The best time to start something is NOW, but especially since now is the end of one year and the beginning of another! Let's start fresh without anything unnessary in our lives. Let's demand our freedom from physical and mental clutter and feel the energy and liberation of living purposefully and in the moment.
Clutter causes stress and anxiety and it wastes time and space. The biggest excuse for clutter is not having time to clean it and/or being too overwhelmed, but the time you put in now to get it cleaned up will save you way more time throughout the year and you'll be so much lighter and happier and better able to focus!
Here are some ideas for starting the process:
Make a checklist of the different places you want to declutter.
Prepare places to put things: trash bag, recycle box, donation box, bin for things that belong in another room
Start small: especially if you get overwhelmed or have trouble focusing, starting a small project first, like a drawer, cupboard or a small bathroom, is motivating.
Divide rooms into sections: for example, when working in the kitchen, work on one cabinet at at time, even one shelf at a time if you get easily overwhelmed
Remove everything: take everything out of the space you are decluttering, clean the area, and then put back what you want to keep
Sort: put like items together, sift through getting rid of what you don't need, combine things you can combine; for example when cleaning the bathroom, put all the lotions together, all the hair products together, all the first-aid stuff together. If you have 5 half containers of band-aids, combine these into 1 or 2.
Declutter first, then organize: as you are decluttering and sorting, use boxes or repurpose containers you already have in the house to organize items for now; don't get distracted and run out and get bins! As you continue to declutter, you may find things in other rooms or closets that belong in the newly decluttered area and it may change the type of organizers you need. Or for example, you may decide to move all of the first aid stuff into the hall closet and you won't even need to worry about having space for it in the bathroom.
Forget perfect: we are not going for perfect! Right now you just want to get rid of everything that is not useful to you, anything excessive and anything unnecessary that is causing clutter. You want a place for everything and everything in it's place.
Organize: once you have decluttered an area and pared it down to everything you want and nothing you don't, then it's time to organize! So if you cleaned out your spice cabinet, got rid of all the old, expired spices and any spices you don't use, it's time to organize what you have. You may be fine with the spices on the shelf as is, but you may benefit from a little lazy susan or a shelf organizer or an over the door organizer.
So hopefully this helps and you are inspired to declutter! You can do it step by step! If you just do one project at at a time, you won't get overwhelmed as easily and it won't take that much time. Imagine if you just spend 30 minutes a day decluttering...you'll be done in no time! So go get started now!!
If you want help, reach out to me and I will be happy to help you get started or I can help you from start to finish, but help is available so don't hesitate to start getting your life in order with or without my help!
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