Fresh Year, Fresh Start!
Cleaning out your home for the New Year? As you look forward to 2021, it may be time for a decluttering session.
Living with too much stuff can cause stress, anxiety, and depression. People with too much clutter in their environment also tend to suffer from relationship issues, sleep problems, and chronic allergies or asthma. Take some time this year to clean out your home for a fresh start. Here are a few strategies recommended by professional organizers.
1. One category at a time
This method is used by Marie Kondo, author of the bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and TV show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. She advocates for decluttering items by category: clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous items, and sentimental items, in that order.
2. One room at a time
Another method is to focus on one area at a time. It could be a room, the garage, or the attic. If that amount of space is still overwhelming to you, break it down to one closet, one cabinet, or one drawer at a time.
3. Arrange keep, sell, and donate spaces
As you progress through your decluttering, it will save time and energy if you have already designated areas to accumulate items that are to be kept, sold, or donated. Then you can deal with each group of items once you have everything separated.
Once you have cleaned out your home, you might adopt some of these habits for preventing clutter from piling up again:
Set a rule where you don’t purchase a new piece of clothing, toy, book, or gadget without getting rid of something you are no longer using.
Get into the habit of always putting everything back in its place. This will keep you from purchasing items you already have but can’t find or forgot about.
To prevent clothes from piling up, try choosing your outfits for the coming week every Sunday, and don’t let clean laundry sit unfolded.
Look through your refrigerator and pantry before shopping and shop with a list of needed items.
Live by the rule that if you haven’t used it or worn it in the past year, chances are you don’t need it.