Thoughts: How do you start decluttering?

Organising and decluttering can be overwhelming.

Busy lives, small places, and messy homes are difficult to manage and can feel overwhelming. Sometimes, the hardest part is just to get a start on it.

But how do you do it? Everyone has a different system, and I believe there is no right or wrong way, only the way that works for you.

I thought I would share my way, which is a 3 steps approach. 

Step 1: Set goals and list the tasks

Set some (realistic) goals of what you’d like to achieve at home or with your space. It can be abstract, such as making it a ‘healthier environment’, or tangible, like ‘create space for a desk’.

Write a list with every single task (or the area in your home) that you need to sort out to achieve those goals. 

Step 2: Start with the easiest task!

What’s the toughest task on your list? Leave that for last. Step 2 is all about starting with the easiest one.

Start doing the work on the task you want to do or the area you want to declutter. What’s staying? What’s going to be donated, recycled, or thrown away?

Then organise what’s staying in a tidier way. You can use dividers, or boxes, or rubber bands, or other things, before putting it back to where it was.

IMPORTANT: It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be an improvement to what it was before. 

Step 3: Task done, you can now start again with step 1.

You improved one small thing. You are now ready to move on to the next. Next time you decide to declutter, your task might be bigger.

You might have started with a shelf on a bookshelf, and next time you might be doing multiple shelves or the entire bookshelf. But now you’ve had some practice, and you know you can do this again.

Shall we take an example?

Step 1: Set goals and list the tasks

GOAL: You would like for the bathroom, a shared area in your home, to be tidy and more welcoming.

TASKS: You need to sort out:

  • Towels storage
  • Toiletries
  • Cleaning products basket
  • Medicines cabinet

Step 2: Start with the easiest task!

That might be a lot, so let’s start small. How about the medicines cabinet? Let’s see…

Check the boxes and throw away anything that’s expired or that you no longer need (most pharmacies recycle expired medicines, did you know?). Are the blisters mostly empty? Take a pair of scissors and trim them. Are your plasters scattered about? Use a rubber band to keep all the plasters together. Are medicines and leaflets out of their boxes? Keep medicines and leaflets in their boxes, they are easier to store and you know what they are for.

Keep doing this until you feel like you only have what you need in your cabinet, and you made some improvements.

Step 3: Task done! Now start again with step 1.

This task is now done. Do you think it’s better or worse? If you’ve thrown away only one thing, or only put one tube in their sleeve, or only bundled up a couple of plasters, well.. that’s an improvement isn’t it? Small improvements are improvements, so, well done!

Do you feel like you can improve on it even more? Great! You can re-do this at a later stage. For now, I would suggest you go back to step one and start with a different task. Keep doing this, and you will get better and better.

Whatever you want to improve on, start small. The hardest part is to do the first step.

Sometimes, you need someone to help you out. I could be that extra pair of hands.

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