When you look around your home, do you see piles of mail, accumulated miscellaneous items on countertops, or baskets of unfolded laundry? This messy and unorganized state of affairs can drain you of your energy, make it difficult to find things, increase anxiety and friction with family members and even make you feel bad about yourself.
But, there’s a solution. Whether you need to clean up to make your living space more comfortable or you need to declutter to sell your home to make your house more appealing to potential buyers, decluttering is an easy way to reach a better life. So, take a deep breath and discover the life-changing magic of tidying up by following these tips to declutter your home.
You may not have the time or energy for decluttering at the speed of life, and there’s no shame in that. A cluttered house can seem so overwhelming that you would rather live with it than declutter, clean and organize your home.
In fact, the University of California, Los Angeles'(UCLA) Center for Everyday Lives and Families recently found a link between clutter and the stress hormone cortisol, where the messier the space, the higher the amount of stress you feel.
That is why it is best to break down this large project into smaller, more digestible tasks. There are a couple of ways to do this; you may want to allocate a certain amount of time each day to removing clutter from home or you might prefer to tackle it room by room.
If you have a consistently busy life, spending a set amount of time each day will allow you to declutter by steadily chipping away at the problem. Some people feel a sense of accomplishment by finishing a mini decluttering project each time by focusing on one room at a time. Or you could combine these two strategies by allocating, say an hour each week to declutter one room at a time.
For time-based decluttering, make a note of which areas of the room you have already tackled so you can pick up there the next time. If you are going to do each room, you can get rid of clutter fast by starting with the most cluttered room in your house, which for many people is the kitchen.
Once you have organized that room, you will feel a huge sense of accomplishment because of the progress you have made and you can move on to the next most cluttered room and so on until your entire house is decluttered.
