10 Tips To Declutter Your Home: Joyful Decluttering
The Best Ways to Declutter your Home
I’m having a de-clutter at home this month. My rule is simple: one bag of stuff leaves my flat each week for the forseable. I’m making space for joy.
For my free decluttering checklist, subscribe here.
I made peace with being a slightly messy person long ago, but my home is small and it does tend to fill up. Especially after being unwell for a long time, then before that a broken collarbone and a new puppy meant very little left my home in a long time.
The overstimulation of stuff everywhere, overflowing bookshelves and cupboards, to do piles and more creates stress and mental background activity I could do without. I want my brain to be free for other things like writing courses.
I talk you through my decluttering process and share 10 tips to declutter your home easily.
The Therapy Toolbox Personal Growth Course
How I Declutter My Home
Start Small
I started small with my first bag - discarding toiletries: things that are almost finished but I started a new one (tsk tsk). Out of date medicines, dried up make up, a bubble bath that smells funny so has sat for two years looking pretty but never used.
Decluttering the Drawer of Doom
My cluttered “draw of doom” was filled pens, hole punches, staplers and all that kind of stuff. It was so full and jumbled I couldn’t find anything. We never went in there and kept our most used pens somewhere else!
Now when my daughter says do we have any Pritt Stick I can give a definitive answer, or she can easily see for herself. Too many felt tips and crayons never used by me or my teen have been weeded so only one best set of each remain, for when my nieces nephews visit. That’s bag 2 done and dusted!
Ask yourself, do I use it? Or simply, is this drawer a total nightmare?
So what is the best half of your clutter? Everything else has to go. (I’ll tackle my drawer of carnage further down the line).
Decluttering Books: Selling and Donating
I’ve got rid of 50 books this week. Half of them to the charity shop the other half are are Academic psychotherapy books that I’ve sold on Ziffit and WeBuyBooks. Because they’ve paid quite well for them this has been enormously satisfying! I’m never going to be able to read the hundred plus books.
Now they are gone I’m less overwhelmed by the bookcase and can see what is there more easily.
With less to choose from it’s easier to choose.
Books worth less though still good like novels are going to a charity shop along with nice but unused crockery that someone else can enjoy, and put money in the charities purse too. I still have hundreds of books. No more book buying allowed for the whole of 2023! After that my new policy to not buy any book until I’ve read one, then it’s one in one out.
Declutter your Time - Too Busy?
When sorting through books I found Tony Crabbes book ‘Busy’. It’s kind of a ‘time declutter’ book.
Two hours reading that yesterday bought me far more time back than those two hours. By honing in on time spent on what matters most, for me, it’s spending more time writing resources, and not spend so much time figuring out marketing (maybe you’ll help? See below).
Decluttering my Wardrobe
A bag for charity, yes! It’s also satisfying selling the best quality clothes on Vinted, things that don’t fit or aren’t what I wear anymore (my jeans-and-jumper days have really set in.) If you’d like to do Vinted I found Sunday afternoon very successful - upload when people are not at work for a faster sale. Price a bit lower than you’d like. I’ll be taking any unsold things to charity in a month so it’s not looming over me.
For my free decluttering checklist, subscribe here.
Decluttering my Life Like Marie Kondo
I’ve long been a fan of Marie Kondo, still one of my best decluttering tips heroes. I still fold my clothes in an upright way she recommends, mostly anyway. It feels less cluttered and does make life easier.
She says only keep what sparks joy (instead of guilt, pain, shame, embarrassment, anger, sadness, etc). You pick everything up, hold it, and wait for the spark.
Decluttering Your Mind - Process Emotional Baggage as You Go
Don’t let the past haunt you, buying mistakes, change in body shape, people who are no longer in your life, or your kids didn’t like crafts after all, your dog refused to wear it’s expensive bespoke coat. It’s fine to find it all a new home, and sadly it’s sometimes in landfill, the mistakes have been made, it’s time to face facts. Decluttering is letting go. This is also why it can be good to do little and often, a bag a week, so you have time to process difficult feelings Hoarding is often linked to unprocessed grief, depression, and low self esteem. (More on how to do this in the Therapy Toolbox Personal Growth Course.)
Clutter is sometimes a physical manifestation of something we don’t want to face, but it’s still there, annoying our unconscious self while we push it out of awareness and desensitise ourselves to it. It feels easier but it isn’t in the long run. Because decluttering can feel painful we need to have support from others, and self discipline, and the self compassion to allow ourselves to feel what we need to as we go. The feelings do pass.
I’m already ahead of target and it feels so good letting go of these things. I feel better that other people will enjoy them. They don’t belong here any more.
Guilty Pleasure - The Big House Clear Out
I’ve discovered the guilty pleasure of Nick Knowles Big House Clear Out (Channel 5 🤫) which is motivating me. The families on the show with cluttered homes discard 50% of their belongings and they revamp their home in return. No longer bogged down with vast reminders of mistakes, the past, bad buying choices or simply having changed, eg children older now, or weight changes tipping the balance. It’s nice to see others are significantly worse than you too!
My main takeaway is how much our clutter can weigh us down without us realising, leading or contributing to stress, anxiety, and depression.
I’m a few bags in and I already feel the weight of it lifting, more space, more peace, less stress, and I’ve made £168!
The Therapy Toolbox Personal Growth Course
10 Best Decluttering Tips for Your Home
My tips for decluttering your home from Marie Kondo, Nick Knowles from the telly, William Morris, me, and a random man from the radio the other day.
It Takes Time.
My target is one bag a week. You might prefer a timed target, eg one hour a week (that’s about how long each bag took). Small and steady wins the race. (KH)
Start with easiest things.
books, clothes, then when you’re good move onto miscellaneous and sentimental. (MK)
Discard everything that doesn’t spark joy.
Let go of books you wish you liked by don’t, gifts from someone you no longer want to see, I’ll firing clothes, even if expensive, craft projects you’ll never finish, cooking implements you don’t use, on repeat, until there’s no guilt, shame, sadness or cringe to be found. (MK)
Treat all your possessions with gratitude and appreciation.
If your stuff are now unwelcome guests, ask them politely to leave (MK, KH)
Only have stuff that fits inside your storage space.
Don't buy new storage to fit stuff. (MK). I grew up in a big house where my parents still live. Their house is so big that it doesn’t matter that they have so much stuff. There is a whole sideboard with only candle related things, and a walk in pantry cupboard with infinite vases suitable for any bloom. I had no role modelling for ‘stuff management’ They had space for everything they could want and more. My flat fits into one of their living rooms, so of course I needed to go on this learning journey. I still have too much candle stuff and extra vases but it’s more manageable, and anyway I like those things.
One in one out.
Once you’re finished, have a one in one out rule for everything. (NK)
Oh, and do finish! (Everyone)
Only keep what’s useful or beautiful. (WM)
Edit your home like editing a book.
A snippet of radio recently taught me to see our space as something that needs editing, like writing a book - deciding what will stay in the final edit and cut out the rest. Treat your home like a finished book, make it the final edit, with all stray sentences and boring chapters cut( RRM).
Select precious keepsakes only.
But they are happy memories! Yes of course, though you can keep one favourite one rather than twenty, and see it in its undiluted glory.
My main tip is to take decluttering slowly. A bag (or an hour) a week is easy to fit in. You’ll feel results and gain motivation as you go. Of course, you can have a blast approach too, but my bitesize way of decluttering your home is less overwhelming.
Happy decluttering!
If you’d like to get my posts to have a better life regularly in your inbox sign up below.
The Therapy Toolbox Personal Growth Course
A request: I want to spend time writing resources for you, not on marketing. Will you help? Even if this course isn’t for you, perhaps it will help someone else. Many suffer in silence and there are so many things we can do, which I have put inside the Therapy Toolbox Course for Women. So please share, the course is designed to change a life!
There’s also now a YEARS ACCESS to the Therapy Toolbox for the price of a couple of sessions with a therapist, so you can revisit again and again.
And if you know a clutterer who needs to bloody well get their s*** together and move on please share this with them!
Find out more about the Therapy Toolbox Course and declutter your mind too!
For my free decluttering checklist, subscribe here.
Photo by Hannah Argyle
