It’s a great feeling to clean up your home and reduce your clutter, but it can sometimes feel overwhelming. Where do you start? Here are a few tips to get you motivated.
1. Ask yourself “Why?”
If you’re reading this article, you must already have a reason for wanting to initiate some spring cleaning, maybe you are prepping a home for sale, undertaking an annual cleaning ritual or simply getting tired & frustrated with feeling disorganized. Whatever your reason, keep focused on your “why” and how you’ll feel when you’re done. This will help motivate you to complete the task.
Where to start?
Pick one area at a time, like under your kitchen sink or your bedroom closet. Starting small won’t feel overwhelming and will actually get you in the mood to do more. It feels so good to eliminate excess clutter to free up space!
3. Re-use, Gift vs Trash
Can you use, donate, sell, or fix up those items you’re considering throwing away? Try creating as little waste this season as possible. Instead of sending your unused items to the landfill, ask yourself if there are other purposes it may be utilized for or someone you could gift it to. Consider refinishing a dresser to make it feel brand new again, or paint your coffee table a different color to refresh the look and feel. Thrift stores are always looking for donations, and one person’s trash might be another person’s treasure. You’d be surprised at what gets claimed by another when you leave an unwanted piece of furniture on your front lawn with a free sign. The less we waste the smaller our footprint and the less impact we have on the planet.
4. Selling
Are there items of clothing collecting dust bunnies in your closet? Or a storage unit that just takes up too much space (and holds more stuff you don’t use)? You can sell items you haven’t used in years to receive extra cash to treat yourself to something special or add to your savings for a future need! Consider listing your items for sale online or having a garage sale if you have lots of things to sell at once. Here’s a great article on the best places to sell online if you’d like to explore further.
5. Paperwork!
You don’t need to hold on to all your paperwork forever! Understanding what you need to keep, why and for how long will make it easier to sort through your piles. Certain paperwork can be shredded after reading, while some documents are important to keep. For example, anything you can easily obtain a copy of online (ie. a bank or investment account statement) can be shredded after reading. In fact, consider switching to paperless statements instead and you’ll avoid collecting the paper in the first place. For audit purposes, you need to hold onto tax reporting documentation for at least 5 years (sometimes longer). That doesn’t mean it needs to be in paper form. You can scan and save documentation online to a secure location for easy access in the future. Receipts for purchases can also be saved in digital form which not only reduces paperwork, but makes it much easier to locate should you need it at a future date.
With these tips, we hope that you will feel less cluttered and more organized going into your Spring season! Let us know how your organizing went!
Tag us on your social media posts about your decluttering experience - and include pictures for inspiration!
