5 Tips To Make Home Decluttering Easy

A clean space is a clean mind. Cluttered spaces produce the opposite. Things are harder to find, harder to use, and simple tasks like basic cleaning take more work.

Decluttering seems like a difficult job, but we know it’s one that provides significant value to our peace of mind.

Make the job a breeze with Acceptable Storage by learning our 5 tips to making home de-cluttering easier!

1. Do One Job at A Time

Decluttering produces significant boons to peace of mind, but even just the thought of doing it can be exhausting.

It’s no fun to live and work every day in a cluttered space, but it’s even less fun to dedicate the hours required to getting them organized! So we put it off and put it off, and things get worse.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Rome was not built in a day, and your home (or any space within it) doesn’t need to be decluttered in a day either! If you’re putting off home de-cluttering because you don’t want to invest an entire weekend into the project, you don’t have to!

By splitting up your de-cluttering project into manageable chunks, you can take the burden off your mind and weekend and still access all the benefits of an organized home. If you don’t want to dedicate an afternoon, ask yourself what you could organize in the next hour! Maybe you can’t do your entire garage, but how about that front closet, or office desk?

2. Rely On Your Method, Not Your Willpower

Effective de-cluttering isn’t about suffering through hours of sorting and organization.

It’s about establishing an effective system, a ‘program’ of action you can rely on to get the job done efficiently, and keep it done in perpetuity.

You make your life so much worse when you get down to the task of de-cluttering without the right tools and organizational system to get things done. You’ll clean the closet to make it ‘look’ clean, but without fixing why it got that way in the first place, you can expect to do the job again in another 6 months!

If your kitchen cabinets are a mess, they likely got that way because there isn’t an effective system of organization for sorting your things. Institute one, and ensure that it’s followed, and you can expect things to stay tidy long into the future.

3. Focus on What You’re Keeping, Not What You’re Throwing Away

De-cluttering means getting rid of a lot of useless junk. Every item you pull out of your garage, closet, shed, basement, or living room is a decision.

Most homeowners ask ‘should I throw this out?’, not knowing that this question is a recipe for exhaustion.

The mind automatically comes up with million-and-one possible future uses for each item. You pull out a thousand items, and each requires exhaustive deliberation. You end up keeping a lot more than is necessary, investing hours of your time to leave a space only a little less cluttered than before.

Instead, ask ‘should I keep this?’.

This requires the mind to come up with an immanent purpose for a given item. If you can’t find it, get rid of it! Not only does this make each decision a breeze, but you end up removing much more useless junk from your living spaces!

4. Make It Fun

You reduce many of the psychological barriers preventing you from de-cluttering when you make the job fun. De-cluttering doesn’t have to be suffering!

The days leading up to the job, make yourself a custom playlist! Use the songs to pace yourself, breaking every 3-5 songs or so.

Maybe buy yourself a pack of beers or margarita mix, invite some friends, and make a day out of it. Cook something low-and-slow on the BBQ throughout the day and treat your friends to it as a thank-you!

Anything you can do to make de-cluttering something that you look forward to (and have help doing!) will pay for itself by not only making de-cluttering easier but less dreadful in the days leading up! With friends and good times all around, you’ll get the job done faster and more enjoyable than you could have imagined!

5. Find The Right Place For All Your Stuff

Figuring out what to do with all your stuff is one of the most prominent challenges when home de-cluttering.

There’s stuff that you clearly want to keep around, stuff that you clearly want to get rid of, but also the awkward middle-area stuff.

This stuff has value to you, but you don’t want it cluttering the house right now.

Maybe it’s pool supplies, winter gear, camping stuff, off-season sports equipment, or that wine-making kit you use once a year. You know you’ll need to use it eventually, but right now it’s just taking up space.

The best solution for these things in Ottawa is a storage unit from Acceptable Storage. Inexpensive and easy-to-access any time,

Inexpensive and easy-to-access any time, Acceptable Storage is the best solution to addressing the challenge of domestic storage in Ottawa.

To learn more about how we can make home de-cluttering easy, let us know your storage needs, and we’ll let you know how we can meet them!

Also, don’t forget to check our extensive inventory of supplies to help organize your home!