What are you best decluttering tips?
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Invite a judgemental friend or relative over for dinner. Best way to force you to clean and declutter your space.
Abdication is both quick and brutal.
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Take pics of sentimental things of little value. Then throw out the thing and keep the pic
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Take pics of sentimental things of little value. Then throw out the thing and keep the pic
Make an album with the pics. Once that album is full, take a pic of the album and throw it away.
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- Don't buy crap
- Don't keep crap (recycle, don't trash them)
- Stop wishing of buying more crap.
Any impression this incredibly wise list of advice could be based on personal experience (and on multiple failures at following them) would be correct. My life changed and the clutter vanished the day I stopped wanting to buy always more stuff and decided to only keep what was... worth keeping aka actually of any use/importance.
What do I do if most of my clutter is previously purchased crap that I don't know how to responsibly dispose of? The recycling facilities in my area are awful. I literally have bags/boxes of shit that I feel too bad to throw in the waste.
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What do I do if most of my clutter is previously purchased crap that I don't know how to responsibly dispose of? The recycling facilities in my area are awful. I literally have bags/boxes of shit that I feel too bad to throw in the waste.
- You look for alternative. I'm not what you mean by awful but I would go to another one. So, I would start by searching where they are located and when they're open. Here where I live I can call a number in tow town and get someone to come pick a few cubic meters of trash, for free. That's limited (in volume and type of stuff they will collect) but it works well and it should be easy for you to check with your own city if they offer such a service.
- Also: you can try to donate stuff, thrift stores, yard sales,...
- If that does not cut it, you need to focus. I mean, don't try to get rid of everything at once. It won't end well. And be fine with trashing stuff. Work one box/bag/closet/drawer/room at a time. Make sure to put aside the things you really need to keep and then put the rest in trash bags. Since you made sure there was no alternatives to trashing them, you should not feel bad... use that as a reminder to not buy crap anymore after that.
- If it's too much work for you it should be easy to hire some youngster/teen you may know or from the neighborhood willing to help you and earn some cash while doing so.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
I have the exact same problem, this is what I've been trying these last weeks and I'm already seeing some improvement.
I started by setting up three easy daily tasks:
- pick up all dirty clothes for laundry
- sweep all the floors
- clean the dishes
I don't do very thorough sweep, just so it looks clean but since I have to do it every day something gets tickled in my brain that tries to find something to sweep because the broom is not picking anything, so I just recently realised that I've been moving out the way or completely removing stuff that impeded me from sweeping small corners that I didn't sweep the day before.
I'm so happy with how it is working that I'm about to add dusting into the routine. If the same logic applies, I'll be throwing away lots of stuff that make dusting harder.
I started doing it to learn to adopt habits and clean more often, the decluttering part was unexpected but welcomed. I still have a long way to go but I feel optimist.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
Focus on maximizing empty horizontal surface space.
::: spoiler Explanation
Have you ever noticed that restaurants and bars often decorate their walls with stuff that would easily be considered clutter on the floor?Apparently “clutter” is a highly relative descriptor, and the visual-spatial bias behind it privileges horizontal surface space.
You can leverage that knowledge to quickly de-clutter spaces without investing in lots of new storage furniture and organization systems.
It’s by far the cheapest trick I know.
:::::: spoiler How (basic)
Move and reorient items from horizontal surfaces to vertical ones.Horizontal surfaces include table tops, floors, chair seats, and so forth.
Vertical surfaces are everything else: shelves, hanging storage, stackable cubes, upright bins, baskets that can sit on top of cabinets, boxes that slide under beds, wall-mounted anything, shelving beneath any horizontal surface, any storage above eye level, etc.
Even just stacking things can make a space look less cluttered.
:::::: spoiler How (advanced)
Once you start getting creative with this concept, you can build it into the planning of your living space.For example, you might figure out what stuff can live in wall-mounted dispensers instead of occupying the space of a counter/vanity/floor.
Similarly, you might find visually appealing ways to store “clutter” out in the open, such as a ceiling-mounted pot rack or a stainless steel prep table used as kitchen island storage.
One of my favorite side-effects of this technique is that once you’ve minimized the footprint of items lying on horizontal surfaces, cleaning becomes a snap.
For example, fewer obstructions on the floor lets you use cheap sweeper bots on a schedule that keep interior dust levels low.
Likewise, wiping off counter tops and bathroom vanities takes mere seconds when you don’t have to move anything.
:::ETA: tldr — “picking up,” interpreted literally, is an endlessly useful principle of housekeeping.
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Invite a judgemental friend or relative over for dinner. Best way to force you to clean and declutter your space.
Honestly inviting anyone over is motivation for me to clean. In my own space, there's stuff everywhere, but when someone's coming my standards for personal cleanliness and organization shoot up dramatically.
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I don't use a box but I do the same thing. I call it a junk pile. If it topples over or I have nothing else to do, then I just start working on the junk pile. That means cleaning it or adding to it. Sure that one spot will never be clean but now at least the rest of the house is.
Vital to get into the habit of only putting clutter in that spot, though. Having a physical inbox is useless if you still put junk everywhere else (unless you are really good at scanning the rest of the areas to declutter to the inbox).
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Set aside a cardboard box for stuff you haven't used in years but you'd hate to throw away because it's still useful. When the box fills up, drop it off at the thrift store and get another box
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Make an album with the pics. Once that album is full, take a pic of the album and throw it away.
never thought of this. But I just used them to fill up my Hotmail storage by emailing them to myself
