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Five tips to get started on decluttering your home
Moving house – or simply renovating – often goes hand in hand with a push to finally declutter all cupboards, wardrobes and drawers so the new home is off to a good start.
From personal experience (the writer moved six times, between four cities and two countries, in the past three years) we can say that yes, most of us have a lot more stuff than they need and getting rid of it is harder than it initially feels.
Diving into the decluttering head first, without planning at least a little ahead, often leads to disappointment rather than success – but since we’ve made our own experiences, here are a few tips on how to sort everything out and keep your new home clutter-free – or at least less cluttered. Nobody’s perfect, after all.
Start early
Don’t leave it to the last minute – stressing about reducing the amount of things you have often only goes one of two possible ways: either you chuck out too much and end up regretting it dearly or you’re so cautious about it that nearly everything follows you into the new home.
Starting early doesn’t just give you enough time to go over everything, it also means you’re covered in case anything suddenly takes up a lot of your time – and in case you finish early, there’s a deep satisfaction in that, too.
Don’t spend too much time at once
This may sound weird, but rather than tackling it all at once, take five or ten minutes out of your day to get stuck in some of your clutter.
One day, get rid of the things making one of your bookshelves look untidy; the next, take your desk (or half of your desk, in case it’s a bigger task), make sure that’s tidy and clutter free, and so on.
Sure, it won’t make much of a dent to start with, but keep at it and the mountain of clutter will diminish slowly but surely.
Don’t leave decluttering until your desk looks like this (or worse) – it’ll only make it harder.
Get a grip on your paper
It’s everywhere, and there’s so much of it that trying to get rid of clutter doesn’t start with what you already have – it starts the moment new paper comes in, most often through your letterbox.
Don’t let the letters pile up: sort them the moment they reach you and don’t be afraid of chucking out the non-important stuff straight away.
When sorting through your papers, use a similarly strict sorting system: bank statements, insurance policies and co can all stay, but do you really need the receipt for your five-year old iPod?
Get to the back of your wardrobe
You probably won’t find a door to Narnia (if you do, please let us know), but it’s more than likely you’ll encounter what the Germans call Schrankleiche (‘cupboard corpse’) – the things you never wore, or only wore a few times, before banning them to the back of your wardrobe.
Get rid of them. No matter if you give them to charity or have a jumble sale, get them out of the house.
You’ve not worn these for years – maybe because they don’t fit, are out of style or just because – and the chance of you missing those things is fairly slim, so don’t let them take up precious space.
(This obviously doesn’t extend to pieces with an emotional value – wedding dresses/suits and other emotionally laden pieces don’t count as clutter.)
Overthink new purchases
Do you really need ten pairs of black jeans or the 15th pair of heels you’ll only wear once?
Saying no may be the hardest part – everything is so tempting, from going to an actual shop to browsing the internet and subsequently being spammed with ads showing you exactly that bag/pair of shoes/special edition of a book you just spent ten minutes longingly staring at.
That’s not to say don’t buy new things, but be conscious about it – especially if it’s something a bit more unusual or occasion wear – to make sure your freshly decluttered wardrobe stays that way.
The post Five tips to get started on decluttering your home appeared first on Gay Star News.
Stefanie Gerdes
www.gaystarnews.com/article/five-tips-to-get-started-on-decluttering-your-home/
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