Top Decluttering Tips

Decluttering your home can be overwhelming – after all, it’s difficult to know where to begin and what to prioritize. Fortunately, there are some simple decluttering tips you can use that will help make the decluttering process easier and faster. Start decluttering by following these decluttering tips and watch as vertical space and storage space gets freed in no time!

1. Figure out your “clutter personality”:

The founders of the “neat method” believe that most people fall into three clutter personalities;

1. Overwhelmed in life = overwhelmed at home
2. Constant worrier = must save everything
3. Too busy = too many extras

Try identifying which category you fit into so you can try and avoid your weak spots.

2. Ask yourself 3 questions when you go through your belongings:

1. Do I truly need it?
2. Do I truly love it?
3. Would I trade inner peace for this?

3. Do the 10-minute declutter exercise:

• If you are feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, try using this technique to slowly start to declutter your home. You won’t need a long decluttering checklist.
• How it works is you get two trash bags for each cluttered room, with the idea being to clear the unneeded clutter from your home.
• In the first trash bag put only items you wish to throw out and in the second, put stuff that is going to a charity as well as anything else you plan to sell at a garage sale/donate.
• If you do this simple 10-minute routine every day for a week, you will start to notice a huge difference in the clutter within your home.

4. Manage your paper:

• Keep your mail in a specific location so you don’t have paper clutter piles all around the house. Try using a mail basket, drawer dividers, or a bin in one set location to hold all of your mail and keep it organized.

5. Commit to a decluttering routine:

• Doing things halfway can wreak havoc on our homes. That’s why it’s important to finish what you start.
• For example, consider your washing machine in the laundry room. You wouldn’t just fill it up with clothes and forget about it for two days, that would cause your damp clothes to smell. It’s important that we finish each cycle so things don’t start to pile up. If you bring a dirty plate into the kitchen, don’t just set it on the counter or drop it in the sink. Rinse it off and place it in the dishwasher. When you get home from work and switch into sweatpants, don’t just throw your clothes on the floor. Pick them up and place them into the laundry basket where they belong.
• Each of these tasks only takes a few seconds and will save you time in the long run if it were to accumulate leaving more for you to pick up. Imagine how much space you will be able to save in a matter of seconds.

6. Use this acronym when getting ready to declutter your home, “F.A.S.T”:

• Fix a time

Schedule a time that works for everyone in your family to start working on decluttering storage spaces.

• Anything not used in 12 months gets tossed or donated

If you haven’t used an item in the last year, it is very unlikely you will find a use for it now. Make more space and get rid of it.

• Someone else’s stuff

It’s bad enough when you are dealing with your own clutter, but when you start adding clutter that doesn’t belong to you, that’s just a huge mess and can really start to get out of control. If your children have moved out and still have their items left at your home, ask them to take any items they would like to keep and get rid of any items they no longer need or want to add their old room to your clutter-free spaces.

• Trash

Make it a fun competition with your family to purge the items you no longer need.

7. Part with any unnecessary memory clutter:

• I know it can be tough to let go of items that have memories tied to them, and it’s okay to keep the important ones, but there are a lot of items you can certainly purge after 20+ years. For instance, you don’t need to keep your daughter’s macaroni necklace she made you for Mother’s Day back in 1995. 
• If you really want to make the memory last without all of the physical clutter, try taking a picture of the item to keep that memory.

8. Purge your closet:

• Turn all the clothes hanging in your hall closet so that the hangers face back to front. For the next six months, only what you wear to the closet with the hanger facing the correct way.
• After six months, donate or sell the items you haven’t worn.
• Note- You can exclude special occasion outfits or seasonal clothing.

9. Try the one-month cardboard box kitchen utensil test:

(If you aren’t sure what you use and don’t in your kitchen, here is a great way to find out!)

• Empty the contents of your kitchen drawers into a cardboard box.
• For one month, put a utensil back into the drawer only if you take it out of the box to use it.
• If it’s still in the box after a month, you probably don’t need it. 

10. Once you have gone through your entire home and purged any unnecessary clutter, make sure to call Grunts Move Junk to come and haul away all of your trash, junk, or items you no longer need/want.

We understand that it can be tough figuring out where to start when it comes to decluttering, so we recommend trying these 10 simple tips to help you begin the decluttering process and get a clutter-free home!

Enlisting the help of a professional organizer like Grunts Move Junk can make decluttering a smooth and efficient process. With Grunts Move Junk, you can arrange for us to come and remove any items you’ve decluttered. This helps ensure that all decluttered items won’t just get moved around the house or end up in storage where they will still take up valuable storage space.