Declutter your Home / What you can do about it

What you can do about it

If you feel the inclination, make a list. Otherwise start from the most logical place and continue from there. This would normally be the room in the house that a) needs your attention most, or b) is the most visited place by guests.

You will need to make a decision on that score. For myself it was a toss up between first getting to the living room or the office. I opted for the living room first since I did take some of my clients through there.

The office was basically what I affectionately termed an “organized mess”. That, I felt I could leave alone for the time being. It didn’t look too bad and I had stuffed all the incriminating evidence away out of sight anyway. The office could wait, the living room couldn’t and it was as simple as that.

You make the decision according to what is most important to you to declutter first. This is the first step. The second step is to take a good long hard look at it. If you want you can even take a before and after picture to make you feel better. (As if you would ever forget what that mess looked like!)

This second step although not designed to give you a headache, could succeed in doing so.

My advice is to make yourself a cup of java, then hotfoot it back into the room armed with your cleaning tools, about which I make a mention in the section “Tools for the Decluttering Trade”.

Start from one corner of the room or even the middle is you feel like it. But first clear out forcibly if you have to a small corner of the room. This will be designated as your dumping grounds.

Next proceed to a different section of the room and start rooting around. Those things that have been sitting around stewing for ages are the ones you’re after today. Use the tools (crates or boxes or bin bags), that you brought with you and start filling them up.

Paperwork is a clutter all on its own and needs no help from us to make it so. Gather everything that even remotely resembles a piece of paper and stuff it in one of the tools. It doesn’t matter what it is, just stuff everything inside.

Unless it’s a foreclosure notice or a red bill or something like that, in which case you might want to keep it where you can get to it! Everything else can go into your tools.

Be warned that if at any point in time you sit down with the intention of going through your paperwork, it will be the end of your day of decluttering. So, stay AWAY from your paperwork. At least for the time being. You will get around to that sooner or later don’t worry.

Now that you have your paperwork problems all sorted out, or rather you know what to do when you come across any paperwork in your decluttering endeavors, you can then move on to the other stuff which are just sitting stolidly in the room.

Anything that looks moldy, mildewy, and even remotely like it came out of a refuse bin should go directly to a bin, “do not pass Go!, do not collect $200”!

Everything else which doesn’t fall into the previous two categories should go either into,
· your dumping grounds corner – remember, the stuff in this corner are the ones which will join your moldy, mildewy friends in the bin later on.
· a tool for essential items – these are stuff that you absolutely must have.
· a tool for sentimental items – you don’t need these but they do bring back fond memories.
· a tool for the things you want, but really don’t need – I think that said it all, don’t you think?

So what’s so different about this technique that it will work? Well, to begin with, you’re not stuck on paperwork. As I said, that can come later unless it’s something that’s really important.

What really makes this technique tick however, is the small corner you cleared in one corner of the room, otherwise known and referred to as your “dumping grounds”.

Once you get into the swing of things, it’s downright liberating to be able to throw things around the room for a legitimate reason.

You don’t need to put it in a bin, or a bin bag, to get rid of unwanted stuff you just fling it across the room to your dumping grounds! What could be better than that?

I wish I could claim ownership of that little gem of cleaning wisdom but I can’t. And no, it didn’t come from any ancient cleaning techniques either!

A friend came to help me with my top-to-toe house overhaul, and clued me in on this. After that, for me at least, decluttering a cluttered room became less of a chore and more fun and relaxed.

What do you with everything that’s gathered in your dumping grounds by the end of the day?

You fetch a large black bag or two, and you stuff everything inside. Next you take it to wherever you throw things, and dump it in there.

This is a general good rule to follow at the end of every declutter day. Why? Because for one thing you don’t want the stuff to start mingling with your other things again, and for another, not all rooms can be decluttered in one go.

In fact some rooms like my TARDIS, need to be cleaned out over the course of a few days.

You won’t need to do it in consecutive days as this can become disheartening, but you need to recognize a room that will take more than one day to completely declutter, and not feel let down when you can’t complete it in a day.

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