Declutter your Home / Where to Start - Part 1

Where to Start - Part 1

This is it. This is where you begin your decluttering efforts in earnest. I have marked here just a few of the things you can or will need to do to declutter your house.

They are in no particular order but if you get through these one by one you will find that you will eventually get through the house.

Your Living Room

This is probably the easiest place to start as this is where you will (hopefully!) have the least amount of junk.

This is not because you’re more organized in these places, but more because you keep dumping the stuff out of here on a regular basis when people come over.

So what you really need to go through here is the small stuff that gets left behind. Like old magazines, newspapers, and coffee table books. If your music system is also here you will no doubt have to go through the stack of CD’s you have, which now resembles a great big mess.

Then you’ll also have to sort through anything else that sundry family members might have decided to keep here, and either put them away yourself or get them to do it.

In the beginning, I opt for doing it yourself, because remember, what you want is to declutter. Trying to get other people to take an interest in the clutter is a futile effort – for the moment.

Pick your battles wisely and you will always come out the winner. In this case, your battle is not with trying to get the family to put things away, but with your cluttering tendencies.

Win that battle first and then you can move on to the next one.

You will have many things you will want to do to your living room, but remember to always start with the basics.

And since this is probably not as cluttered as some of the other rooms, you probably don’t need as much ammunition to deal with it.

· If you have odd books and things lying around the room, put them away in their places.

· Old magazines should definitely go in the “throw” pile, as should old newspapers.

· If your children have left their toys behind remove these to their rightful places. If they don’t have a rightful place, make one. (See “A treasure trove of toys”)

· Stack, or put away your CD’s in any order. As long as they look neat that’s all that matters for the time being.

If you have time on your hands after you’ve finished the living room, you can then look to put them into some semblance of order.

· Some people might believe that coffee table books are a thing of the past, but I believe that they just migrated.

Now, instead of finding them on the coffee table, you will probably find them on a convenient book stand or ornament rack, somewhere it looks as if it belongs.

· Dust out your sofa. You would be amazed at the things that can fall into the crevices of your couch so be sure and declutter your sofa as well.

· Knick knacks and the like should not be placed haphazardly around the room. If you like having little knick knacks and ornaments in your home, keep it to a minimum.

If you have more than you know what to do with, keep some of them outside for the moment, and put the rest away.

When you get tired of seeing the old ones outside, you can then exchange them with the ones you out away earlier.

· To give an appearance of a fully decluttered room, you will want to keep as much space in the room as you can, free from anything, clutter and furniture alike.

Sometimes the appearance of space can create a greater effect than if you were to change everything around.

Your Dining Room

When you’re going through your dining room, you might find that you need to remove everything from it but the very basics.

After that, you can bring things back in one by one so that you can then decide when enough is not too much.

Ideally your dining room should hold no more than the dining table, chairs and dresser, or armoire. Maybe a side table or two, but after that, everything else becomes superfluous, and you will need to remove them in order to achieve a successful decluttering effect

The things you don’t need can either be found a new home elsewhere in the house, or you can store to use at a later date. It all depends on what the extra items were and the state of them at the time of decluttering.

Your Kitchen

As far as your kitchen goes, you will find that there is more than enough clutter in here to keep you occupied for months on end. To help cut through all that red tape, I have one suggestion: bin bag.

That’s right, most of the clutter in your kitchen can be taken away through the simple expedient of using a bin bag. Grab one and keep the roll handy, you might need it sooner than you think.

Your Fridge

The first thing you need to do is to go through your fridge. Throw out anything that looks like it might sprout legs and walk.

Anything with fuzz growing on it, and basically anything that smells, has changed consistency, or has changed color, throw them all out!

The cupboards

After you finish the fridge, go through the cupboards next. These should be done methodically to make your task easier, so start from one corner of the room and work your way to the other corner.

Throw out anything that is broken, that is growing without your express permission or knowledge, and set aside those things which you haven’t used for a while.

This includes spices. They also tend to go off after a time, especially if they had migrated to the land that time forgot soon after you bought them.
Utensils

If you have spoons and utensils by dozen or by the hundreds, don’t try sorting through them. My mother gave me this tip, and I have to say that it came in quite handy.

Place all your spoons and utensils into one box and keep it on a counter within easy reach. Keep them there for one month, and every time you reach in there and take something out, keep it outside, don’t put it back.

By the time a month is out you should have the utensils that you use most sorted out. Then if you want you can either the give the remainder away, or sort through them first before parting with them.

I only say this because there are some utensils which you only use occasionally and if you were to be without them, it would not be good. You would most likely need to go out and get a new one!

So sort through these items and give away the ones that you don’t use. The ones that you use only occasionally, store in a separate drawer to the ones which you use more regularly.

The overall kitchen

Now that you’ve gone through the specific areas, you will find that there are still some small things which you can do to make your kitchen a De-Cluttered Zone.

· Store your kitchen cleaning items away in one caddy under the sink. This way you can get to them when you need, and they’re not falling all over themselves.

· Keep your garbage bin in an easy to get to, but unobtrusive place. Don’t make it a centerpiece of the kitchen.

· Have a separate place for the plates and dishes which are most often used. The same applies to glasses and mugs. For everything else use a separate cupboard space.

· Keep your spices where you can easily get to them, use something like a spice rack for this.

· Keep the counters as free as possible. The more space you have on the countertops the larger the kitchen looks, and the more space you have to work.

· Keep dishcloths and tea towels in one place. Either use hooks for this purpose, or use one of those small tea towel holders with about three separate arm attachments on them.

· If you have a dishwasher, then use it. This saves you the time and hassle of having to wash the dishes, and it will also get the table cleaned off faster than it would otherwise be.

Your Bedroom

Now this is one place where you can get really bogged down and where the clutter can all build up to nearly unmanageable proportions.

You will need to proceed with caution here, and depending on the last time that you cleaned it out, arm yourself with something to fend off that family of angry chittering squirrels or chipmunks.

Your bed

This is the ideal place to start. If you don’t have under bed storage then you definitely want to be armed and waiting when you start groping around in their. Might I suggest using a vacuum to accomplish this task?

Go through it with a fine toothcomb and take out everything that doesn’t belong there. This includes the family of squirrels!

By the time that you’re done, there should only be carpet or floor to be seen lurking under the bed.

If you have to, take your full allotted time to get this over and done with because cleaning out under the bed is not something that you do on a daily basis, or at least I don’t.

You will also want to make sure that it is as clean as possible for the under bed storage that I recommend you look into buying, if your bed doesn’t already come with it.

There’s a lot of space under the bed so use it wisely.

Your dresser drawers

You can delve into these either all at the same time when you’re tackling your bedroom, or you can do them as part of your decluttering warm up routine.

Take each drawer separately and go through it with the toothcomb again. You will need to be ruthless here as well. If anything has a hole in it larger than your head, and your head wasn’t meant to go through the hole then chuck it!

Do yourself a favor and create more room so that the things you have can have space to breathe. It’s also a sorry truth that if you haven’t gotten to it within about six months at the most, you will not get around to darning it now.

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