De-clutter for a happier home

Prepare for the New Year with a clutter-free home.

If you spent last weekend putting up your Christmas decorations and found yourself battling with clutter, you’re not alone. Delving into the depths of your attic and adorning every corner of your home with tinsel is bound to uncover some unnecessary clutter.

While organising your house and clearing the clutter may seem like too much to add to your already full-plate, starting the New Year with serene and tidy surroundings will get you in the right frame of mind for new beginnings. Not only this, but a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience actually found that clutter can diminish your ability to focus and process information. So it seems as if the old adage of  ‘a tidy house equals a tidy mind’ is truer than you thought.

Follow the following steps to banish clutter for good:

Divide the job into manageable tasks

It can be incredibly overwhelming to take on the task of tidying your entire house at once – so try to break the job up into steps. Try to focus on just one room at a time – and if that’s too much, look at one section of a room at a time. Keep moving through the sections/rooms and you’ll get the whole house done before you know it.

Take some before and after pictures

If you normally start these kinds of tasks with gusto but then never get around to finishing them, try to keep your motivation up with a series of before and after snaps. Before you tackle your first room, take a picture before and after you de-clutter it. Keeping this visual reminder of how your house can look should help you stay motivated to move on to the next room.

Be ruthless

You can organise your belongings as much as you like – but if there is simply too much stuff, your house will never feel tidy. Now is the time to look at these things and ask yourself if you really need it. If the answer is no, donate it to a charity or throw it out. Letting go of possessions like this will make you feel lighter emotionally.

Inform others

If you live with other people, be sure to tell them how you plan on organising the house. Let them know where they should place their belongings from now on so they can help to keep your house clutter-free. Hopefully they’ll pitch in and help!

Keep it clean

Once your house is tidy, the biggest challenge is keeping it that way. Try to spend 10 minutes or so at the end of every day putting things where they’re supposed to be and clearing any clutter. This will keep the house clean and save you another mammoth job at the end of next year.

Looking to de-clutter your life while you de-clutter your home? Take a look at our life coaching areas to see how a life coach could help.

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