Declutter Your Home for a Prosperous 2020

If you followed the tips in our last blog (5 Tips for Keeping Your New Year’s Resolution), then you’re 2020 is hopefully off to a great start. While it may be tempting to wait until spring to start cleaning, you could benefit from the momentum of the new year and get a head start on decluttering your home right now.

There are numerous approaches to decluttering, but here we’ll look at the two simplest methods. The first approach is to declutter one room at a time. The second is to declutter by category.

How to Declutter Each Room

Decluttering one room at a time has many benefits. Instead of waiting for the satisfaction of cleaning your entire house, you can enjoy the gratification of organizing a single room. It can also be easier if you have kids or other people living with you since you can focus on one part of the house without upending the others.

A potential downside of this method is that you may take so much gratification in completing one room, that you neglect that rest of the house that you promised yourself you would tackle. Another drawback is that you could fall into the trap of decluttering one room, only to realize that you’ve moved the entire mess into another room. Luckily, if you follow these tips, this shouldn’t be a problem.

First, when decluttering a room, pick a section of the space. A good place to start could be the closet, the dresser, or even under the bed. As you go through the stuff, you should have one box for things to keep, one trash bag for things to donate, and another trash bag for actual trash. Whether you do a section a day or complete an entire room in an afternoon, upon finishing each section, you should put the garbage bag in a trash can, put the donations in your trunk to be donated as soon as possible, and put the box of things to keep off to the side so that it all doesn’t recirculate as more clutter before your task is complete.

Declutter by Category

If you’ve seen the popular Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, you’re likely familiar with the KonMari method of organizing by category instead of by room. While you could benefit from learning more about this method and philosophy at the link here, a simple approach is to go through the house organizing and removing items by category in the following order:

1. Clothes
2. Books
3. Papers
4. Miscellaneous Items
5. Sentimental Items

The core of this approach, which is similar to aspects of minimalism, is to thoughtfully examine each item in your life and to only keep those that truly provide value or “spark joy” as Marie Kondo puts it.

The Hybrid Approach

In your own efforts to declutter, the best approach may actually be both. First, choose a room. Then, choose a section of the room. Finally, declutter that section by category, starting with clothes and ending with sentimental items. After that section is complete, move onto another, repeating this method until the entire house is clutter-free.

Now Get Started

Whether you choose to declutter by room or by category, what’s most important is that you get started and stick to it. If in your decluttering journey you realize it’s not so much what’s in your space, but the space itself, click the link to learn more about Lake Worth’s premier townhome community.