How To Get Rid of Unwanted Junk: A Step-by-Step Guide
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Getting rid of excess clutter and unnecessary junk is a great way to make your home feel cleaner, brighter, and more spacious. A tidy house also feels safer and more secure — it’s amazing what an impact uncluttered surfaces can have on your sense of home. However, if you have ever tried decluttering before, you will know that it’s not an easy task. Unless you want your home to appear as though a tornado recently ripped through it, tackling the process in small steps is the only way to go about things. With so much information online about decluttering and different tips for fighting the tide of stuff that threatens to overwhelm most homes these days, we’ve compiled some of the best advice from around the web into this step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Start with a Clear Out of Only The Most Important Items
If you try to get rid of everything in a single, massive decluttering session, you will only end up feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and guilty. You’ll be so overwhelmed, in fact, that you’ll end up doing nothing. Instead, take a look around your home and choose the items that you absolutely must keep. Only keep the items that are absolutely essential. Anything else can go. As you move from room to room, keep only these most important items in mind. For a start, you might want to consider keeping sentimental items and items that are irreplaceable like: Jewelry – This is a great way to hold on to memories. If you are unsure of the sentimental value of certain pieces, write the occasion and the person who gave it to you on the inside of the jewelry’s box.
Step 2: Assign A Place For Everything
The first step to clearing clutter is to assign a place for every item in your home. If you have ever tried to declutter before, you might have discovered that it’s almost impossible to get rid of anything when you don’t know what to do with it. With no place to put the things in your home, you might as well keep them because you’ll never be able to part with them. As you go from room to room, look for ways to alleviate the current chaos by assigning a place for everything. The best way to do this is to create a list of your home’s current storage solutions, and then ask yourself how you can improve on them. You might find that you don’t have enough storage for your clothes or that you have too much storage for your kitchen. Whatever the case may be, you need to make sure that your home has only the necessary amount of storage.
Step 3: Make A Commitment To Discard
You can’t expect to get rid of all your clutter in a single afternoon. In fact, you can’t even do it in a single year. It will take time. And during that time, you’re almost certainly going to find yourself questioning your commitment to living a clutter-free life. You’re going to find yourself thinking about the “joy” of having a messy house and “need” for all the junk that currently surrounds you. You’ll probably feel guilty about the fact that you’ve been trying to get rid of your stuff. You might even consider throwing everything back in the drawers and cabinets where it was previously stored. All of these things are completely normal. They happen to almost every person who attempts to declutter their home. What’s important, however, is that you remember your commitment to sorting out your stuff and getting rid of the things you don’t need. You need to remind yourself that you’re not getting rid of these things because they are “bad” or “dirty” — you’re getting rid of them because they’re cluttering up your life.
Step 4: Be Firm And Only Discard What You Know Is Unimportant
As you work your way through every room in your home, you’re sure to come across items that you’re not sure about. You’ll probably find items that you want to keep but don’t know what to do with. You might come across items that you’re not sure are important enough to keep. When this happens, you need to be extremely firm and only discard what you know is unimportant. If you’re not sure whether an item is important enough to keep, ask yourself these questions: If you can’t answer these questions with confidence, then you should consider discarding the item. The only items that you should keep are the ones that you know are important enough to keep.
Step 5: Clean Up After Yourself
If you want to avoid having to declutter on a regular basis, you need to learn to clean up after yourself. If you don’t really have a problem with clutter, you might not agree with this step. But if you’re like most people, you’ll probably find that the best way to avoid falling victim to the cluttered home that many of us fall prey to is by simply cleaning up after yourself as you go throughout the day. If you’re currently experiencing a bit of clutter chaos, we recommend doing these three things as you go from room to room: These three steps will help you to avoid ending up with a cluttered living space when you’re done decluttering.
Final Words
As you can see from this article, there are many ways to declutter your home. You can start by making a list of your clutter-y areas and then working through them one by one. Alternatively, you could dedicate a day to decluttering and tackle everything at once. No matter how you decide to go about it, you’re sure to benefit from decluttering. Not only will it make your home look much cleaner, but it will also make you feel more relaxed and less stressed out.
