How do you declutter your house
How to Declutter Your Home: 6 Best Room-by-Room Methods
Set the overwhelming feeling aside by starting with small steps
By
Elizabeth Larkin
Elizabeth Larkin
Elizabeth Larkin is a professional organizer with a strong interest in productivity, time management, and process refinement. She used her organizational skills and effectiveness to pen articles with helpful information on cleaning, organizing living spaces, and decluttering.
Learn more about The Spruce's Editorial Process
Updated on 09/27/22
Reviewed by
Katherine Picott
Reviewed by Katherine Picott
Katherine is a professional home organizer, certified KonMari consultant, and member of The Spruce's Cleaning and Organizing Review Board. She launched her own professional organizing business, Tidy Milso, in the summer of 2020, to help reorient those feeling overwhelmed with both clutter and disorganization in their homes.
Learn more about The Spruce's Review Board
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
Whether you're downsizing or just trying to simplify your life, figuring out how to declutter your home is a big job. The best way to start decluttering when you're overwhelmed is to do it in stages. Make a "declutter your home checklist" to prioritize clutter areas. Focus on one room, or even one zone within a room (e.g., kitchen cabinets), at a time. And complete each job fully before moving on to the next space.
Before you start to declutter your home, have containers defined for the following purposes to sort items:
- Put away: Items that have crept out of their designated storage spaces
- Fix/mend: Items that need something before they're put away, such as a shirt with a missing button
- Recycle: Items that can be recycled
- Trash: Items to throw away in the household trash
- Donate: Unwanted items that are still in good condition and can be donated to a charitable organization or another person
Here's how to put these containers to use while decluttering each room in your home.
Click Play to Learn How to Get Rid of Stuff With These Pain-Free Strategies
Creating a Decluttering Timeline
If you don't have a lot of stuff, it might be possible to declutter your house in one day or on a weekend. Or you might want to create a longer timeline to declutter your house in 30 days, for example. You can also plan a decluttering schedule just for the weekends you have in a month if you wish.
Keep your goals realistic and attainable, so you can declutter your home without feeling overwhelmed. Break down the spaces you need to declutter, estimating how long each will take. And then organize that into your overall timeline. Give yourself some buffer time in case something doesn't go according to plan.
What you should not do when decluttering is pull out all of your stuff without a plan for how you're going to sort it. If you do that, you'll likely just waste time wading through all of your disorganized items. In addition, it's often best to clean first before you declutter, so your everyday items are tidy and out of the way.
Consider starting in a room or space with only a small amount of clutter. That way, you can get it done quickly and feel like you're making progress on your overall decluttering timeline, which should in turn motivate you to keep going.
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The Bathroom
The Spruce / Erica Lang
Start with your medicine cabinet. Take everything out, and discard outdated medications, makeup, and skincare products. Put everything you're keeping immediately back into the cabinet, storing the items you use most often at eye level.
Next, move onto any cabinet drawers. Remove everything, and do a quick evaluation of what you're keeping and what you're tossing.
Put the items you're going to keep back into their drawers, with the items you use most often in the top drawers. Now, do the same routine with your shower/tub. Finally, pull everything out from below your bathroom sink, and declutter the items there.
Lastly, everything that did not have a home can be quickly sorted into the five bins you have staged for the purpose.
10 Quick Tips to Organize and Declutter a Bathroom
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The Bedroom
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
First, make your bed. It's hard to feel any progress decluttering a bedroom while an unmade bed stares you in the face.
Start with your nightstands. Remove anything on them that doesn’t belong there, and put it in your put-away bin. This may include books you’ve already finished reading, pens and paper, and mail. Throw out or recycle anything that you no longer use, such as empty tissue boxes, pens that have gone dry, or chargers that no longer work.
Do the same with the tops of your dressers, chests, and/or bureaus. Pay careful attention to any clothing that is strewn about. Anything that needs folding or hanging goes into the put-away bin. If you're afraid it may wrinkle further, you can lay clothes on your bed.
Go through each bureau, drawer by drawer. Take everything out. Pull out anything that is no longer worn, and put it in your donation bin. Fold and store the clothing you're keeping.
If you keep a desk or vanity table in your bedroom, tackle that next. Resist the urge to shove things back into drawers; instead, put them in your put-away bin. Toss or recycle any garbage or anything you haven’t used in more than six months.
Return items to their proper places. Fold or hang and store any clothing. If you're now eyeing your closet, we'll tackle that next.
9 Bedroom Organizing Tips to Use Right Now
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Closet and Clothing
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
OK, deep breath.
It's time to declutter your closet. The easiest way to tackle a closet is to first declutter your clothing by type. That means start with shoes, then boots, then dresses, then denim, etc. It’s much easier to decide to toss or keep a pair of jeans if you’re looking at your entire jeans collection at once. So start pulling out different types of clothing, and decide what you'll toss and keep.
Once you’ve gone through each type of clothing, you will have four piles to deal with:
- Put away anything that was simply in the wrong spot. Example: If you had a pair of socks in your closet, put them in your dresser.
- Put any dirty laundry into the hamper, or bring it to the laundry room.
- Anything that needs to be repaired should go to the tailor or dry cleaner.
- To get rid of clothes, take them to a donation center or consignment store.
How to Declutter the Clothes in Your Closet
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The Entryway, Mudroom, and Foyer
The Spruce / Christopher Lee Foto
You may not have a traditional mudroom or foyer, but you definitely have an entryway.
No matter how small it is, the best way to make an entryway most functional is to declutter it regularly. Start with any desk, console, or side tables you have in your entry. Go through each drawer, removing the contents, and make a quick decision to toss or keep each item. Go over the tops of each desk or console as well. Do you have a space for your keys and other important items? Make sure everything is accessible and not too crowded. This will make it easier to leave the house with what you need each morning.
The hall closet should be decluttered like any other closet: Start with shoes and boots, then jackets, followed by accessories.
The entry is another area that picks up a lot of clutter from other rooms. Spend time putting away things from other rooms that have made their way to the entry.
7 Essential Design Elements for a Stylish and Organized Entryway
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The Kitchen
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
Keeping your kitchen clutter-free can be a challenge because so many different activities occur there—cooking, eating, and socializing.
As a result, the kitchen has many different types of items stored in it. You can choose to declutter your kitchen by focusing on one category of item at a time (cutting boards, glassware, utensils, or bakeware, for example) or going by zone through each part of the kitchen. The first step is to completely empty each space, assess each item, and put everything back where it belongs. Start with your powerhouse storage spaces first, such as the pantry and upper cabinets. Then move onto the lower cabinets, drawers, and the space under the kitchen sink.
The 11 Best Under-Sink Organizers of 2023
Finally, concentrate on your countertops. Move as many items as possible off of the countertops and into storage spaces. Keep only what you use every single day on the countertops.
Finally, take your put-away bin, and return anything that doesn't belong in the kitchen to its rightful storage space elsewhere in the house.
8 Ways to Declutter a Small Kitchen
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The Living Room
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
The living room is one of the hardest rooms in your home to keep neat on a daily basis.
That's because it gets a lot of use, and living rooms don't usually offer a lot of storage features. You may have some bookcases and a TV console, but they don’t hide much. The key is to: - Decide on permanent storage spaces for commonly used items, such as remote controls, magazines, and books.
- Declutter this space regularly.
Start with bookcases, console, and side tables. Then move on to your coffee table and entertainment center. Empty them, assess the items they store, and then return them to their proper storage spaces. Put books away; reduce paper clutter, such as mail; return remote controls to their proper places; fold blankets; etc.
Move on to electronics. Remove everything that is not connected to your television or home theater system. Are you using it? Does it work? Store items such as chargers and gaming equipment where you use them.
Finally, tackle the toys. Assess every toy for wear and tear. Does it still function? Do your kids still play with it? Recycle or store each toy.
Grab your put-away bin, and return everything that belongs in another room to its proper storage space.
How to Organize a Living Room
Where to Dispose of Clutter
For the items you aren’t keeping when you declutter your home, you have some options regarding how to dispose of them. This is where it can be extremely helpful if you’ve already sorted appropriate items into recycle, trash, and donate bins.
Make sure you are aware of your local recycling guidelines, as certain items, such as electronics, often can’t go in the regular recycling. Keep a separate bin for those items to bring them to an appropriate recycling center. Moreover, if you know you’ll be undertaking a major decluttering project, you might want to rent a dumpster in advance for unusable items that must be thrown away.
Remember that items in good condition can be donated or sold. Besides a donation bin, you also might want to start a collection of items to sell in a garage sale.
Furthermore, if you plan to give away certain items to friends and family, it can be helpful to start bins for each person to fill as you declutter.
4 Smart Ways to Declutter Your Bedroom
This article is part of our series, The 7-Day Spruce Up: Your Ultimate Guide to Home Organizing. The 7-Day Spruce Up is your destination for whole home happiness, curating our very best tips and product recommendations to help you create your tidiest, coziest, most beautiful home yet.
Imagine going to sleep every night and waking up each morning in a clean, clutter-free bedroom. Your sleep hygiene can greatly benefit from a peaceful environment—part of that includes a bedroom that's organized and clutter-free.
Try out these six tricks that are essential to maintaining a decluttered bedroom.
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Do a Regular Decluttering Sweep
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
The more often you declutter, the less time it will take.
Take 30 minutes each week to focus on decluttering your bedroom—you can do it all in one sweep or break it up into three 10-minute sessions over the week. Before you start, grab a recycling bin, a laundry hamper, and a "catch-all" bin. - Start with your nightstands—remove any items that need to be trashed or recycled. Do the same for the tops of your dressers and other surfaces.
- Put any items that are out of place in the catch-all bin and then bring them to their proper rooms.
- Place dirty clothes and linens in the hamper, and return any clean clothes to the closet.
- Go through the drawers in your nightstand and dressers—sort appropriate items into the recycling and catch-all bins.
- Go through the catch-all bin to return items to their proper places.
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Weed Out Your Clothes Closet Regularly
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
If you're looking for the biggest clutter culprit in most bedrooms, look no further than the closet.
Even if it's often behind closed doors, the closet is often teeming with clutter in the form of clothes you no longer wear or those that never got back onto the right hanger or into the correct stack on the shelf. Combat this by taking an extra few seconds to hang up or fold the clothes that do not need to go in the laundry hamper and put the dirty ones into the hamper. Spending a little time on front-end maintenance makes decluttering easier and less time-consuming.
The best way to avoid clutter in the form of clothing, shoes, and accessories is to buy less. If the ship has sailed on that, make an effort to get rid of items you don't regularly wear rather than putting off those decisions for another time.
Tip
Your laundry hamper doesn't have to be a traditional hamper—choose something that aligns with your bedroom decor, such as a beautiful basket or a sleek bin.
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Use Trays, Bowls, and Baskets to Contain Clutter
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
Bedrooms tend to collect a lot of one-off items like watches, earrings, books, and knickknacks.
Sort, organize, and store these items out of sight by using trays, bowls, and baskets to hold jewelry, glasses, and other necessary items. -
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Invest in Furniture With Storage
The Spruce / Letícia Almeida
If you've simply run out of storage in closets and cabinets, turn to alternative solutions, such as furniture with built-in storage. An upholstered bench at the end of the bed not only provides a place to sit when putting on your shoes, but can also hold those shoes—or extra linens, towels, or anything else that you need a place for.
100 corners to be sorted out
- Decluttering
- How to declutter
13 comments
Rubbish - it's like this: it accumulates imperceptibly, but it becomes rampant. Here is a list of 100 places to declutter your living space in your house or apartment. Pay attention to each item and scan your home. Freedom to you and your homes!
Contents
- Kitchen
- Bathroom and toilet
- Wardrobe
- Rooms
- Workplace, desktop
House decluttering: kitchen
- Refrigerator: we throw away all products that have expired.
For those who will expire soon, we start a separate shelf - now you will not forget that you need to eat it first. - Expired cereals and spices
- Kitchen appliances that cannot be repaired or are not in use
- Defective cutlery
- Chipped eating utensils: plates, mugs, salad bowls, etc.
- Ancient cooking utensils: pots, pans, ladles, cracked glass lids
- Recipe cut-out book (leave only favorites)
- Tea, coffee, cocoa, expired or not consumed by you
- Cutting boards (wooden boards need to be changed often!)
- Empty yogurt, salad, biscuit containers
- Expired tablets
- A stack of business cards, calendars, brochures and flyers from cafes, shops and grocery delivery services
- Old newspapers and magazines
- Extra kitchen appliances (can be sold)
- Extra crockery
- Lids for jars
- Banks
- Original wine bottles that you once wanted to put together in a composition, but did not get your hands on
- Cookbooks and recipe books
- Extra and old stools
- Extra and old coasters for hot dishes and plates
- Old sponges and washcloths
- Torn, old towels, kitchen tablecloths and napkins
- Unnecessary packages (or fold them so that they take up minimal space)
- Expired dishwashing and kitchen cleaning products
See also: How to clean with pleasure?
House decluttering: bathroom and toilet
- Old damaged equipment (hair dryer, curling iron, iron)
- Extra equipment (sell)
- Expired cosmetics, personal care products and spoiled perfumes
- Old and worn personal care products: pumice stone, washcloths, body massagers
- New cosmetics that you have not used and will not use (gift or sell)
- Opened cosmetics that did not suit you
- Old toothpaste tubes
- Waste soap dishes
- Old and worn bath towels
- Cosmetics that have not expired but have changed in appearance, smell or texture
- Empty cosmetic jars
- Probes
- Exotics that you bought at one time
- Expired cleaning products, powders and bleaches
- Old toilet brush
- Old sponges, brushes and cleaning cloths
- Old cans
- Old bathroom screen
- Space under the bath: check if anything has fallen there? Is there too much?
- Old storage containers
House decluttering: wardrobe
- Clothes that make you feel cramped (if things are good, sell)
- Clothing left over from when you had a different style
- What you will never wear again
- Something that brings up bad memories
- Clothing that has lost its appearance: dyed, rubbed, worn out
- Things that are hopelessly out of fashion
- Things that are not your age
- Clothes that make you feel like a fool
- Worn shoes
- Shoes that press
- Clothes forgotten by your guests (return them to the owner)
- Clothing received as a gift that did not fit you
- Old bags
- Jewelry you haven't worn in a year or more
- Damaged accessories (broken umbrellas, frayed straps, broken glasses, torn wallets)
- Clothing that goes with nothing
- What you bought during a fit of shopaholism and never wore
- Unloved and worn underwear and pajamas
- Old home clothes that you don't like yourself in
- Extra clothing for sports
- Old and oversized swimwear
- Washed bathrobes
- Worn slippers
- Waste scarves, stoles, caps, hats, panamas and gloves
- Broken hangers.
By the way, a little life hack: try using the same hangers - you will be surprised how your closet will be transformed thanks to just this one trick!
Decluttering the house: rooms
- Figurines that are not pleasing to the eye, even if they were donated
- Unnecessary books (we sell or give away)
- Extra bedding sets (donate or sell)
- Old blankets, bedspreads, pillows, mattresses
- Washed bed linen
- Machinery not in use or broken
- Deposits of curtains and tablecloths
- Unnecessary on mezzanines
- Unnecessary on the balcony
- Old discs and cassettes
- Unnecessary and superfluous mirrors and pictures
- Equipment boxes
- Old Christmas decorations
- Clothing for summer cottages and dirty work (for sure, its quantity can be reduced)
- Damaged furniture
- Sports equipment, if no one uses them (weights, dumbbells, exercise equipment, horizontal bars, balls, rackets)
- Extra and worn carpets
- Extra wall calendars
- Extra services for guests
- Waste flowers, vases and flowerpots
See also: Maintain order in the house, or how to train yourself not to clutter up the apartment
Have you decluttered the living space in your house or apartment? Has your life changed since then? What was the most difficult?
How to declutter and dismantle household rubble? How easy is it to part with unnecessary things? How to restore order, which is preserved, and does not disappear in a day?
Answers - free guide contains 18 rules for clutter and order. Get it for free! - VKontakte or to your email.
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* By subscribing, you give permission to receive letters from me and to process personal data in accordance with the Privacy Policy Author of the School of order "Optimization of life"
I will help organize the house and free up time from constant cleaning for what is really important!
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How to declutter your house effectively? (7 cards)
Together with the organizer of the space, Victoria Zapashnaya, we have compiled instructions for those who are tired of the eternal mess in the house. How to loosen up and enjoy a free life - read in our cards.
What is decluttering?
This is a large-scale cleaning process in which you get rid of unnecessary things. You free the space of your home from items lying dead weight on the shelves, in closets, pantries and mezzanines. Clothes that are not worn, books and magazines that are not read, household utensils that are not used, ridiculous souvenirs, unhappy gifts, etc.
How do you know if you need to declutter your house?
Returns quickly to the apartment even after a thorough cleaning chaos - visual clutter is created, nothing is put in place or at all don't know where to look? This is already an occasion to analyze how many things you keep and what you really need to use.
If, stumbling across some unnecessary things, you experience negative emotions or tormented by remorse that you did not finish or did not started to do something - this is also a reason to clutter up your house. So you make your choice and put an end to constant reflection. Psychologists say that any of our unfinished business negatively affects productivity. We must constantly keep them in mind, and this reduces the concentration on current important matters.
If the circumstances of your life are such that you do not may or may not want to devote a lot of time to cleaning - for example, you have a child - removing unnecessary items from the house, you can simplify and speed up this process.
If new horizons open before you, maybe work now requires maximum return or you are thinking about changing your usual way of life and are looking for a source of strength and energy for a powerful leap forward, - think of decluttering as a way to end a past phase of your life.
To clutter up means to throw everything in the trash?
No, it's not that bad. The fact that a thing has become unnecessary to you does not mean at all that it cannot benefit someone else. If we are talking about clothes and shoes, there are reception points in Brest (“Blagodat” at 49 Lenina St.) and containers from the Red Cross (now there are two of them – near polyclinic No. 3 on Zhukova St. and on Orlovskaya St. 28D). The main thing is to adequately assess the condition and appearance of your belongings, without trying to pass off frank rubbish as something useful.
Household items, furniture and various household items can be donated free of charge using a convenient Internet platform (kufar, mothers forum) or VK groups (here is our selection for Brest residents).
If we are talking about books and magazines, they can be attributed to the nearest library, leave at bookcrossing places or, in the end, hand it over for recycling as waste paper.
There can go once needed you notes and printouts, if they are no longer relevant now, and information for you it is more convenient to search on the Internet.
Unnecessary textiles - blankets, bed linen - useful in animal shelters.
How can I declutter? The first way is by category.
First, mentally separate all the items in your apartment into groups - for example, clothes, shoes, household chemicals, cosmetics, books, documents, dishes, children's toys, textiles, etc.
Then think about the situations associated with these categories of things, most often cause your irritation: you can’t find the right document, no time to look for a shoe brush before going out, infuriating filled clothes closet, it takes a lot of time to find a bottle of mask in the bathroom, tiring clean up toys after the child, I don’t like the accumulation of packages in the kitchen ... And the level your dissatisfaction will show with which category of things it is worth starting decluttering.
There are several rules for this method:
- Be sure to get all items of the same category and put them together. You can start with the most “painful” category or go step by step (clothes / shoes - books / papers - household items - memorabilia).
- Reduce quantity by getting rid of trash and unnecessary items in this category.
- Always be guided by the question: “Does this thing give me joy?” and leave only those things that cause positive emotions.
Japanese Marie Kondo suggested this method of sorting things, and you can read more about it in her books “Magical Cleaning” and “Sparks of Joy”. This option is well suited for residents of ordinary city apartments, but, of course, it is worth adapting it to our mentality and lifestyle.
Our author Tatyana Moroz shared her experience of cleaning using the KonMari method.
How can I declutter? The second way is by premises.
This method was proposed by the American Marla Scilly, the author of a system for organizing life called "Flylady".
As the owner of a large home with several bedrooms, guest bathrooms, a separate laundry room and a garage, she was faced with the problem of a huge amount of junk, which she found it difficult to control. And then she formulated an idea that gave hope for order to housewives around the world: “Junk cannot be put in order, you can only get rid of it!”
General rules for decluttering the rooms:
- Get rid of trash gradually, 15 minutes a day, starting from the most cluttered room, so as not to “burn out”.
- Dedicate 5 minutes every day to decluttering “hot spots” at home – places where things accumulate very quickly and there is a risk of not throwing away an unnecessary thing in time (meaning small things like pieces of paper, flyers on a dresser in the hallway or an old newspaper pen on the table in the living room).
- When deciding whether to leave the thing or not? be guided not only by emotions (love or hate, like or dislike), but also ask yourself questions about the usefulness and functionality of the thing (how often have I used this over the past year? Do I have the same object in function, but better in appearance? Do I need multiple copies of this?)
This method of decluttering will not work if carried out in isolation from the system itself, without performing the mandatory daily and weekly cleaning tasks at home (the system itself is described in great detail in the book by M. Seeley " Flylady School).
Which way is more efficient?
It all depends on what tasks you have, in what segment time you have and how strong your motivation to act.
If you are already mentally prepared to part with a lot of objects, there are no negative relatives nearby and you want a visible results as quickly as possible - choose Marie Kondo's decluttering method. In just a couple of hours of work, you can free the closet from unnecessary clothes or kitchen from unused utensils and feel satisfaction and relief at the same time. A complete decluttering of the apartment can be done within a few days or weeks (again, the factor of time and motivation is important).
You have a hard time parting with any things, you are used to being guided by the thought “What if it comes in handy” and there are many places in your house where you don’t know what is stored - perhaps the method of gradual decluttering “according to flylady” is more suitable for you. Just be prepared for the fact that you will not see the first results immediately - it may take from several weeks to six months.
What should I do to prevent trash from accumulating again?
Change your shopping habits. Instead of asking, “Why not buy this?” ask yourself: “Where will I store it?”, “How often will I use it?”, “Can I do without it?”
Once or twice a year sort your belongings, getting rid of the irrelevant. This is not only about clothes, but about all groups of items that we use and store.
The problem of the appearance of rubbish can and should be solved “technically”:
— organize a storage system that is convenient for yourself and your family — when every thing has its place, it can be easily and quickly returned there;
- use any suitable container for storage (cardboard boxes, plastic baskets, fabric organizers). Then it will be clear you can see which capacity is full and what exactly needs to be put in order.
