Why You Should Declutter Your Home
Some people are very bothered by clutter in their homes, but other people don’t seem to mind it. If you’re reading this, someone may have suggested that you declutter your home. Maybe you know that your home is cluttered and just don’t care. And if you don’t care, should you bother?
There are a couple of benefits to decluttering your home, even if you may not see them right away.
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1| Represent Yourself
The arrangement of your home is a lot like the way that you dress. People see it as a kind of visual representation of who you are. As a result, inviting people into a cluttered house can mean inviting them to make certain assumptions about you and the way that you live your life.
Maybe your life is cluttered too. If you have a lot on your plate, you may feel that having a lot of things on your kitchen table is representative of who you are. However, there are ways to represent your busy life without having a messy life.
2| Live More Efficiently
You may also find that having a tidier home means living a more orderly life.
If you have a lot of pans in the fire, you may feel that you don’t have time to keep a spotless kitchen. However, decluttering your home makes it easier for you to find the things that you need to complete the task at hand. You may also find yourself more focused and inspired to do your work if you are in a more organized environment.
For this reason, you can look at tidying up your house not as a waste of time but as a time investment. It will take some time away from tasks that you may see as more important but once you’ve got it done you can work more efficiently on those other projects. You also won’t need to worry about important items or documents being lost or damaged.
Keep in mind as well that it takes longer to tidy your house the first time than it takes to keep it tidy Afterwords. Tidying your house, the first time may take weeks but keeping it clean may only take a few minutes a few days of the week.
3| Showcase Your Interests and Accomplishments
As mentioned above, some people are proud of their untidy homes. After all, they’re busy people and if their house represents that by being a bit cluttered, that’s fair.
And it is fair. However, having a tidier house may allow you to represent that same idea in a different way.
Having an uncluttered house doesn’t mean that you don’t own things, like mementos of your projects or keepsakes of your adventures. In fact, having a tidier home makes these mementos and keepsakes stand out more to your guests. In this way, committing to declutter your house can turn it into a little museum dedicated to you and your accomplishments.
4| Increase Your Social Opportunities
Finally, decluttering your house increases your social opportunities. As mentioned above, many people with cluttered houses aren’t bothered by them but their guests are. Decluttering your home can shift the focus from the clutter of your home to the substance of your life.
Cluttered spaces are often smaller spaces. However, small spaces can seem like larger spaces when they are well organized. You may not be a social person and may not feel like you need a lot of space, but wouldn’t it be nice to at least have the opportunity to host more people in your home? You may find that you like this idea and have been hiding from it as a way to avoid taking the first steps to declutter your home.
Taking the first steps to declutter your home can feel like a waste of time. However, when you consider the opportunities that it gives you and the ways in which it can increase your efficiency, it quickly becomes a worthwhile endeavor.
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How to Declutter Your Home
With the busy life that the average 21st century person leads, it can be easy to let things pile up a bit around the house. However, too much clutter can make simple tasks harder and even dangerous — not to mention what it can do to your social life.
When things have gotten a little out of place it can be fairly easy to go through and put everything in it its proper spot. But when things have really gotten out of hand, how do you even begin to declutter your home?
1| Set an Intention and Make a Plan
The first step to decluttering your home is to decide what your end result will be. Determining whether you want your house to be child-friendly or efficient or cozy will help you to decide what things to put where and what things to put in the trash.
During this step, it can also help to divide your home into “zones” based on the floor plan. Decluttering your house can be a pretty big project, so looking at it as decluttering a series of rooms one room at a time can help it to seem more manageable. Further, by the nature of decluttering, some spaces will become more cluttered as you move things around. Having a plan will help you to focus on one area at a time so that you don’t reclutter areas that you just worked on.
Keep in mind that different rooms or zones can have different intentions. You may not want your office to be as cozy as your living room. You may want your living room to be child-proof but not your kitchen. This can help you determine where to keep certain things and how to prioritize.
2| Decide Where to Start
Once you have set your intention and come up with your floor plan, you can decide where to start. Keep in mind that as you declutter certain areas, other places are likely to become more cluttered – only temporarily of course. This can help you to prioritize where to start. This can be different for everyone depending on your lifestyle.
If you entertain a lot, you mind want to start with areas like the living room and the kitchen. As you work through these areas, you can get them clean first even if it means cluttering more private areas like your bed room, office, &c. until you get around to those later. If you have a child on the way, start by decluttering the areas that need to be childproofed. If you don’t have a child on the way and don’t entertain much, the places that you use the most like the kitchen or the office should get the first priority while more “public” places can take the clutter first.
3| Maximize the Space and Minimize the Junk
Of course, decluttering your house isn’t just about moving things around. You have to put things in places where they can stay or put them out with the trash.
Investing in organizational aids like shelves and dressers can help you to maximize your space by putting a larger amount of things in the same or a smaller space. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get rid of things that you don’t need or that don’t fit the space or the scheme of the room.
This is where you can get creative. Maybe you had a decorative piece in the living room that doesn’t fit with your new childproof goal. You don’t have to get rid of it, just put it in a non-childproof area. It could be the one decorative thing that brings some color to your office or it could become a personal treasure that stays in your bedroom.
What About Deadlines?
One thing that we didn’t talk about is setting a deadline. Some people find that setting a deadline helps to motivate them. Other people find that setting a deadline only allows them to put off cleaning until the deadline draws closer. Whether you set a deadline should depend on what kind of person you are. Of course, sometimes life sets deadlines for us, like when there is a child on the way.
