Clutter cleaning is a healthy practice for any home. Keeping things fresh and organized has so many benefits, and it is always a nice feeling to know things are clean and orderly. But, it is not always 100% possible to keep your home totally spotless. Most of us deal with a little bit of clutter from time to time. With our busy lifestyles, it is totally normal to experience a little clutter buildup every now and then.
Laundry can pile up, old mail may start to overrun your kitchen table. After a while we can get used to seeing that pile of stuff on the counter, to the point where it feels like a part of the house even when the home is in complete disarray.
It can be a little discouraging when clutter rears its ugly head. But, it isn’t the end of the world as long as it stays manageable. Manageable being the keyword. There is a big difference between having a little bit of clutter, and struggling with hoarding. If clutter is allowed to grow for too long, it can develop beyond the point that the average person can reasonably handle. Making sure to stay on top of a good decluttering regimen is a big factor in preventing this. The more effort that is put into cleaning clutter when it starts to form, the less likely it is for things to spiral out of control in the future. Clutter cleaning also keeps the house nice in general, so it’s never a bad thing to do!
Importance of
decluttering your home
Taking the time to incorporate tidying and organizing into a regular housekeeping schedule helps to make sure things don’t get out of control. Everyone experiences clutter. But, letting it go for too long can have serious consequences. The longer clutter accumulates in your home, the harder and more time consuming it can be to finally clean it up. Things can even get lost in the sea of random items. In extreme cases, too much clutter can be a sign of a hoarding disorder.
A good clutter cleaning routine can help to prevent dust, allergens, pests, mold, and other health hazards from overtaking the home. It also provides many people with a sense of accomplishment and motivation! Staying organized can aid in reducing stress, and keep our lives on track. There are so many physical and mental health benefits that follow a good clutter cleanup. Add decluttering to your to-do list and see for yourself!
How to Declutter Your Bedroom
Your bedroom is where you start and end your day. It is your most sacred space. Keeping it clutter free can elevate your mood and help you feel more motivated. There are a few major areas that should be considered when decluttering. Making sure these things are in order may lead to a much more uplifting environment, and even better sleep.
- Make the bed. This one small act that can have a big impact on the tidiness of your room. Put on a new pair of sheets and place the previous ones in the laundry. Change your pillowcases, and straighten out your blanket or duvet. Adding some decorative pillows to your linen ensemble is a nice touch if you have the space. But, if you’re concerned about where to put them when not in use then just keep it simple and go without the extra stuff.
- Get your clothes together. So much clutter can be cleared by simply picking laundry up off of the floor and placing it in a designated bin. Carry your laundry basket to the machine. While your stuff is in the wash cycle, make sure everything else is folded and neatly put away. Just don’t forget to come back for the stuff in the wash.
- Organize your belongings. Straighten up your shelves and throw away any garbage. For loose items like makeup, personal care, or accessories, placing them on trays or in small boxes gives a much more streamlined appearance. If you have space under the bed, consider using shallow bins for extra storage space.
How to Declutter Your Closet
- The Linen Closet: Don’t worry, you don’t have to drive yourself crazy trying to perfectly fold a fitted sheet to have a clutter-free linen closet. Just try to stack things as neatly and as uniformly as possible. Using baskets is a good way to keep things organized without overstuffing your shelves. Store sheet sets together so things don’t get mismatched.
- The Clothing Closet: Emptying your closet and starting with a blank canvas is often the most helpful way to clearly sort through all of your stuff. Pick up any clothes that may have fallen on the floor. Put dirty clothes in your hamper, and take them to your laundry room. Develop a system for storing your clothing using space-saving hangers, shelves, and dividers. If there is anything that has not been worn for a while, consider donating it or packing it into storage.
How to Declutter Your Living Room
Clutter builds up in the living room because of how much activity and foot traffic it gets on a daily basis. Cleaning this room might take a little bit more time and attention. Properly planning before you begin decluttering can make the process a lot easier. Before you begin, make sure you have thought everything through and that you have everything you need to get the job done.
- Remove unnecessary things. Assign a staging area where your miscellaneous items can be kept until the very end. If you need to, keep a plastic bag or two handy as you declutter. Walk around the room quickly grabbing anything that does not belong in the living room and add it to your staging area. Consider the function of all the objects in your living room, and whether they need to be there or if they should be stored somewhere else. When you are done, you may redistribute items in the staging area to their proper home. Use this time to decide what you will keep or throw away.
- Identify the major clutter. In most living rooms, there will be one or two areas where the clutter is worse than others. This could be a corner, a chair, a coffee table, or anywhere that is in complete disarray compared to the rest. Use the staging area to work through these areas one at a time, sorting through things and putting them back where they belong. Have a garbage bag nearby where you can easily toss your junk before you get too attached.
- Books, magazines, and DVDs. Develop a good system to store things in your entertainment stand and bookshelves. Make sure everything is nicely displayed. Making use of the walls and adding some floating shelves can eliminate the random piles making your coffee table or couch unusable.
- Throw blankets and pillows. Using decorative pillows and blankets can add a nice cozy touch to any living room. Sort through the current arrangement to make sure it’s functional. Repurpose, donate, or discard items that no longer serve a purpose, and store any extras in an attractive basket or bin.
How to Declutter Your Dining Room
- Recycle. Grab a clear plastic bag and throw away any recyclable items. Throw away newspapers, magazines, or old mail so they don’t just pile up. Make sure to shred any important documents like old bills before tossing them.
- Put things away. Collect anything that does not belong on the dining room table and put it away in its proper shelf, drawer, or basket. Place dirty table-linens in the laundry and swap them out for fresh ones. Use a decorative container for storing extra napkins.
- Add storage if needed. Cabinets and shelves are perfect for displaying dinnerware when not in use. Serving utensils and containers that are not as attractive can be hidden. Making use of baskets, drawers, and other storage units can also help organize some of the more random things that make their way into dining rooms. But, be careful not to let them simply sit untouched somewhere else.
How to Declutter Your Home Office
Having clutter scattered around your home office can make it difficult to focus when you are trying to get work done. Cleaning and organizing this spot should not take long. But, it will make a big difference in minimizing distractions and improving clarity. With just a few simple adjustments you can get organized, reclaim your workspace, and dramatically improve your productivity.
- Clear your desk. Gather all those loose pens, sticky notes, and paperclips, and put them in something so they are contained. Even a big plastic cup can be a useful desk organizer if nothing else is available. Collect any notebooks, calendars, planners, and important documents. Place them in dividers on your desk if they need to be accessible. On a shelf out of the way would be even better.
- Organize. Straighten up drawers. Add trays to neaten things up, and throw away that cluster of old, broken pens! Go paperless where you can. Scan and store your documents digitally. For documents that you need to hang on to, make use of customizable shelving to develop a filing system. Make use of an inbox and outbox station to stay on top of your tasks.
- Streamline your power cables. Do you have an octopus of wires living under your chair? Consider cable organizers. Having to navigate a tangled cluster of wires whenever we need to access our computer can take valuable time and attention away from the job. Unplug everything, straighten things out, and plug things back in methodically. Twist ties, clips, tubes, and rubber bands can be used to arrange wires in a way that makes sense, and prevent them from becoming a jumbled mess.
How to Declutter
Your Kitchen
Clean out any expired food from the fridge or pantry. Make sure your spices are all in the spice rack, and not running rampant on the counter. Clear the sink and dish drain. Dry dishes and put them away immediately after washing.
There are lots of useful tools for neatly storing pots, pans, and containers without causing a massive avalanche every time you open the cabinet, too.
How to Declutter Your Bathroom
- Check the medicine cabinet. Sometimes we forget that we already had a bottle of cold medicine or a box of band-aids at home. So we buy another one. Consolidate your duplicate items where you can. Use trays to keep similar items or smaller objects together. It’s a great way to stay organized and prevent things from falling off the shelf.
- Minimize junk on the countertops. Wall-mounted towel rings, toothbrush holders, and soap dishes are perfect for clearing up space around your sink. Use a waterproof hanging caddy to get those shampoo bottles off the rim of the tub. Placing extra wash clothes and toiletries in small baskets or decorative containers will eliminate the look of an unsightly pile.
- Build a storage system. Tuck things like toilet paper, personal care items, and cleaning products neatly out of the way with a beautified storage system. Installing floating shelves, or an over-the-toilet cabinet maximize your storage space for shaving cream, deodorants, and vanity items. Caddies that fit under the sink are good options for storing your cleaning products and personal care items.
- Purge the rest. Bring a plastic bag with you so you can easily throw away any garbage, or empty the bin. If there is not a small garbage pail already in your bathroom, make sure to find a good spot for one. Toss empty bottles in there and empty it frequently.
How to Declutter Your Laundry Room
- Eliminate stuff you don’t need. If there is laundry waiting in the basket, throw it in the machine for a wash cycle. That will free up a great deal of space right away. Dry, fold, and put your things away as soon as the load is done. Collect any empty detergent bottles and carry them right to the recycling bin.Take away any miscellaneous bits and bobs, putting them back into their proper homes.
- Maximize your space. Whatever your laundry room looks like, try to work with what you’ve got. At the bare minimum, find a delegated area to keep your laundry detergent and dryer sheets for easy access. Then determine whether you’ve got space for anything else. Over the door hangers and wall hooks can be accommodating for even the smallest spaces. Keep your laundry bag or supplies off of the valuable surface space. If you’ve got the room, take advantage of it and install some shelving to store laundry baskets, ironing boards, and supplies.
How to Declutter Your Basement or Attic
- Assign sections. Instead of just randomly throwing things in boxes and hauling them into the basement, designate a zone for each thing you will be storing. Having a portion of the basement be dedicated to storing decorations will make it much easier to find your seasonal knickknacks than if they are lost in a sea of random belongings. Sectioning the room has the added benefit of helping you create staging areas you can use to get organized. Add all similar items into their own spot, and then sort through each zone one at a time.
- Make labels. Or, at least get some masking tape and a sharpie. Labeling storage containers can really simplify things. Adding labels helps to keep storage containers organized because like things will all be stored together. You will also know what is inside the container right away from looking at it. This method helps to discourage keeping too much junk, because anything that you keep has to belong in a specified category!
- Minimize bulk. Making the most of your space is not always about adding things. Sometimes it calls for taking things away. Eliminating volume and storing things as compactly as possible allows for much more space to move around and find what you need. Don’t just pack things in, leave yourself some room. Fabric items such as blankets, curtains, or winter clothes can be vacuum sealed to reduce the amount of space they are taking up in a container. This is most practical for things that you won’t need to access for at least several months. Throw away duplicate or broken items, as well as incomplete sets such as board games that are missing pieces. Use shelving units, dividers, or drawers for streamlined access to your containers.
How to Declutter Your Garage
An impressive amount of junk can amass in your garage. Cleaning it up will reveal all kinds of hidden gems. Perhaps it is because for many of us garages are multi-functional. Anything from old clothes and board games to an assortment of tools, gear, and sporting goods can be found in a garage. Not to mention all the stuff you need for your car. Just like the attic, people tend to forget about things they store in the garage. Before you know it, the clutter is piled sky high, and it’s impossible to tell what you are even looking at. It would be lucky if there were even room to put a car.
- Put everything in the center of the room. Hit the reset button. Remove everything from where it is being kept and put it in the middle of the garage. From there, start sorting things into categories and finding them a home. Anything that does not need to be stored in the garage should be kept elsewhere. Designate an area for things you plan to throw away, and get ready to purge anything you don’t need. If it’s lived in the garage untouched for years, it will probably be up for removal.
- Create easier access to your stuff. Install shelving, cubbies, and hooks, where you can. Coming up with a solution that allows you to easily see and access items stored in your garage will help reduce clutter and improve the functionality of the space. Don’t store things in the garage unless they are actively being used for that space. That box of childhood memories might be better suited for the attic. But the box with all the liquids you use to maintain your car definitely belongs.
How to keep your home organized
Making sure that your home stays organized is all about having the right routine. Actively setting aside time once a day, week, or month to declutter is the key. Life today can be very demanding. Most people lead fairly active lives, and it is only normal for small amounts of clutter to build up over time. Don’t overstress it. Planning ahead makes clutter a lot more manageable. It is even easier to deal with once you learn how to keep clutter to a minimum.
- Schedule clutter cleaning days. Balancing work and life can be tricky. But, when we procrastinate on things that we could do right now it usually ends up creating more problems down the road. Think of the dishes, for example. One rogue plate can become an entire sink’s fill of dishes in a matter of days. Then, what would have taken 2 minutes to clean is going to take 30. Clutter works the same way. When let go for too long, it can become an unmanageable mess. Do your best to clean as you go. It will eliminate a lot of stress by preventing clutter buildup, and when you do need to declutter there will be a lot less that needs to be done.
- Put things back where you found them. Giving every item in your home a designated place makes it a lot easier to clean up when they are not in use. The fewer decisions that need to be made throughout the day the better. When we do not know where we should put something, we are a lot more likely to put it somewhere that it doesn’t belong. Doing this over and over again will create clutter. By giving everything we own an assigned home, we are less likely to make a mess by leaving our things on the nearest surface. It also becomes much easier to locate things when we want them.
- Get rid of unused items. Don’t just keep things for the sake of keeping them. We often tell ourselves that we will hold onto broken items to fix them later. Or we keep something that we have not used in a while just in case we need it in the future. But what is the likelihood that you are really going to put a button on that shirt that has been sitting crumpled up on your closet floor for the past 6 months? Stay accountable and make a plan. Decide how long you will hold on to something in the hopes of one day using it, and then toss it when the time comes. A few things here or there that you like to hang on to may be fine as long as you have the space. Just make sure they are being properly stored and cared for. But, if you are finding that the same bunch of items is just churning throughout the house, it might be time to say goodbye.
When to call the professionals
Sometimes clutter becomes more than just a simple pile or old mail that can be easily sorted and tossed. When clutter is allowed to exist for too long, it can easily overtake the home. Being so busy on the day-to-day can make it difficult to recover from this quickly.
It may be time to consider getting help from a professional organizer if the situation has evolved beyond what you could reasonably manage in a few short days. But, in more serious situations calling in a professional can have a huge impact on your health and safety.
- How much clutter is too much? When clutter starts to overrun your home, it can negatively impact your overall quality of life. Massive piles of clutter that block off rooms might be indicating a serious problem. In the worst of cases, unchecked clutter can evolve into hoarding. It is best not to attempt to declutter a hoarder’s home without proper preparations and professional help.
- The risks of having clutter. When stacks of broken, disorganized, and unused items pile so high that parts of the home become completely unusable it can be extremely dangerous to try to unravel alone. Falling hazards become a serious risk. So do the possible injuries and infections that could result from taking a tumble and landing on something unexpected. Dust and mold that grew among the clutter can be released if disturbed while the house is being cleaned. This can cause respiratory issues, illness, or allergic reactions. Pests that have been living among the clutter may be carrying disease. Or, the infestation can spread if not handled properly.
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- Don’t put yourself at risk. Extremely cluttered homes can present a number of issues that the unprepared person may not be able to handle. Cleaning up large amounts of clutter can take a lot of time and effort. It can also be dangerous. Working with a professional who has experience in these situations can not only help to get things cleaned more quickly, it can help to ensure your safety.Hoarders911 offers a fully customizable cleaning service to help you manage any amount of clutter you may be experiencing at home.
- Our team is prepared with a solution for everything. With nearly 3 decades of experience, we have developed the skills and expertise necessary to recover homes from even the most extreme hoarding situations.
- Against us, clutter doesn’t stand a chance. The experts at Hoarders911 understand how stressful it can be to become overwhelmed by clutter. That is why we come ready to handle everything.
- From sorting and organizing, to deep cleaning, we do it all. Our discreet junk removal services are perfect for quietly hauling away your unwanted items. Your neighbors won’t know a thing. We offer solutions for pests, mold, and even light repairs from one of our talented handymen. Our team has everything you need to get back on track to a clutter-free life. Get a consultation today and find out if our services are right for you.
In the worst of cases, unchecked clutter can evolve into hoarding. It is best not to attempt to declutter a hoarder’s home without proper preparations and professional help.
- The risks of having clutter. When stacks of broken, disorganized, and unused items pile so high that parts of the home become completely unusable it can be extremely dangerous to try to unravel alone. Falling hazards become a serious risk. So do the possible injuries and infections that could result from taking a tumble and landing on something unexpected. Dust and mold that grew among the clutter can be released if disturbed while the house is being cleaned. This can cause respiratory issues, illness, or allergic reactions. Pests that have been living among the clutter may be carrying disease. Or, the infestation can spread if not handled properly.
- Don’t put yourself at risk. Extremely cluttered homes can present a number of issues that the unprepared person may not be able to handle. Cleaning up large amounts of clutter can take a lot of time and effort. It can also be dangerous. Working with a professional who has experience in these situations can not only help to get things cleaned more quickly, it can help to ensure your safety.Hoarders911 offers a fully customizable cleaning service to help you manage any amount of clutter you may be experiencing at home. Our team is prepared with a solution for everything. With nearly 3 decades of experience, we have developed the skills and expertise necessary to recover homes from even the most extreme hoarding situations. Against us, clutter doesn’t stand a chance. The experts at Hoarders911 understand how stressful it can be to become overwhelmed by clutter. That is why we come ready to handle everything. From sorting and organizing, to deep cleaning, we do it all. Our discreet junk removal services are perfect for quietly hauling away your unwanted items. Your neighbors won’t know a thing.
- We offer solutions for pests, mold, and even light repairs from one of our talented handymen. Our team has everything you need to get back on track to a clutter-free life. Get a consultation today and find out if our services are right for you.
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JUNK REMOVAL
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