Does everything in your house have a home? A place it belongs… preferably near its site of intended use? Or do you have “piles” of things? Maybe in baskets or dish pans (guilty) or tote bags or trash bags or boxes… all conveniently hidden away? Or maybe you have piles of paper and mail and magazines and shoes and books… or odds and ends or do-dads and clothes, and things you need to put away and they are piled up in plain site! Let’s talk about the best and easiest way to declutter your home!
But first here’s our current DECORATING TIPS AND TRICKS episode…
Today is HOME STYLE SATURDAY.
We are digging through our archives to bring you the best of the best! I’ve been getting lots of emails concerning how to declutter a home. So today I’m sharing my favorite tricks for a tidy and organized StoneGable!
Now let’s get organized!!!!
Here’s a not uncommon scenario in my home:
Bobby: Honey, I need to find the car registration. Do you know where it is? (He obviously knows I know… I handle all the incoming mail.)
Me: Did we get it?
Bobby: Yes, the one for my car expired last month.
Me: Oh! (L-O-N-G pause!)
Bobby: Where do you think you might have put it?
Me: It must be in the office.
Bobby: Can you narrow my search down?
Me: I think it might be in one of the piles of mail either on my desk or on a shelf in the bookcase. Sorry, honey! I’ve been so busy lately I’ve not filed anything.
Bobby: Can you look for it? I need to get the car inspected.
Me: (Another L-O-N-G pause) Can’t you go online and get another one? It will take me hours to sort through everything and find it.
YIKES! Even at StoneGable, this scenario plays out over and over! I am no expert at keeping some things organized. But I do know what I am supposed to do! And I bet you do too.
When I can’t find things in my home like the car registration (one time I lost a license plate… who loses a license plate?) or something important I can get quite stressed out. I so envy people, like my Mom, who knows where everything is and can get it in a matter of seconds if needed.
When we don’t have a “home” or purposeful place for everything in our home we start that downward spiral to clutter. And clutter begets stress and stress most of the time begets twins called inertia and apathy! Dealing with our clutter is just too stressful! And so more clutter accumulates. It is a vicious cycle, for sure!
The best way to destress our homes is to dig in and start clutter busting! Cleaning out and decluttering and finding places for EVERYTHING in our homes.
After decades of reading every kind of home organizing and cleaning book you can imagine I know the strategies that have worked best for me. I’d like to share a few with you…
START
Don’t get caught in a cycle of inertia… not being able to move forward. And don’t befriend apathy…giving up and not caring. The simple act of starting to organize, anything, will burst that unhappy cycle and every little step towards a clean and super organized, decluttered home will give wind to your sails and the willpower to do more!
THROW AWAY, GIVE AWAY, PUT AWAY
Grab a big trash bag and two laundry baskets (or boxes). Throw all the things that are not in good shape that you don’t use often in the trash bag. Put anything that does not belong in the room you are working on in one of the laundry baskets. This is your “put-away” basket. And everything that is in good shape that you no longer want or need goes in the “give-away” basket.
Everything else in the room must have a home. Put things away neatly. From now on, you will know where everything in that room is and you will always put it away after you use it! If something new comes into that room, something else must be taken out. It does not take long for clutter to start accumulating. We all must be on our guard!
BE RUTHLESS
This is my mantra! BE RUTHLESS!!! We don’t need three lemon zesters. Two need to go! We should not have 10 extra bed pillows. Only enough for each bed and maybe one extra for a guest. Those extra and duplicate items we have in our homes cause clutter. And clutter is literally stressing us to death.
IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START, TRY THIS
Pick a room… any room and set a timer to spend 15 or 30 or 45 minutes. Now start straightening up and organizing. When the timer dings, you are done for the day… until tomorrow. Work a little every day. Some days you may have more time to give than others and that’s okay. The key is consistency. Make organizing a part of your life!
I like to start in my foyer because it is where people enter my home. Then I work around the room in a clockwise direction picking everything up. I don’t go into another room until the room I am working on is totally straightened up and everything in it has a well ordered “home”. We are not talking about cleaning it… we are talking about organizing it.
So now you pick a room.Go through every drawer, cabinet, and surface. Use the trash bag and 2 laundry baskets to get rid of everything that does not belong in that room! Be ruthless about what you keep. Most of us tend to keep so much more than we can ever really use. Get rid of it… this is so freeing!
When one room is organized and decluttered, move to the next and dig in!
I like to work on organizing five days a week.
WHEN YOU ARE DONE ORGANIZING, START OVER
When you have organized your home. Start over! But this time, it will be easier and faster and much less work! Follow the same plan over and over again and you will have a wonderfully organized home!
When I am done organizing my home I go back to the foyer and start again! I set the timer and begin. When the timer dings I am done for the day!
DEAL WITH THE CONTENTS OF THE BAG AND BASKETS
If you don’t do something with the bag of trash and the two baskets of items from your daily organization you will end up with more clutter! Throw away the trash… right away. Put the “give-away” basket in the car to take to a local charity. Spend time putting away misplaced things in your third basket.
This is where organization often breaks down. We must put away and give away! Make an extra effort to stay on top of this! If there are gobs of things in the put-away basket you might want to ask yourself if you really need everything. You may be able to let go of some of the put-away basket items.
DON’T CREATE DISORGANIZATION
Once an area is straightened up and organized it’s easier to want to keep it that way. Make sure to be ruthless about keeping those areas of your home from getting cluttered again!
This is the easiest way to organize a home. It might take longer than spending a week or two doing nothing but nose-to-the-grindstone organizing, but every little step is a step in the right direction!
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How about you? Why don’t you share your best organizing tip and decluttering tricks with the rest of the StoneGable family? I can’t wait to hear!
You might like to follow me on Pinterest and see what I’m finding to pin every day HERE.
Thank you for the organizing tips. You helped me get motivated. I especially liked the idea of setting a timer and doing one room at a time. I tend to put things in a place in the house(things I don’t use but save) and I clean them, set them back in the same spot and there they stay for month or more. Setting a timer plus doing it daily is a great idea and you won’t be overwhelmed with the task.
I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. The best thing I ever did to get motivated.
I’ll have to look that book up! Thanks for sharing that book with us!
One thing I am good about is keeping junk out of my car and I go through all the mail each day. My bills go to to the desk where my laptop is, junk is recycled, magazines go in a stack to be read. I clear everything out of my car. I do have junk drawers and closets to clean, and that is my goal early this year. The main thing I need to work on is my craft room. I have way too much, more supplies than I will ever use. I plan to donate some of it. It just feels good to get organized!
We are preparing to downsize in a couple of years so this is to important when working toward that end. One important thing is to sort, shred, and file all incoming mail every day. I put bills to be paid in one spot, the recycle bin is in the attached garage, and our cross-cut shredder is just off the kitchen where we open the mail. Yvonne, I’m with you – I like to see one room completed before moving to another. That old saying works well too – my grandfather used to say there’s a place for everything and everything in its place – and it gets put there after use -that way I’m ahead of the game when I do my decluttering thing. Luv ya.
Great post, I started my decluttering last week. I have one room completed!!! It feels so good.
Great post! Can you share where you purchased the concrete vase that displays the tulips …. I love it!
Hi Valerie, This pretty urn came from HomeGoods. Hope this helps.
Yup…been decluttering and organizing. I started with my craft room….moved on to family room and so on. I don’t set a timer….but have a rule. Once an item is in the “box” to give away or throw away it can’t come out.
In the family room, which is large, I divided it up into segments…so far the desk got done…I will attack the books….
It feels good to get rid of things….
I was wondering…where do you store things used a few times a year….like cake pedestals and such??
Nancy
wildoakdesigns.blogspot.com
Hi Yvonne…I am new to your blog….your home is just beautiful! So much inspiration to be found! Thank you for this timely organization blog. I was feeling so overwhelmed with clutter, especially following Christmas and the Holidays and feeling that I cannot enjoy my home because of it….and so overwhelmed that I didn’t know where to start. You are so right about the spiral of clutter….it really carries into every aspect of your life. I am beginning today with your clutter plan…..setting the timer (excellent idea!) and getting to work on this. Love your idea about just two baskets and a trash bag! Many thanks and Happy Weekend!
Welcome to the StoneGable family Laura!!!
Thanks for sharing your strategies and tips for decluttering. Gentle reminders and rereading how-to’s helps to motivate me. I am guilty of storing items here, there, and anywhere I had a spare space. The problem is, I forget where I’ve put things. It has been so much better when I can group like items together and store them in one place. Example: having all napkins and placemats in one place. Mine don’t all fit in my dining room hutch, and I had them stored in several places. This summer I gathered them altogether, and decided to use a hanging multi-cubby organizer to stash all of the placemats and napkins and hang it in the front closet nearest the dining room. Napkins and placemats are rolled and stored in the cubbies. It’s working out very nicely for me. Now, no more searching in several places to find placemats when I want them. Thanks for sharing!
I’m a big fan of Marie Kondo. Her most helpful tip for me was to tackle clutter not by room but by category. If we’ve really let things get out of hand, there’s no telling where things are lurking. I went through the Konmari process two years ago, starting with clothing, then paper, and so on. The very last category was cleaning supplies. How I managed to acquire seven cans of Lemon Pledge is still a mystery.
Hi Mandy, So glad you found a process to declutter that works for you. I need to see progress ie one clean room at a time.
ps. Meant to say…this year also…I have finally decided to let go of most paper in my home…I’ve always kept way too much paper records, statements of everything “just in case”…so much time to manage, so weighed down by it all, and so unnecessary as most is accessabole online these days (and I never looked at most of it.). Only keeping what’s truly essential now and also went paperless on most bills now too. Again, the inundation of decluttering my parents’ stored papers (in their defense it was from a time nothing was on computers, and also they never owned a computer) has sharpened my “letting go” skills…I just refuse to have to spend time managing it all “just in case” anymore, but instead will take the approach…if the need comes up, (which it rarely does!!) there IS a way to access that info.
Hello! No matter how much I read and reread organizing tips…It always helps to keep me on track..so thank you. January is my big decluttering month, (though I purge clothing and stuff seasonally too) because it always involves paper shredding from the year (or years) previous. This year I had extra “stuff” and papers too because we just sold my mom’s home in late November and I “inherited” stuff (still sorting, keeping what’s precious, donating a lot else, swapping out my old stuff for stuff mom had bought with me in mind etc.) Also inherited a LOT of her “paperwork” so that’s been a project, but I’m getting to the bare bones now and am feeling quite accomplished. I’m in a small condo with limited closet space, so I can only accumulate so much. All my rooms & closets are pretty organized except my upstairs loft/office/workout room (ie. catch all for everything else)…so this room is the ongoing challenge. Really being more “ruthless”, (sharpened those skills while having to get rid of a LOT from mom’s.). But one of my best maintaining tips for keeping things in place while daily living/straightening is “handle something ONCE!”. I use to transfer things from room to room, place to place, to “put away later.” Now I consciously say “handle it once” in my mind and make a decision on it right then. And of course once “everything has a place to live” this is even easier. 🙂