Although clutter doesn’t pose a serious risk, it can disturb you and your family’s daily life. Clutter is a problem in thousands of homes globally, especially in the United States.
About 54% of Americans are overwhelmed by the clutter in their homes, and around 78% don’t even know what to do with it. Also, they find it too difficult to handle, so they let it pile up, taking over their space.
Here are a few household decluttering tips you can use to keep your humble abode neat and spacious.
Break up your work
Decluttering your home is a big task. Setting out to organize an entire home will leave you frustrated, confused, or overwhelmed about where to start. It’s easy to break your work into smaller portions that will help you get a sense of achievement along the way.
An ideal way to manage decluttering is by creating a list of the rooms and the order to work on them. Also, list and arrange things in groups. Select the first room or the items you want to start decluttering with. It’s better to start with small rooms first.
Rent a storage unit
Sources suggest that the average size of apartments in the US is 941 square feet, which can still be pretty small if you hoard plenty of stuff. Compare that to the average size of apartments in Arlington, WA, which is 902 square feet. Homes in urban cities tend to be compacter and can become cluttered faster. So you’ll need to come up with more creative ways to maximize space.
In this case, for example, residents in Washington State’s Snohomish County can rent Arlington storage units to free up space in their homes and manage clutter. And if you’re not in Arlington, you can still use Google to look up a storage company in your neighborhood.
Renting extra storage allows you to safely keep things you don’t frequently use, such as seasonal clothes and linen, Christmas decoration, sporting equipment, and even heirlooms you don’t want to part with. Some service providers also provide storage units that are climate-controlled and under 24/7 surveillance, so your belongings are sure to be safe for the long haul.
Give yourself sufficient time before decluttering anything
One of the easiest mistakes homeowners make when trying to remove clutter from their homes is to do too much at once. If the clutter has gathered over a longer time, it will need more than one day or two to remove everything from your home.
An ideal way to accomplish it is to clear up one room at a time and move to the next. It’s like setting step-by-step goals, and you’ll see the progress much faster.
By organizing your junk cleanup in that manner, you stay fully motivated and energetic. Once you clean up one room, you can use it the same way you did before it was overrun with clutter.
Be practical about what to keep and throw away
You can only initiate decluttering once you convince yourself to part with items you no longer require. You might have things in your home that you have yet to use and have been covering your space for years. There’s no way you’ll ever touch them again, so get rid of them.
You can sell them via a yard sale or through platforms such as eBay. However, the faster way is to donate these items to different charities if you want. Everything else may go directly to the dump or can be recycled. Your main goal is to regain the space in your home.
Don’t worry about the price
You might be looking at your lightly-used piece of furniture and wondering about the money you spent on it. The money you spend on the thing is a sunk cost since you’ve already paid for it. Keeping such items around or paying extra to repair them if they look worn won’t add value to your life.
Before deciding whether to keep something, forget the previous expenses and think only about your present and future. It’s better to think about whether keeping these items will have any positive impact on your life. If it doesn’t, it’s high time to let them go either by selling or donating them.
Pay more attention to surfaces
Flat open surfaces such as countertops, coffee tables, nightstands, home office desks, laundry room counters, and the tops of kitchen cabinets are like magnets for clutter piling up. It’s easy to utilize them as storage spaces for every item, such as keys, coins, trash, and old appliances.
If you see a lot of junk on flat surfaces, think of some good ways to eliminate it. For example, you can place an attractive, small clutter box on the kitchen counter where you can easily throw your wallet, keys, and other items when you enter your house.
Keep your storage spaces neat and beautiful. If you keep rearranging and decluttering your entire home to store items in unsightly shoe boxes or cardboard boxes, you will feel like your home doesn’t look neater. When you initiate a decluttering project, be more creative about the space and consider better storage solutions to arrange the things you’ll have left.
Set up natural declutterers
If you see a problem space where more junk than average accumulates, consider new ways to prevent that mess in the future. You should get a recycling bin if you have a bad habit of keeping your junk mail on your kitchen counter or coffee table. Setting up a recycling bin next to where you check your mail, so you will naturally toss the clutter before it has a chance to accumulate.
Conclusion
Clutter will begin to pile up, even for a vigilant homeowner constantly tidying up. Rather than allowing the junk to overwhelm you, accept that it’s completely normal, and you must commit to occasional mini-decluttering and cleanups. You can declutter your entire home once every month or once a year to keep a junk-free home.