If you are trying to learn how to reduce clutter in your home, you are in luck! Check out some of our best tips by clicking here.
Living in a home full of clutter has been shown to increase anxiety. While we may feel like we’re surrounding ourselves with valuables and mementos from our lives, we could be hoarding possessions that have no real meaning to us.
While not everything in your home lacks value (monetary or sentimental), the truth is, most of us have way more than we need. For example, the average person only uses about 50 percent of their wardrobe.
We’re here to teach you how to reduce clutter by taking an objective look at your possessions, making a decision, and following through.
Start With One Room at a Time
First, don’t bite off more than you can chew. While we highly recommend getting the project done as quickly as possible, you can’t look at the entire house as a whole. Instead, break it up into individual rooms to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Start with the most heavily cluttered rooms first. Then work your way through the house to the easier rooms.
Design a Decision-Making Mantra
You need to take a ruthless and objective approach to learn how to reduce clutter effectively. This means creating a mantra to help with your decision making process. One of the most popular mantras is “if you don’t love it, need it, or use it, get rid of it.”
However, for people who have legitimate hoarding tendencies, this process may seem impossible. We recommend getting help with hoarding to improve your success rate.
Remember, hoarding is a mental health disorder. While it’s not your fault, it can lead to a dangerous and/or unhealthy living environment.
Create a Sorting System
Learning how to reduce clutter means knowing how to organize. Create a sorting system for each room to help streamline the process. There are several things you can do with unwanted items.
We suggest making a box for each of the following categories:
- Throw away (items with no value that can’t be repurposed)
- Donate (items other people could benefit from but aren’t worth selling)
- Sell (items of relative value that could be sold online, pawned, etc.)
- Storage: You will have important sentimental stuff such as photo albums that need to be out of the but not disposed of, Self Storage in Tottenham or anywhere else close by will be a viable option for this.
Don’t Procrastinate the Final Steps
Once you’ve gone through each room of the house and have finished the sorting process, you’re almost done. However, learning how to reduce clutter means learning how to follow through. Don’t leave the boxes of unwanted items sitting around.
Immediately take trash boxes to the dump and donation boxes to Goodwill (or other donation places). Use the rest of your day to get the “sell” items up on the internet or down to a pawn shop. It’s vital to finish strong to avoid simply moving your clutter from one area of the house to another.
Looking for More Tips on How to Reduce Clutter?
Now that you have a good idea of how to reduce clutter around your house, are you ready to make it happen? Check out some of our other articles on managing your home for more information on decorating, cleaning, home improvement and more.