Finding out how to declutter your house isn’t really the hard part – the tough part is putting things into action! Too often a person will decide to attack a closet that is full of junk by throwing everything in it out into the hallway. The person feels like emptying the closet will ultimately lead to a clean closet. Actually, attacking the problem this way just leaves the person with a mess on the floor to clean up.
In most cases, it’s easy to start with optimism and determination to get the job done. As things start to progress with the cleanup, however, the frustration and confusion starts to get overwhelming. For this reason, we are breaking down the steps for decluttering your home into 5 easy ones that will work quickly!
1. Start with baby steps
All you want to do at the beginning is spend 5 minutes decluttering a certain area. You need to choose one specific area in the house and it can’t be an entire room. Try to find a small space that could be cleaned in a total of 5 minutes. It may just be one drawer in your dresser. That’s enough to get you started and once you have completed the5-minute task you’ll feel great! You will have completed an entire cycle from start to finish and will be able to tackle the next one when you’re ready.
In order to keep track of these 5 minutes, put on a timer. Most microwaves have a timer that will beep when the time’s up. The timer will be in control of the situation and once it has beeped you need to stop. If you need more time to finish up your cycle you can put the timer back on for 5 minutes when you’re ready. Once you’re feeling more in control of the situation you can extend the time limitation to 10 minutes.
2. Start from easiest then move on to hardest chore
Getting rid of clutter should be done starting with the easiest to confront and then working on slowly to the hardest. When you’re choosing your smaller tasks to perform, don’t look for anything that’s difficult. Start with something that won’t take a lot of brain power so that you can begin to see results quickly. The faster you clean and the more you get done, the better you’re going to feel about yourself and your accomplishments. This will get you motivated to do more and more until you’re left with only a few difficult projects at the end.
3. Handle the bulkier items first
Try to free up as much space as you can quickly. If you see that your children have left out a few big toys, they can be handled first before the smaller toys. As you start cleaning out space, your vision perception starts to change. You’ll actually see things that you didn’t notice were first there when the cleaning first began. By getting rid of a lot of big items, you’ll feel the space lighten up. You won’t get caught up in the overwhelming type of feeling that it often goes along with the decluttering process. This is how to organize your house without having to deal with a lot of frustration and confusion.
4. Keep it fun
The best way to succeed is to keep things fun. Don’t allow the process to get heavy at all. When you’re finding out how to declutter your home, don’t do anything that makes you feel foggy or unsettled inside. Keep things light so that you enjoy the process. Otherwise, you’ll just end up giving up. Find a way to make it enjoyable. Perhaps you could play some your favorite tunes on your iPod while you’re working. Maybe you could sing your own songs while you’re decluttering. Simply look for ways to make the job more fun and don’t look at it as a terrible chore. If you do, you’ll just be looking for ways to constantly avoid doing it instead of looking forward to getting things done.
5. Persistence will get you there
The only way that you’re really going to end up with a well-organized home free of clutter is to persist with your projects. Persistence is the key to success. If you ever find that you’re getting bored and not persisting, it’s time to put together a new game. You can abandon the 5-minute cleanup and replace it with a new and exciting kind of adventure. Decide to fill up one bag per day with items that need to be given away or trashed. You could also make up a reward scheme so that you get a positive payback for everything accomplished.
You get the idea, right? The trick is to make things as easy as possible without allowing yourself to get bored or irritated. When you can accomplish this, you will be able to persist and will find yourself ultimately in a decluttered home that you can be proud of.
