Time to declutter? If you still haven’t made the first step in removing clutter from your home, this list will help. Everyone struggles to get the ball rolling, but these methods add a little more excitement to an unexciting process. Using creative ways to declutter a home allows you to take your mind of the tedious tasks. Here are some innovative ways to declutter your home.
The Four-Box Method
Trash, give away, keep, or relocate. Bring four boxes to the room or location in your house and break up everything into four categories. Trash, give away or sell, keep the item where it is, and relocate to a new home. Every item must be placed in a category; no object can be passed over. Use this method in any room in the house. It could take you hours to complete or minutes. You will always end up with a decluttered space.
Give it away
Give something away each day. Things you don’t want to give away are valuables or essentials; anything else could be given away. There are benefits of giving items away instead of selling, mainly no long selling process. Giving to a person or charity means there is no waiting for buyers and no negotiating. Give it away!
Perspective
Changing your perspective allows you to notice clutter you couldn’t before. If you don’t consider the items lying around your house to be clutter, you can’t get rid of it. Often, all you need is a change of perspective. Host a dinner, take photos of your home or invite friends over. See if they respond to clutter, or maybe you will feel the need to clean it. Do anything to see your home in a new light.
Rent it
Making money is always motivating. Instead of leaving your garage or shed full of junk, use it to make some money. Listing a space online can get your money for little to no effort. Spacer can find you people ready to pay to house some of their items. The best part is, it’s going to be neat and orderly. You can also lease your car space or driveway.
Coat Hanger Experiment
We all have a bunch of clothing items we don’t wear but keep. To identify what you don’t wear, hang your clothes on hangers in the opposite direction to how you would hang them usually. After you wear an item, then place it back on the hanger facing the correct or usual way. After the set period, three months, six months or more, you can clearly see what has to go.
This technique can be applied to linens, tools, toys and more.
Make a list
Making a list doesn’t sound that creative. However, making a list of all the places in need of decluttering, starting with the easiest works somehow. Once you finish that area, stop. The difficulty of this technique can be measured by you. You could start with a garage, room or even a messy draw. Again, this is perfect for the individual with a busy schedule.
12-12-12 Challenge
This task ensures you start making decisions about all the items around your house. Locate twelve items to throw away, twelve items to donate, and twelve things to be put away or returned to their home. This challenge adds a little excitement to a very unexciting job. By the end of it, you have 36 items no longer adding clutter to your home. It’s also a good way to get lazy children involved.
Five minutes
Leo Babauta at Zen Habits recommends writes about decluttering for the somewhat lazy person. He notes a list of 18 tasks, each of which you spend five minutes on. No, you are not doing them all today. You pick one today, then one each day until you have completed them.
The list includes simple tasks such as clear off a counter or bench, pick up five things and find them a home and fill a car load for charity. This is one of the easiest ways to slowly declutter. Suited to the extra lazy or extra busy individual.
No matter what technique you choose to get started – the goal is just to initiate the process. Little steps or significant steps, anything to get the ball rolling is great. You could use one of these creative methods or all of them. Remember, you can celebrate small wins. Start decluttering!
