Decluttering your home can be one of life’s little pleasures. There’s something inherently satisfying about clearing out your home of things you know you don’t need, use, or even want. But how do you decide what to get rid of? What to store? What to keep in your home? Well, we’re here to help declutter your home.
What’s The Best Way To Declutter Your Home?
We find that the best way to declutter your home can be to tackle it room by room so it doesn’t seem too daunting. It also has the benefit of giving you small ‘victories’ along the way and stopping you from becoming disheartened, distracted or losing motivation.
One of the best tips for decluttering is to first sort everything into three metaphorical piles: keep, store, or bin. With that in mind, we’ll go over the best way to declutter your home in brief, and then cover off points in more detail.
How To Declutter Your Home
- Do it room by room: It’ll be easier to focus and the task won’t seem too daunting.
- Separate things into three piles: Keep, Store, Bin.
- Be ruthless but considered: Sentimentality can get in the way of things we are never likely to use/wear/watch/read again. Get rid of these items, but by all means take a while over your decisions so you don’t regret anything. If you can’t decide, store it.
- Store things you know you only use occasionally: declutter your home by moving things into storage. Christmas decorations, summer clothes in winter (and vice versa), camping gear etc. can all be put into storage until you need them.
- Work out where you will keep the ‘keep’ bin: It’s not decluttering if you keep things that are just going to get in the way again. If it doesn’t have a place, store or bin it.
- Remember the 80/20 rule: We tend to wear 20% of our clothes, 80% of the time. The same is also true of things like books, DVDs, toys etc. Try to get rid of the things you don’t use.
- Realise the value of something: Sentimentality aside, your items probably aren’t worth as much as you think they are. Most things depreciate in value so unless you know for sure, don’t hold on to something because of its perceived worth. That said…
- Make some money where you can: eBay, Gumtree and car boot sales are your friend. Turning stuff you don’t want into money (that you do want) is a great way to incentivise decluttering your home and encouraging being ruthless.
- Do a good deed: if you don’t want to spend the time selling your unwanted items. Donate them to charity. We live in a throwaway culture and if somebody can still get some use of your items then all the better.
Tips For Decluttering Your Home
Most things in your home are likely to be put in the ‘keep’ pile; you either use them regularly, you like them or they serve a purpose. It’s usually fairly easy to make decisions on these items but in some cases things might be different and the inner-hoarder might come out in you.
- With clothes, separate them by season. You don’t need your winter coat in the summer, and you don’t need your beachwear in the winter. Store them.
- Struggling to decide with your everyday clothes? Every time you hang clothes in the wardrobe after washing them, put them on the right hand side. As you do more washes they’ll move to the left. If an item gets all the way to the left side, you clearly don’t wear it. Sell or donate it.
- Try to keep flat surfaces clear. Whether you’re in the kitchen, the living room or decluttering a bedroom, flat surfaces are a magnet for ‘stuff’. Put everything you’re keeping in its correct place and see what’s left. If you can’t find space for it other than on a surface, ask yourself if you really need it. If you do, consider buying/making extra storage space.
Long Term Decluttering Ideas
How do you prevent the same situation from happening years or perhaps even months down the line? You start changing the way you live slightly to stay on top of things…
- Store things in labelled boxes. When you move house, everything goes in boxes that are labelled and you go to them when you need something. Why not adopt the same approach at home? Keep as much as you can, ranging from shoes to household bills in labelled or numbered boxes so you know where everything is. In a lot of cases you can even make this storage a feature of your home…
- Get smarter with your home storage. Vertical wall space is often under utilised so build shelving units to keep other items. In the kitchen, the inside door of a cupboard can house a rack to keep pan lids. In the bathroom, an over the door shoe holder can be a great place to keep your toiletries…
- Spaces over doors or in the corner of rooms, especially when they’re small are often wasted. They can be utilised for extra storage…
- Roll clothes such as t shirts, underwear, shorts etc. in the drawers. They take up less space and can be moved around to maximise the available area you have.
We hope this helps you declutter your home and turn your space into a blissful nirvana… We’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.
Remember, when you do work out what you want to store, we have self storage units in a range of sizes available near you. Get a quote today.
Posted on 12th July 2022 by Attic Storage | Last updated on 19th July 2024
