4 Ways To Declutter Your Home Without Sacrificing Sanity

Life can be pretty demanding and coming home to a place of serenity with less clutter can have tremendous effects on your personal and professional growth and success. In fact, there have been psychological studies on the matter of clutter.

“Getting rid of the clutter in your home, with or without the help of other non-organizationally challenged individuals, seems to be a key factor that you may not have realized is so important to your feelings of happiness,” Dr. Susan Krauss Whitbourne explained in Psychology Today.

Unfortunately, decluttering your home and personal space is easier said than achieved. There may be no time to declutter. Or you may have little emotional attachments to items making up the clutter. There is also the issue of just being too lazy to do it.

Regardless of your excuse, decluttering and living simpler is important in today’s digital and hyper-social age. To help, we compiled a few ways to declutter your home without sacrificing your sanity.

1. Create a declutter plan of action

This is the first, and the most important step to declutter your home without going crazy doing it. A plan of action will also help you sidestep the excuses you may have, like no time to get it done. This is because you will separate areas of clutter into easy to approach zones.

For example, you can start with a small zone like the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Then you can move to larger zones like the cluttered hallway and bedroom closet. From there, take on the big tasks, such as decluttering the garage or basement.

Your plan of action should also include what to do with it. You don’t want to move clutter from one area to another. Enlisting the help from professionals can be a saving grace, since they will box, move, and store your stuff in a simple and affordable way.

2. Approach decluttering your home methodically

Before you can get rid of and store your stuff, you need to have an approach that will make the decluttering process easier. This will allow you to make quick work of the process. This is valuable for those time starved due to family and work obligations.

Get some boxes and lay out three labeled Keep, Store, and Throw Out. Put these boxes in the zone you’re tackling for the afternoon and sort the clutter appropriately. Once done, don’t dig into the boxes, because the decision has already been made. So store it, toss it, or neatly arrange it. It’s that simple!

3. Add up “Time of Use” of items you don’t want to toss or store

We all have items with a bit of emotional attachment. But the truth is, most clutter has been sitting around untouched, unused, and out of sight for months, if not years. This makes the “Time of Use” application essential for getting that clutter out of your home.

If you are holding an item in your hand and looking at the Throw Out box with emotional attachment, think about the last time you used that item. If it was more than six months, toss it. For items that really do have sentimental value, like baby shoes for instance, store it for safekeeping and to keep you sane down the road.

4. The price you paid for it has long surpassed current value

Many people refuse to get rid of an item due to the price they paid for it two, three, or five years ago. This is kind of ridiculous, since the cost of that item is now a sunk cost. The value of that item has long been surpassed and keeping it around because of what you paid five years ago is simply not worth the clutter cost you’re enduring presently.

To keep this from happening during your decluttering, erase cost completely from your mind. If it has not increased in value, the item no longer has monetary worth. Associating what you spent is a slippery slope, so just eliminate completely to make decluttering easier.

Wrapping up . . .

There are certainly a number of ways to make decluttering your home a successful endeavor. But the above four are among the most important and serve as a great starting point. Start small, have a plan, and take emotions and cost out of the equation for maximum clutter free results.

It’s an amazing feeling to sit in a clean and clutter free home, open a bottle of wine, light a candle from https://jewelcandle.com, and unwind in front of the TV.

If you have a few decluttering tips of your own and want to share them, we want to hear from you. Help other find the peace and serenity of having an open home with items of importance and utility.