How to: Declutter your home (and mind!) with these three tips

With over three million copies sold, the runaway success of Marie Kondo’s book ‘The Life-changing Magic of tidying up’ has meant decluttering has been very much in vogue of late. Given the expendability of goods these days, it’s little wonder that we all feel like we’re drowning in ‘stuff’ and not only can mess look bad, it can stimulate a stress response too. Unsurprisingly, this feeling of overwhelm seems often to correlate with the amount of clutter we surround ourselves with but it needn’t be that way.

 

 

A tried and tested way to keep on top of the daily ephemera, set aside ten minutes each day to blitz through your home and sort out the clutter. If you can keep on top of the daily mess you’re less likely to end up with a much larger problem that seems more overwhelming to tackle. If you have kids (and depending on their age), you could even assign each family member a room for the daily decluttering blitz. 

 

Image source: Mrs Myers

 

You may have heard about Oprah Winfrey’s famous closet hanging experiment but possibly not. Essentially you start by hanging all your hangers in the reverse direction and after you wear an item you return it to your wardrobe with the hanger facing the correct way. At the end of six months, you’ll be able to see the things that haven’t been worn and thus need to be moved on to eBay or the charity bin. Genius!

 

Behold the organisation! A serene looking walk-in wardrobe. Image source: InStyle UK

 

A more exhaustive decluttering technique, the box technique has a huge fanbase. Essentially you need to buy four boxes (or alternatively you could make do with containers that you already own) and use one for items you intend keep, one for items you want to throw away, one for items you intend to give away, and one for items you would like to relocate within your home (whether that be into storage or simply a different room).