Want To Declutter your life, but don’t want where to start?
Modern life is, if nothing, complicated.
We have too much of everything: too many chores to complete, too many people to interact with, to many possessions to keep track of, and too many responsibilities to deal with. No wonder we feel suffocated at times, and vow to declutter our lives so that everyone is simpler, more organized and just plain happy. Life can’t be productive if we are constantly struggling to get through our days, and neither can be completely happy.
If this is how you feel, then you’ve come to the right place. By the end of this article, you can learn of 20 ways that you can declutter your life, and you will definitely be able to use most of them (if not all) in your life. Remember, a simple life is a happy, stress-free life, a calm life. You can do more with your life when you have less in your way!
So, let’s get started!
Steps to Decluttering Your Life
Decluttering your life doesn’t only mean to get rid of your unnecessary possessions; it also means to remove and let go of everything negative around you. This could be anything, from belongings you never use anymore to people who are bringing you down, responsibilities you are tired of dealing with to memories that are painful.
Here are the steps that you can take
1. Let Go of your unwanted Commitments
We often make promises in the spur of a moment, without thinking of the consequences. Most of the time, we regret these commitments made in haste, and waste our time and energy on them. We promise a friend to attend a get together we don’t want to and we commit to a charity that eats away at our savings; we offer to go to work over the weekend when we don’t want to and we promise ourselves a vacation we can’t afford. We end up with more than we can give time to, and resent most of them.
Your first step would be to find out the commitments that are important to you, i.e. the ones we actually want to carry out. Make a list of everything that you are supposed to do in the near future, and start crossing out the ones that are cluttering your life.
2. Declutter your life: Rethink your Daily Routine
Every day, we perform hundreds of little chores and tasks. Some of them aren’t even necessary for us and can be easily reduced or changed. For example, you don’t need to do your laundry every day if it is a lot of trouble; you can do your whole laundry once a week. If washing your dishes are taking up too much time and energy, start using disposable plates and spoons. If the thought of cooking fills you with dread, eat out. Our days are short enough without having to spend it on tasks we don’t like.
3. Let Go of Some People
Not everyone you meet needs to stay in your life forever; sometimes, you just outgrow them. If there are certain people in your life you are struggling to spend time with, maybe it is time to let them go. Instead of a forced phone call to someone you are not interested in talking to, it is much better to spend more time with the people you actually care about. This way, your life will only have the people who matter, and not the ones who were cluttering it.
4. Plan Your Day Meticulously
Plan your whole day every morning as it starts – in your mind or on paper. If you end up with too much to do and not enough time, shorten your list. Only keep the chores that are absolutely necessary and postpone the others for later. Doing something that is tiring and unnecessary will tire you out, and you won’t have the energy to concentrate on what really matters.
5. Clear your Frequently-Used Spaces
If you want to start cleaning, start with the room or the space you spend most time in. It could be your workstation, your home office, your kitchen or your craft table. The space where you work needs to be clean, organized and as empty as possible. Use drawers or baskets to keep your stuff so that your surfaces are left alone, and there’s nothing to hinder your productivity. Throw away anything that is broken, unfixable and unnecessary.
6. Clean up your Paper Trail
You don’t need to keep hardcopies of everything these days, when you can make soft copies in a matter of seconds. If you have a lot of information on physical paper, like scribbled notes or plans – you can always make a soft copy of it and save it on your computer. You can print out the information any time you need them, and there won’t be any unnecessary paper trail in your home.
7. Declutter your Phone
Although anything on your phone isn’t taking up physical space, it is a good idea to keep your phone clean too. Uninstall apps that you no longer use and games you don’t play anymore; delete annoying promotional messages from companies and remove contact information of people you only added temporarily, i.e. pizza parlours that are now closed, person you used to receive your newspapers from 10 years ago, etc.
8. Do the Same with your Computer
We often have information and files on our computer that we no longer need, and they should be deleted immediately. Keep the minimum number of icons on your desktop, and organize all your files under specific folders. Delete movies and TV series that you have watched already, since you can always get them again in case you want to re-watch.
9. Modernize your Entertainment Outlets
There was a time when we used to buy dozens of DVDs and CDS every week, but that is not the picture anymore. Almost no one needs to buy DVDs anymore since we are more comfortable watching cloud-based platforms like Netflix and Hulu. Besides, every single music and songs are available on YouTube now so there’s no need to buy CDs as well.
10. Donate Old clothes
Most of the time, our closets are full of clothes we are never going to wear again: clothes that are too tight for us, out of style or too old. Still, these items hang around in our closets for years, taking up unnecessary clothes. Parents love storing old baby clothes even when they know they are never going to use them again. Donating these clothes to charity can actually help someone else in need, and open up more space in your home.
11. Keep one (or two) of everything
This happens more in kitchens and craft rooms, when we end up with two or three of the same thing. Four pairs of scissors, dozens of knives and forks, freebie mugs, tons of blank journals and four sets of drawing pencils – these are what clutters your life. You only need one of two of these in your life, but end up with several. Throwing away, selling them, or giving them away to friends can be a good way to declutter your life.
12. Sort Everything into Groups
Take your time to sort out all your belongings and categorize them into groups. Most of the time, everything that you can’t categorize actually doesn’t belong in your home, and you’ll have an easier time throwing them out. This also helps the next time you go shopping and want to buy something.
13. Clear your Bedroom
Your bedroom should be the most tranquil room in your room, where there should be nothing to distract or disturb you. The only possessions you need in your bedroom should be what you need to relax and sleep, and nothing more. Everything else is clutter that you need to remove.
14. Do the Same to your Workspace
Your workspace deserves the same treatment, both at work and at home. Anything on your worktable except your laptop and the essentials are a clutter, and need to be reduced. Categorizing them into baskets or drawers can be a good idea, but what’s more important is to locate everything that’s unnecessary in your life, and remove them forever.
15. Declutter Your Life By Learning to Say “No”
You can declutter your life just by saying “no”. Not just to unwanted commitments and toxic people, but also to unnecessary purchases. Many times we end up buying something we don’t need because we can’t say “no” to an insistent salesclerk. Saying “no” can get us out of get-together we don’t want to attend, old friends we are not interested in anymore, things we don’t need in our home, and unnecessary worries on our mind.
16. Clean out your Junk Drawers to declutter your life
The hardest places to clean are the junk drawers that are present in every home. You may have a single junk drawer or a dozen around your house, but they all have the same uncategorized junk we can neither throw away nor keep. If you can’t find yourself to throw them away, the next best thing to do would be to sort them into boxes and label them.
17. Only Buy what you can Sort and Store
It’s no use trying to stop impromptu purchases of something we don’t actually need, but in order to declutter your life, you need to promise to only buy what you have space for. If you are a book collector and your bookshelves are threatening to crash, don’t buy more unless you can make space. Opt for an eReader or a Kindle instead. In the same way, if you collect souvenirs, action figures or anything else, only buy something when you have the space for it.
18. Don’t Hoard Baby Gears
Babies outgrow their clothes and gear very quickly, but parents store them for years. It’s fine when planning for more babies in the future, but completely unnecessary if you are done having children. There is a good market for used baby gear in mint condition, and you can sell them online when your baby is done using them. You can also donate them or given them away to your friends when they have children.
19. Clutter-Free: Cut back on Decorations
Decorations on your wall, shelves or sideboards look good, but only when you don’t overdo it. Simplicity is always best in homes, so only keep a fraction of everything. Buy only one or two souvenirs on your trips abroad instead of dozens, and make them prominent ones.
20. Rethink your Magazine and Newspaper Subscriptions
Finally, rethink all the magazines and newspapers that you buy or subscribe to, because you can read most of them online these days. Newspapers and magazines amount to a clutter very quickly, before you even know it. Besides, when you are getting all your information online, you are actually saving trees and positively contributing to the environment.
Having more than we can handle can never be peaceful for anyone, whether it is belongings or responsibilities. Nothing can be done right when we have too much on our minds, and nothing seems precious when we have too many of it. You might be just cutting back on possessions, but you will be contributing to your mental peace.
So get decluttering now! Declutter your life isn’t hard if you follow these steps.
