Decluttering can feel like a truly monumental task, but when broken down, it can be much more manageable than you think.
So, where do you start? What do you do with the stuff you’re getting rid of? What do you do when you run out of energy part way through?
We spoke to professional home organizers to discover their best decluttering tips for every room of the house, helping you to set the stage for perfect home organization. From the best decluttering mindset for the task to tackling decluttering on a room-by-room basis, our guide will only help decluttering become a more manageable and seamless process in your home.
Decluttering tips
Decluttering isn’t just about clearing your home of things you don’t need or want. For many, decluttering brings a positive impact on mental health.
A survey* recently showed 44% of homeowners experience ‘mess-stress’ at least weekly, and 72% of ‘naturally tidy’ people have experienced stress from an untidy home. Furthermore, a cluttered house will make your house look cheap.
But before you start decluttering the most cluttered areas of every home, get yourself set with these expert tips and shared knowledge about the skill of decluttering.
Preparing to declutter
Preparation and mindset are key to successfully organizing your home. When done correctly, decluttering can change your life. Below, we share our expert tips for getting into the right frame of mind for the task ahead:
Allocate a decluttering time
Organizing guru Nicola Lewis of This Girl Can Organise begins, ‘Start off by allocating some time each day that works within your daily schedule; it could be five, 10, or 30 minutes. Setting a timer and putting my phone down helps keep distractions at bay and allows me to work through the area swiftly.’
If you don’t know where to start, try putting something like the boundary method into action. Tidying your junk drawer first is a productive start to a decluttered home and can help combat procrastination. Diana Rene, home management expert at The Decluttered Mom, recommends ‘starting a PM pick up.’
She says, ‘Set a 15-minute timer each evening. This mini routine helps build momentum and makes organizing a part of your daily routine,’ she says. ‘Play some music or a podcast to make it enjoyable and something you look forward to.’ Use the time to tackle a specific place, gather items for donation, or use a method such as the Didn’t Know decluttering method for an effortless and rewarding result of your time.
Make a list
Kathryn Lord, home organizer from More To Organisingsuggests, ‘Start by writing a list of the rooms and prioritize the ones you use the most or that cause you the most difficulties. Then within that room, do the same.
‘Decluttering is a marathon and not a sprint,’ Kathryn reminds us. ‘It’s easier to break it down into chunks and do little and often rather than try to do everything and lose motivation part way through. It can seem overwhelming at first but the good news is, the more you do it, the easier it gets.’
Kathryn warns things will look worse before they get better. Try taking before and after photos so you can see the amazing progress you have made.
Find your motivation
Hyping yourself up and getting motivated to declutter is a must so you don’t run out of energy part way through.
Nicola Lewis recommends putting on music or playing a podcast for motivation. Music can help transform our living spaces and provide us with feel-good vibes. She explains, ‘This will take you to your happy place and make the task more enjoyable.’
Try saving a new episode of your favorite podcast so you have the motivation to declutter. As tempting as it may be, avoid putting on a television show, as this can become a major source of distraction and procrastination.
Ask for help
Setting yourself the task of decluttering your home can be very difficult if organizing is new to you, or you find it hard to let go of sentimental items. Find comfort in knowing you can confide in close family and friends to help you to complete this.
Your friends won’t have the same attachment to items as you do and it can help you detach yourself from those sentimental items and look at them a little more objectively, which will ultimately speed up the process to a clutter-free home.
You can make it a fun activity by turning it into an opportunity to spend time together. Order a pizza or head out for dinner or drinks to celebrate a job well done afterward.
Get bins or bags ready
Once you’ve determined which items no longer serve you, it’s time to decide what to do with the items you have decluttered. Remove them and place them into a donation, upcycle, mend, or sell bags.
We recommend using sturdy bin bags that won’t rip, such as the Hefty Strong Large Trash Bags available at Amazon. The 33-gallon size means there is ample space for anything you wish to declutter.
Nicola Lewis says, ‘It’s important to ensure your donation bag leaves the house. You can sell unwanted items online, donate them to those in need, upcycle or mend older pieces to make them current and on-trend, or recycle your items responsibly.’
Kate Ibbotson, founder of decluttering and organizing service A Tidy Mindaddsm ‘One thing I always do before I start is make sure I have three bags ready: Donate, Recycle and Rubbish. I always tell my clients not to have a “maybe” bag and instead have an “action box” for items that need mending or returning and a “memory box” for anything with sentimental value.
‘Move your decluttered items out of the area and place them in a car (if possible) or at least by the front door. You should aim to donate, recycle, or tip your decluttered items as soon as possible.’
Pick your approach
Pick a plan on how you want to work through clutter will help to set you up for a successful decluttering session. There are thousands of possible approaches, each one working differently for each person, with some being more effective than others depending on the room and the type of clutter you are dealing with.
To take things into your own hands on a practical level, these methods are tried-and-true ways to tackle clutter:
- One Bag a Day method: Fill one bag a day with clutter to donate or trash.
- Dopamine Decluttering method: Make decluttering fun and enjoyable to encourage motivation.
- Hushing the House method: Create peaceful spaces in your home by reducing visual noise, for instance clearing surfaces or having a space for empty hangers in your closet.
- 12-12-12 decluttering method: Find 12 items to throw away, 12 to donate and 12 to be returned to their proper home.
- Snowball Decluttering method: Once you have decided to get rid of something, you can use the same reasoning to declutter other like items that fit the same criteria.
- Didn’t Know decluttering method: Find items you didn’t even know you had and declutter them. Punteha van Terheyden, head of Solved at Homes & Gardens started doing this and has done one drawer a day since, adding it’s ‘the easiest and most effective decluttering method’ she has tried and finds it easy to stick to.
- Boundary Method: Set yourself physical boundaries that you cannot cross when storing items in a specific space, such as a drawer, forcing you to get rid of anything that will not easily fit.
- Scavenger hunt decluttering method: Turn decluttering into a family game. If kids find it hard to let go of any of their items, Punteha says to quietly remove those items later and store them out of sight somewhere for a month. If they don’t ask about them, get rid of them as they’re unlikely to think of them again.
- Move Out decluttering method: Ask yourself if the things you own are what you would bring with you if you moved house.
- 10-10-10 decluttering method: Spend 10 minutes in 10 spaces getting rid of 10 things in each.
Deciding where to start decluttering
Working out where to start with decluttering is the hardest task of them all.
This will depend on a few factors, including your key problem areas (is it your closet that you can’t navigate through in the mornings, or does cooking in your kitchen drive you mad?), how much time you have, and how much energy you have.
Generally speaking, though, there are a few spots the experts recommend if you having a hard time getting started.
Start with key storage areas
‘Ibbotson suggests, ‘Attics, basements, or hard-to-reach areas at the top of closets are prime locations to stash something quickly to avoid dealing with it. If you’re serious about clearing your clutter, start with these areas first, and then you’ll have enough space to store things that you actually need.’
The same applies to tackling hard-to-reach spots like window tracks and the most forgotten spring-cleaning dirt spots, like baseboards and drains.
Work by category
‘When decluttering, it’s a good idea to divide your belongings by category, not by room. This would be really helpful when you have all your books, for example, in one place and can evaluate which to take and which to leave,’ says Kate Windleton, relocations manager at Strong Move.
Barbara Brock, professional organizer, founder and CEO of Barbara Brock Inc., recommends then designating a place for each category. ‘To name a few – cleaning supplies, household paper goods, tools, linens, and gardening tools,’ she says. ‘If everything has a place, then keeping it organized and clean is simpler.
‘The best way to manage your space is to group like items together – in other words – categorize. Categorizing shows you what you have (or don’t have) and what is important to you. By grouping things together, you can see what kind of storage you need and it’s easier to see what product to buy to house your items.’
Then, Brock recommends that everyone in the household knows the location of each category.
‘Organization is about two things: assigning a place for everything and identifying to everyone where that place is,’ she says. ‘It’s one thing for a person to organize, it’s another for the other people in a household to know where things live. If a person wants to tidy up, then they know where to put it. By assigning a place where something lives, it speeds up keeping your household in order.’
Work by room
For some people, working by room and seeing progress in one complete area will be easier to manage and more motivating than having to travel around the house to deal with everyone’s books, then everyone’s clothes, and so on.
When working by room, consider the ski-slope decluttering method to avoid becoming overwhelmed. This approach has you starting in the furthest corner of your room from the door, and decluttering that area, using a basket (such as a folding laundry basket, from Walmart) to collect clutter that lives elsewhere.
Once that corner is tidy, move on to the next corner, bringing the basket with you, putting anything from the basket away that lives in this spot, and decluttering this zone.
Repeat for all four corners of the room, moving back and forth as if you were going down a ski slope until you reach the door and the room is tidy. Anything left in the basket by the end can then be carried to its rightful home elsewhere in the house, or thrown out.
Start small
‘Don’t try to declutter your whole house in a week – you’ll exhaust and overwhelm yourself,’ advises Ibbotson. ‘Declutter in bite-size chunks of 30 minutes and a couple of hours. Focus on contained spaces such as a drawer, kitchen cupboard, or shelf. Arm yourself with paper and a pen to make notes of “actions” and designate rubbish, recycling, and donation bags.’
The snowball decluttering method uses this technique to create motivational momentum and make this process less overwhelming. Clinical psychologist and founder of US Therapy Rooms, Dr. Daniel Glazer explains: ‘By starting with a more manageable task, you gain confidence, shift your mindset, and overcome initial resistance or uncertainty around letting go of possessions.’
Decluttering the kitchen
Start with expired products
The easiest place to start when decluttering a kitchen is with the expired products and foods you hate. Dig into your cabinets, fridge, and freezer and remove anything that is past its use-by date, or items you can’t stand. These can all go straight in the trash, instantly making a bit more space.
The remaining food items can then be stored by their expiry dates to help limit food waste suggests Vicky Silverthorn, professional home organizer and owner of You Need A Vicky.
She says, ‘Organize your kitchen like a shop – rearrange your cabinets and organize the refrigerator so that you have items with the closest use-by date to the front, and push items with longer dates to the back – and when you do a shop, put the new items at the back.’
Declutter kitchen appliances
Organize kitchen appliances at the same time as decluttering the rest of your kitchen and get rid of any you no longer use on a regular basis.
Kathryn Lord, home organizer says, ‘Any appliances you don’t use, either commit to using it or get rid of. That smoothie maker? When did you last use it? Why not always have a smoothie for breakfast with your children on a Sunday, pull out the recipe books, or invent your own?’
Re-discovering kitchen appliances can be a great way to kick-start a new habit or routine, but if they’re just sitting there gathering dust, it’s probably time to say goodbye.
Appliances are one of the biggest causes of clutter in a kitchen. Cutting back will instantly make the space more functional.
Declutter pantry
Organizing a pantry, particularly a large one, or organizing deep pantry shelves, is a big challenge when tackling kitchen decluttering.
Juliette Thomas, Founder & Director of Juliettes Interiors says, ‘The solution is good visibility, which will stop you buying more than you need.
‘Label everything! I love to use jars to store large commodities such as pasta and flour. These look great on the shelves and are practical too. Watch out for the expiry dates and declutter the out-of-date items.
‘Try not to overstock, either,’ she adds. ‘Too much is wasted – we only need one of each item or a refill on the way!’
Empty out drawers
The best way to organize kitchen drawers and organize kitchen cabinets is to empty them onto a clear, flat surface, putting aside items you no longer want. Once you have vacuumed and wiped out the drawers, improve the kitchen storage ideas within them to ensure clutter can’t get out of hand again.
Juliette continues, ‘Always use kitchen organizers like a utensil divider for organizing kitchen drawers. There’s nothing worse than opening a drawer to items that don’t have a home.
‘Make sure you organize in a way that will have you finding the things you’re looking for instantly – no one has time to go rummaging in drawers. Have separate sections for utensils that cut, cutlery, graters, and zesters.
‘Keep the top drawers for the items used the most, and lower drawers for items not so often used. Keep items in sectional order, ie, what their use is by department. This way you can easily know where to quickly find what you’re looking for.
‘Have a large pan drawer built into your kitchen to organize pots and pans, preferably close to where you’ll be cooking. Ideally you want your kitchen to function as best as possible, so try to organize your cupboards in an efficient way – for example, having glasses near the drinks area and utensils near the stove. Use pan protectors (such as the GreenPan Pan Protectors available at Amazon, which are Amazon’s Choice) so you can stack your plans neatly without scratching them which will mean you have more space.’
Declutter kitchen countertops
With enclosed storage taken care of, now it’s time to tackle the counters.
If you want to organize kitchen countertops, decluttering first is essential. Juliette says, ‘Keep out what you use on a daily basis. Otherwise, put away other items. Kitchens are at their best when decluttered, giving more surface space to use and an overall tidy, contemporary look to show off the kitchen rather than the clutter. Put away spices, coffee/tea, oils, and so on. Completely declutter.
‘Keep surfaces tidy. Make sure there’s a home for everything so nothing gets left on the side.’
Decluttering the dining room
Though we might like to think our dining rooms are designed exclusively for enjoying meals, it’s often too easy for household clutter to pile up on the dining table itself, so it’s important to declutter the dining room regularly.
‘Janelle Cohen, professional organizer and creator of Straighten it Up recommends, ‘Begin by clearing surfaces such as tables and counters. This creates a more visually appealing and spacious atmosphere.’
Once your dining table is clear, consider creating separate drop zones in your kitchen or mud room to alleviate the desire to clutter up this space again.
Adding a sideboard to your dining room is a great way to add purposeful storage, and wall-hung cabinets can conceal clutter without taking up valuable floor space.
