How to Declutter Your Home Quickly: Creating a Clean Space for the Rest of the Year
If you are looking to organize and declutter your home quickly, you’re in the right place.
Welcome, friend! Stay a while.
The new season is here, and you somehow accumulated more things AGAIN.
It is going to be okay. Be kind to yourself.
This happens, and I find that I have to declutter quite often.
Unless you are someone who is naturally an extremely neat person, then your space will get disorganized and cluttered, and that is fine.
No shame in that.
For me, when my space is cluttered, it also reflects my current mental state.
I’m more anxious, I seem to be more unproductive, I’m not excited to be home, and I just don’t feel as happy.
Let me help you change that.
Signs That it’s Time to Declutter
- You dread coming home because the mess in your houses stresses you out
- You struggle with storage and finding space in your home
- You don’t think your home is a place where you can relax
- You can’t find anything
- You know inside your heart that you’re lowkey a hoarder
- You don’t throw anything away
- You have been buying a lot of things, but still own a lot of stuff from years ago
- The state of your home gives you anxiety
How to Declutter Your Home Quickly
1. Always Start with Your Why and Purpose
I apply this to pretty much everything that I do in life because without knowing your “why” then there is really no point in whatever you are doing.
You have to figure out the motivation behind why you are trying to quickly declutter your home.
It could be many reasons:
- To clear your mind
- To ease your anxiety
- To relieve stress
- Hosting a party
- Fresh start
- Moving
- Redecorating
- Minimalism
- To earn money from selling things
- Preparing for children or pets
- To create more space and storage
2. Declutter One Room or Section at a Time
When the whole house is messy, I tend to start cleaning things in different parts of the house.
Through time, I realized that this is not a very efficient way to declutter my space.
If anything, it makes it difficult because I would get distracted, then forget what I was doing, and nothing ever gets finished.
Even though you are in denial, multitasking is unproductive, and you know it.
If you have an apartment or a house, picking one area is how you can declutter your home quickly.
Pick the kitchen first or your bedroom.
Below are some suggestions:
- Clothes that you rarely use
- Clothes in the dryer that you haven’t folded in a week
- Trash, take em to the dumpster
- Unopened mail
- Receipts
- Coupons
- Expired food and old food in your pantry
- Expired and old food in your fridge
- Dishes in the sink
- Kitchen gadgets you’ve only used once
- Seasonings
- Amazon boxes
- Junk drawer
- The chair with all the things. You know the chair
- Under the sink cabinets
- Children’s toys and clothes
- Pet toys and treats
- Shoes
- Socks
- Scarves
- Hats
- Books
- Documents and files
- Pens and pencils
- Souvenirs from travels (magnets, shot glasses, etc.)
- Things on your work desk
- Things on the kitchen counter
- Things on the dining table
- Things on the coffee table
- Things under the bed
- Things on your side table
- Toolbox
- Garden supplies
- Plants
- Your bathtub area
- Your hobby area
- Unfinished project materials
- Skincare products
- Travel sized bath products/samples
- Makeup
- Board games
- Bathroom products
- Cleaning products
- Storage room
- Memory box(es) childhood/old things you’ve accumulated
- Throw pillows
- Blankets
- Decorations
- Wires, cables, etc.
3. Empty Out Each Room or Section
Obviously, if you empty out a room, it’s going to take longer, but if you empty out specific areas or small drawers, it’s easier to see everything you have accumulated.
The next step is to sort things by which ones your are keeping and which ones you are not.
Organize everything back into the particular section.
4. Give Yourself a Time Limit
Sometimes, it’s hard to motivate yourself to get up and clean the house especially if you don’t have the time, you have to care for others, or you’re just straight up lazy.
I FEEL YOU.
Nothing wrong with admitting that.
Try this: Set up a timer even for 15 minutes to 1 hour and designate it as time to declutter.
You’ll be surprise by how much you can accomplish.
Even if you sat on the couch for 45 mins out of the 1 hour, you still cleaned for 15 minutes, and that is more time that you have ever done recently.
Setting a time can also get you in the habit of decluttering more naturally.
5. Designate a Day
Building on the creation of a time limit, you can also do this on a specific day.
You can say “on Mondays, I will declutter the house for 30 minutes.”
Even though this sounds so insignificant and should be obvious, getting into the mindset that “on this day and time, I will be doing this” is so important.
6. Plan Your Strategy and Set a Goal
If you are going to follow the first 5 steps that I mentioned above, you can actually create a schedule especially if you are someone who loves lists.
You can set a plan for the week or the month and create a calendar that tells you when and how much time you’ll be spending and when you want all the decluttering to be done.
Planning ahead helps you set an expectation for yourself and help keep yourself accountable.
7. Ask for Help
Another tip to be able to declutter your home quickly is to ask for help.
Duuuuuh.
I know a lot of us have a hard time delegating or we don’t know how to ask for help.
But if more than one person is cleaning and organizing, then the quicker you can finish.
If your house is messy, changes are the people you live with feel the same way and would be willing to help you.
Instead of you focusing on one room, you and your roommate or you and your significant other can work on the different rooms or sections separately.
If you live by yourself, then invite a friend to help you.
It’s probably weird to ask, “hey let’s hangout and help me clean my house.”
However, you can try a different approach and say, “hey friend, you should come by and help me get rid of clothes or help me empty out my pantry.
You would be surprised that a lot of your friends would be happy to come over and take some of your unwanted clothes and food.
I have personally done it while we were in the process of moving.
8. Tackle the Most Obvious Clutter First
The main indication that you want to declutter is probably because you can see that there is mess everywhere and want to organize your home quickly.
Start with the biggest eye sores.
- Is there a chair designated for clothes that you don’t want to wash, but also didn’t want to hang?
- Is there a mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink?
- Are there bags of clothes sitting by your doorway, but you never got around to actually driving to Goodwill to donate them?
- Are there unopened mail and receipts taking up space on your desk?
Start with the sections you see all the time.
You’ve put off decluttering those places for months.
It probably won’t take as long as you think.
9. Throw Things Away as You Go
This is similar to washing everything as you cook.
Whenever I cook, the sink is always a mess with everything I have used.
The key is cleaning as you go.
I wash the dishes while I wait for whatever I am cooking to simmer or usually right after I have prepared all the ingredients.
In this way, I am not overwhelmed with the amount of dishes in the sink.
If you are decluttering and have piles and piles of trash, make sure that you take everything to the dumpster right away or else it would just be another place with clutter.
10. Make Decluttering a Habit
I know most of us would hope that our home would stay clean all the time.
Maybe if you are fortunate enough to have a cleaner, it can be that way, but most of us do not have the luxury.
If you implement the tips I have mentioned above, you can get into the rhythm of decluttering and maintaining cleanliness in your home.
Decluttering is not some big event that happens every 6 months.
The more you can incorporate it in your day to day routine, the easier and quicker you can declutter your home.
It is definitely faster than having to do a huge declutter because you haven’t done it in months, and you get overwhelmed by the things you are surrounded by in your house.
I hope these steps on how to declutter your home quickly can make your life a little bit better.
Just remember that you do not have to do it all at once.
Instead, you have to slowly make decluttering a habit because we all are busy people.
If you need help with packing for a trip, please check out my other blog post.
