Spring may be over but that doesn’t mean you can’t still do some spring cleaning. If your home is cluttered and filled with things you don’t even remember buying, let alone have a use for, it can seem like an impossible task.
Paul Grey from Chums has shared his top tips for how to declutter without losing your mind. His most important tip is to pick up every item when you’re trying to clear things out – yes everything. He said: “It’s all too easy to cast your eyes over a desk full of papers or a cluttered bookshelf and assume you still need and want everything there. But by examining each item, you may well find the manual you’ve been holding onto for the kettle you threw out three years ago.”
The most common offenders for this are papers and documents. Even though they are small it’s worth going through everything to see what you still need. You may be surprised by how much you are holding on to.
Paul said: “Some items with personal details on may need to be shredded to be safe. But remember, you can wait until you have a big batch of things to be shredded instead of doing it immediately and interrupting your decluttering flow.”
Scheduling time to tackle the mess is another way to make it more manageable. Decide on a time that works for you and mark it in your calendar, or put a reminder in your phone and then stick to it.
Resist the temptation of distractions – if you find your old diary from 2010 don’t sit and read it.
Decide where it’s going and then move on. If you find a coffee cup, return it to the kitchen and come right back to the task at hand – don’t start to go through your kitchen cabinets. Move methodically and the task becomes much easier.
Reducing the mental load is another great way to break down the chore. It can be easy to overcomplicate things unnecessarily.
Paul said: “Many of us feel the need to have a bin bag for rubbish items, a box for things that could be donated and a box for things that could be sold – but this can be counterproductive.
“Think about it. You take an item out of a drawer and decide you don’t want it any more. Now you’ve got to decide what to do with it – and the time that takes means you don’t clear as much out of your chosen area as you might have otherwise.”
Instead, bring one reasonably sized box and put anything you’re getting rid of into that. Focus on the core decision – to keep or to get rid. Once the box is full – you can sit down and go through everything inside to decide what to do with it all.
This way, you can start to see results – in other words, a cleaner, less cluttered space – more quickly.