How To De-Clutter Your House Like a Pro

Top tips from Store First

Is your house beginning to look a little cluttered and messy? Living in a cluttered and disorganised environment can take its toll on your mood, your energy and in some cases, even your mental health.

Clutter accumulates for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest is procrastination – it’s far easier to tell yourself you’ll “clean up tomorrow” than to put something back where it belongs after you’re finished with it.

After a month or two of forgetting to put things back where they belong, your home can start to feel more like a collection of items cluttering the floor, countertops and other spaces than a place to live.

Luckily, de-cluttering your home is a simple process that – when approached in the right way – lets you free up storage space, clean and tidy your home and enjoy a far more liveable environment.

Do you need some motivation to start de-cluttering your home? In this guide, we’ve put together 10 simple but effective tips that you can use to start decluttering your home right now.

Start in the bathroom

Don’t know where to start cleaning? The bathroom is generally the best room for you to start decluttering in, since bathrooms are rarely passageways and they’re often packed with items you rarely use.

Bathroom declutter pic.twitter.com/OvZ28sYK

— Sabine (@Sabs_85) February 20, 2013

Pick a corner of your bathroom and start sorting items. Toss rarely-used items into the rubbish, and pack items that you don’t use frequently but want to keep in a box to place in storage. Once you’ve de-cluttered and discarded unused items, clean the shower, sink and bathtub. Get your home’s bathrooms out of the way early and you’ll never need to think about them while you’re de-cluttering the rest of your house.

Clean one room at a time

Instead of de-cluttering your entire house at once, choose a room to begin with and clean it from top to bottom. Sort items into “throw away” and “place in storage” bags and don’t start on the next room until you’re 100% finished in the current one.

ITS AMAZING what can be achieved in a couple of days! Here's a recent #Declutter project I undertook in #Bath! pic.twitter.com/HelRyIZFu7 — catriona archer (@catrionaarcher) November 7, 2014

From bedrooms to living rooms, de-cluttering one room at a time lets you sort your house into smaller, more manageable milestones. Tick rooms off your to-do list one by one and you’ll see yourself making progress as your home gets tidier and tidier.

Scan and store online

Do you have a messy and cluttered home office? Letters, documents and other paper items can often end up strewn across your desk or packed into folders on your shelf or in your filing cabinet.

Instead of letting paper clutter up your home office, scan letters and documents and store them online. Cloud storage services like Google Drive and iCloud make it easy to manage all of your bills, letters and other personal information digitally.

Paper clutter is a serious annoyance, especially if you work from home or receive a lot of mail. Make scanning your mail a weekly habit and you’ll never need to worry about paper cluttering up your home office again.

Store rarely used items

Do you have valuable items that rarely get used? From heirlooms to appliances, the items that clutter up your bedroom or living room are often too valuable to throw in the rubbish or too large to store at home.

Instead of discarding or donating these items, box them up and store them in your own self storage space. Insured and protected, items kept in self storage remain in perfect condition without taking up living space or cluttering your home.

Use the 20/20/20 trick

Here’s a cool trick to quickly declutter your home: toss 20 items into a rubbish bag to throw away, place 20 items in a cardboard box to donate and spend 20 minutes cleaning a specific room in your home.

The 20/20/20 trick breaks de-cluttering down into small, manageable activities to make it seem less like work and more like fun. At the end of your 20 minutes, take a five-minute break to catch your breath and then start again.

Listen to music as you work

Don’t like cleaning up? Listening to music while you clean makes the entire process far less boring. Transfer your favourite playlist to your MP3 player or phone and put on some music as you work to keep yourself focused and interested.

Audiobooks and podcasts are also great ways to pass the time while you de-clutter and clean up. Combined with the 20/20/20 trick, a good podcast will help you pass the time as you work – before you know it, your house will be completely clean.

Clear and clean flat surfaces

It’s easy to “de-clutter” your home by picking up items from the floor and keeping them on top of your desk or kitchen countertop. This isn’t really decluttering – it’s just transferring clutter from one place to another.

Force yourself to keep your countertops, tables and flat surfaces clean and free of clutter by cleaning them first. Start with your kitchen countertop and sort all of the bills and letters on top of it before moving on and cleaning the next room.

Buy great home storage items

The right storage items will prevent clutter from accumulating in the first place. A shoe rack, for example, will keep your shoes from cluttering your home’s hallway and encourage you to take off your shoes the moment you step inside your home.

Coat racks, likewise, prevent you from tossing your coat onto the sofa. Key hooks prevent you from leaving (and potentially losing) your keys on the coffee table or kitchen counter.

Deodorise your home with citrus

Does your home smell a little dusty? De-cluttering and cleaning up can make your home far more organised than it once was, but it often leaves it with a dusty scent, or even the smell of detergent or other cleaning products.

Deodorise your home by heating a small amount of water and citrus (you can also use cinnamon) in a frying pan. Keep the heat low (otherwise your home will smell worse) and leave the heat on for 5-10 minutes to let the scent develop.

Lemon oil is great for cleaning your home! Here's easy ways to use it: http://t.co/jSCr6Rp1fA pic.twitter.com/cdsiQZfQwq

— Catherine Slezinger (@TheOrganicMomma) February 11, 2014

Make de-cluttering a habit

De-cluttering your home is no good if it’s simply going to become cluttered again in a week or two. The next time you de-clutter and clean your home, force yourself to make it into a regular habit.

Instead of letting dishes accumulate in the sink for a day or two, wash them as soon as you’re finished with them. Instead of tossing your coat over the back of the couch, store it on its hanger – or on the coat rack – as soon as you take it off.

Small habits add up over time and prevent your home from becoming cluttered. On the other hand, bad clutter-related habits quickly add up and leave your house in a messy state, even if you’ve cleaned it recently.

Are you ready to start de-cluttering?

Living in a messy, cluttered environment can take its toll on you. When your house is disorganised and full of mess, your attitude (and even your mind) can become the same in surprisingly little time.

If you’re tired of coming home to a messy house, set aside an hour or two this week to de-clutter your home. With the 20/20/20 trick and a good playlist, you’ll be able to enjoy a clean and clutter-free home in what feels like no time at all.

If you’re interested in finding out more, email info@storefirst.com or call 01282 330 330.