribe to the 30 day limit. This means that I keep boxes for about 30 days. If for whatever reason I don’t like the item and still need to return it in the original packaging, I’ll know within 30 days.

After that, the boxes are gone. This is just a routine cleanup for me that I continually do whenever something new comes into the house, which thankfully isn’t that often anymore. 

No Really, Get Rid of those Empty Boxes for your MacBook!

Now I can hear someone in the back over there saying “But it’s for my MacBook! Someone will pay more for it because I’ve got the box!”

No. No they won’t. Your MacBook, IPhone, iPad, or whatever other device you are trying to sell is only worth what people are willing to buy it for and having the box won’t increase the value (especially if you’ve covered it in stickers, but that is a different topic).

I call these ones out specifically because this is a myth that tends to swirl around in the Apple user base far more than other brands. This is a voice of experience.

Even if people are willing to pay more for it, how much more do you think that is? Think of the space in your home as having a cost associated with it. Is the space that those boxes are taking up in your home worth the potential extra cost of storing them?

They have a mental cost because you know they are there causing clutter. They have a physical space cost. Especially laptops and tablets, those are decent size boxes.

What could you put in that space instead? Maybe nothing and you just have a more open home? Maybe freeing up that storage space allows you to put something you really want to see out in the open instead? 

So today, I hereby give you permission. Go recycle those boxes! Free up space in your home! Because at the end of the day, it’s just a pile of cardboard that is taking up space.