Starting Small

At first, decluttering your living space can seem really intimidating, but it's easier than you think if you do it in baby steps. Cleaning one room at a time is much more manageable than trying to clean your entire house in one day. This post will be a guide to help you declutter each space in your home if you don't know where to start.

In my previous post, Minimalism 101, I briefly touched upon a general mental list to go over when starting to declutter and will repeat some of the points listed there for emphasis and to help steer you in the right direction.

Picking a Room

So you're in the mood to throw some stuff out, trash bag in hand, but you don't know which room to start with first. There are many different ways to go about this. You can pick the room with the least amount of clutter to ease yourself into the process or jump in head first by choosing the messiest room you have. I found that starting with my bedroom was a good option because it was the room I lived in the most, so I knew what I was and wasn't using right off the top of my head. Choosing a room that you frequent the most is a good start if you're not sure about what you should throw away. If you're constantly in the room, but never use the item, it's safe to say it won't be missed. The tips I list below are just starter things to do if you find yourself lost or overwhelmed by the task

Bedroom

1. Start with your nightstand and get rid of any trash or unnecessary items that you keep there.

2. Clean out your drawers. Of course you don't have to do them all in one sitting, but do at least one a day. Take everything out and make piles of clothes you wear and clothes you don't. This allows you to see which clothes you have a preference over and actually use versus the clothes you have just because you've never bothered to rid yourself of them.

3. Separating your winter and summer clothes may be useful to you if you don't have a lot of room for storage in your drawers. Leave the current season's clothes in your drawers and put the rest in a storage container.

4. Go through your closet and make sure that you can fit all of the clothes. You'd be surprised at how many things we keep that don't fit us.

5. Vacuum and dust the room. A clean floor is extremely satisfying to look at and a dustless room eliminates impurities that would otherwise wind up in your lungs.

6. Fold any clothes that you have laying around.

Bathroom

1. Clean out everything from the cabinets to make sure you're not hoarding anything down there that you don't need/never use. Make 2 separate piles, 1 for what you use and 1 for what you need to throw away. Once you're done, neatly put things back under your cabinets. I found that using shoeboxes and labeling them helped make my items stackable and freed up more space.

2. Clean off your countertop. If you're not sure what you should throw away or put in storage, put aside the "unsure" items and if you don't use them in 7 days, it doesn't belong on your countertop.

3. If you have drawers instead of cabinets, go through those and throw out any wrappers you may have. If you use a drawer for makeup, take all of it out and clean the drawer. This will give you time to also assess what makeup you do and don't use on a regular basis as well as get rid of old makeup.

Kitchen

1. Going through your fridge on a weekly basis is helpful to show you what you eat the most and the least which helps later for your grocery list.

2. Keep all of your cleaning products organized under your cabinets. If you have limited space, buying miniature shelves can help give you more.

3. Limit the amount of silverware you have. If you don't get a lot of guests and live by yourself or with one other person, one set of dishes and utensils is plenty enough. Not only will this give you more cabinet space, but it'll motivate you to clean your dishes and silverware which aids in keeping a clean kitchen overall.

4. Go through your pantry and throw out the foods you never eat and anything that has expired.

5. When you cook, wipe down your countertops to minimize the germs you spread, especially when you work with raw food a lot.

Living Room

1. If you have a lot of gaming consoles, keep them close to the outlet so you can keep your wires wrapped up so they don't tangle. Putting all of the controllers in one bag/section of the living room is a good way to keep up with them all.

2. Keep furniture simple. Too many decorations will make the room look distracting and busy

3. Use storage bins to help organize toys if you deal with children often.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is, there's no right or wrong way to declutter, so long as you're doing it the way that makes you feel the most comfortable. If you live with other people, getting them on board by keeping a chore list can help a lot in keeping the living space as a whole clean. So long as you remember to have fun with it and take your time, you can't go wrong!