Tips for Organizing and Decluttering Your Home

Spring, a season for rebirth and rejuvenation – and that applies to your home, too! Many of us are undertaking home design or renovation projects as we come out of winter into the new season. Winter is a prime time for us to accumulate extra stuff and now is the time to inventory, analyze and rectify all the clutter overwhelming our homes during the cold months.

Decluttering and organizing is healthy, if it doesn’t become an obsession. But let’s face it – not many of us actually like to clean the house. Here are some of good tips for organizing and decluttering your home.

Why should we organize?

Simply put, organization helps you love your home. Chaos can be stressful making the one place you should be able to enjoy peace and serenity, less appealing to be in. If your home is well organized, you’ll want to be in it more often and it’ll be more comfortable for you.

In addition to loving your home, organizing and decluttering comes with social and mental benefits, such as helping you to clear your mind, reducing anxiousness and stress; it helps with your self-esteem, because now you feel better about inviting people over, promoting healthy social relationships; it helps you focus; and it makes your life easier because you can find things!

What about decluttering?

If you’re someone who doesn’t enjoy cleaning, you’ll love decluttering. Clutter can steal your time, your space and your energy, not to mention the eye sore that visual clutter is, leading to higher stress levels. Decluttering helps reduce tripping hazards and can help prevent pests and reduce dust and mildew, meaning better breathing and reaping the benefits, especially if you suffer from allergies and asthma. Decluttering your home is freeing – to your mind and your schedule.

Organizing and decluttering your space means you have to clean less because you simply have less stuff to clean. It also leads to a reduction in spending money – remember when you desperately tried to find that item you were positive you had somewhere, but just couldn’t find? Queue the autopilot of going online to re-purchase it because you needed it.

Tips for Organizing

Start small: if the idea of organizing, decluttering and cleaning your entire home sounds daunting, you aren’t alone, and you’re way more likely to be productive and accomplish more if you start with a small room or a defined part of a larger room. If you are really dreading this type of project, start with the fridge! You’d be surprised how good it feels when you’re done, and it just might give you the motivation to push forward into a slightly larger cleaning binge.

Schedule it: the same logic to scheduling your workouts can be applied to scheduling your organizing and decluttering sessions. You ensure you don’t make other plans during that time, and you hold yourself more accountable for the work. Set aside at least one full day to tackle each mini project (or room).

Plan it: Draft an amateur floor plan with where you would like to store certain things in each of your home spaces, so you have a rough guide to follow. It can be easy to get overwhelmed and even with these tips for organizing, having a written or printed point of reference can help you from getting sidetracked.

Take inventory: Before you can really get to the organizing, decluttering and cleaning part, you must figure out what exactly you have. Grab a pack of post-its and a pen, or a label maker, and figure out what you are working with. Label everything.

Stay focused: Set sentimental items aside to look at later – it’ll distract you from the task at hand and you’ll be less productive if you look at every photo and memory as you come across it.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect!

Whether you’re doing a much-needed house clean or hoping to undertake a larger home renovation project in the upcoming months, these tips for organizing can help you get from point A to point B a bit easier.

If you’re looking to get inspiration for that next home upgrade, or hire a professional organizer for a larger project, talk to an expert at one of our upcoming shows.