Back to Introduction: The Definitive Guide to Organize Your Life And Get Rid of Clutter
1: How To Declutter and Organize Your Home
- Begin With The Goal In Mind. What do you want to accomplish? Down to 100 things? Use every thing at least once every month? Every six months? I recommend you start off with the goal of only keeping things you are committed to using this year. Also set limits on how much seasonal clothing, etc you’re willing to keep. The easiest way to do this is to see how much storage space you already have (or are willing to have). Have an overflowing closet? Perhaps commit to only keeping what fits in the closet – or purchase some drawers. You don’t have to get rid of items – but I recommend having a place to store everything. Unsurprisingly, if you pick up a copy of my free personal development course, personal development 101, we similarly start by determining what it is you want in life.
- Set The Ground Rules. Before you come across an item, decide on the criteria you’ll use to decide whether it stays or goes. How many “backup” items do you need? What’s the plan – will you donate, or try to sell the excess clutter? I recommend picking a donation area and just taking clutter immediately there. Too often if we say we’ll try to find a good home for it, the clutter ends up in a no man’s land tucked away in a corner. We’ll rationalize we’re not “keeping it” – we’re just trying to find someone to give it to. Life is too short, and there’s more organizing to be done – so just donate it, get the tax write off if you want, and move on.
- Pick a Single Point of Focus. Don’t try to organize your whole house at once: pick a single location. I like to start with the bathroom. It’s easy for me to pick out what is going to be used and what isn’t – and (for me) there usually isn’t very much excess to get rid of except for wayward travel supplies and the like.
- If It’s Overwhelming, Schedule It In – and Set a Timer. If you have a few hours and a small amount of organizing, you can try to finish it all at once. Sometimes though, if it’s a large amount of work, it can overwhelm us. We look at the the scale of the task and think to ourselves “I’ll never be able to do that!” – so we don’t even start. Don’t fall into that trap. As I talked about in my recent article about keeping your dreams alive, even spending just a few minutes a day makes a difference. Schedule a regular decluttering block of time, and then set a timer and perhaps declutter for 15 or 30 minutes. You’ll be amazed how much you can clear in a short amount of time, and organizing every day will also help make it a habit.
- Get Boxes or Garbage Bags. Don’t just sort the piles into more piles. Physically take the clutter you are going to donate (or otherwise remove) and place it in garbage bags. I recommend starting with three bags: trash, donations, and “other room.” Trash is items you don’t need and can’t be reused, donations are items that are in working order but that you no longer use. Sometimes I’ll find something that’s not really clutter – but it doesn’t belong in the room it’s in. If it is fragile you can immediately relocate it to another room, but in general I recommend not breaking your flow – take the excess items and place them in the “other room” bag to be sorted post organizing and decluttering.
- Designate an “Out of Place” Area. If you can, designate an area in the room where you can put items you find in the room, that need to stay in the room to be organized. For example, you might be organizing your office and come across a stack of paperwork. You don’t want that to derail you, so place that in a pile to get to later – hopefully once you’ve cleared some desk space so you CAN deal with it! I typically reserve a box for this. As I’m organizing, if I find something that I need to deal with, but is going to take a long time to organize (for relatively little space cleared) I don’t break my flow for it – I just put it in my box and continue on in the section I was working on.
- Go In One Direction. Some people may disagree, but I like to have a very thorough, systematic approach to organizing and declutterring. So for example, I’ll start by the door and work all along one wall – and that may be all I do for the day. I’ll completely organize everything that’s over there, and if something doesn’t belong there, I relocate it to either my “other room” trash bag, or I move it to my designated area in the room for items to organize.
- Finish Up – Clear The Trash and Donation Bags. That’s it – just repeat Steps 3-7 until your timer goes off. Then deal with the donation and trash bags – and if you want, deal with the items in the “other room” and “out of place” pile. Remember, those items were clutter to begin with – so having them in separate boxes and bags for a little while doesn’t hurt.
- Once Cleared, Designate as DCZ: DeClutterized Zones. Once an area has been cleared, make sure you don’t add clutter to it. For example, I might clear off a counter in the kitchen one day, and designate that as an area where no mess can be left. Slowly as I keep organizing and decluttering, this zone expands until the whole room is clear and organized.
Part 2: How To Let Go Of Individual Items – a.k.a. Common Reasons We Hold On To Stuff