We tend to accumulate more stuff as we get older. Many of us are pack rats who loath to part with anything meaningful. The trouble with this is that our home is only so large and, taken to an extreme, you choose to relocate to a larger home just to house everything you’ve collected.
Here is how to make your home clutter free in next to no time.
Follow the One Year Rule
What’s the one-year rule? It’s a simple idea that if you haven’t touched the item to use it in the last 12 months, then you don’t need it any longer. It’s similar to the “use it or lose it” idea but turned on its head.
The approach is an excellent way to blitz through the property quickly pulling out anything that you haven’t done anything with in over a year and placing it in a pile in the centre of the room. From there, you’re able to sell the items to make some money from eBay or the Amazon Marketplace, give them to friends who want them, or use Freecycle.
Doing More with Less
With our kitchens, we never met a new gadget we didn’t like. The challenge here is that there’s only so much countertop space. Let’s face it, that gadget you bought at the market which was beautifully demonstrated and on “special discount today only” tends to stay in the kitchen cupboard unused. If anyone brings up whatever happened to that fancy gadget, you tend to get a sheepish look on your face.
The reality with preparing food in the kitchen is that you don’t need many tools. Plenty of people get in the middle of a complex renovation and must make do with a limited amount of countertop space to prep the ingredients and one or two saucepans to work with. You’d be amazed what you can do when you challenge your creativity to come up with great meals based on a limited selection of ingredients and less kitchenware. For inspiration, you can learn how to cook when renovating through Ren Behan’s tips.
Create Habits to Support a Clutter-free Environment
Being more organised isn’t the answer to deal with clutter in the home because you’re moving deck chairs around on the Titanic. Your hope of a clutter-free home is sinking with your whole approach. It’s only possible to have a clutter-free space when you excise the clutter first. From there, you are free to manage what’s left to keep it clean and organised while being ever mindful of the same build up happening again.
Once you’re free of the clutter, implement a routine for putting everything back into its place before going to bed. Don’t end up with a messy home because you were too tired to put things away as that’s how it all starts again. If you really want to get serious about clutter, you could enter the “100 Things I Own” challenge to reduce what you own down to no more than 100 items. From there, you commit to selling or giving away one item for every new thing you wish to buy to avoid building up too much stuff ever again.
To instantly clear the clutter away from your home, you must take it seriously. Half measures don’t really work. If it takes you a while to sort through everything you own to decide what is considered clutter and get rid of, that’s fine. Just as long as you complete the personal inventory and become clutter-free in the end. It’s just too freeing not to.
I love this! I don’t know if I could ever do the 100 things challenge but it sure is interesting! I came here looking for decluttering tips because I have a goal to declutter my house by the new year. I have an appointment with the carpet cleaners (desperately needed!) at the end of December to clean all of the floors, and so everything needs to be decluttered by then. Setting a strict deadline like that is really helpful. I really love your year rule too. There is a lot that I haven’t used in years but think I’ll use “someday”. This was a good reality check. Thanks for this inspiring article!
Good luck with the decluttering, I need to listen to my own wise words 😉