7 Simple Habits To Decluttering Your Life

Photo by the other Martin Taylor

Say what u will
Say what u mean
No, you could never offend
Your dirty words come out clean

~Incubus~

Simplicity is something we all strive for in these busy times we live in. However, one of the biggest impediments most of us face, in life, is clutter. Clutter can manifest itself in a myriad of forms, but home clutter is definitely the most devastating for our individual productivity. Trust me, when you’ve got a pile of cloths, left over cereal and after party beer cans keeping you from entering a room you know you’ve got a problem.

Clutter can hold a lot of things back from you. First thing that comes to mind is the psychological factor; you’ll get far less things done, especially if the clutter is at your work desk. Then there’s the organizational factor; it’s really easy to get things lost when you’ve got piles of junk hanging around. Some people even raise the issue of clutter being damaging to our health. And of course let’s not forget the aesthetics factor. Indeed clutter is bad for you, but let’s take a quick look on a few tips and pointers you can apply to help declutter your household and life. c

1. Start a general household cleanse. Get all the members of your family together so that you can work faster and at the same time do a fun activity together. Ok it may not be fun, but at least you’ll be close to each other.

2. Start off small. Once you’ve get everybody together, make sure everybody starts cleaning at the same place, together. This helps keep things fast and organized. By decluttering your household one room at a time, you can not only spare a lot of time and by having all the members of the family in one place, you can all decide which items to keep or throw away from the clutter.

3. Put it all in one place. Here’s what I do when my desk gets cluttered at an all too alarming rate. I just take everything that just isn’t at its place and place it in the room’s center and continue to do so until the rest of the room looks tidy and clean; except for its center of course. From there on you can sort and pick which gets in the donate box, in the garbage can or back in the closet.

Photo by sindesign

4. Prioritize. Take a good look at the pile of clutter you’ve just recently put aside. Check each item out and estimate whether it’s of any use at all. Ask a few simple questions. How many times have I used it in the past 6 months? Does it hold any particular value? If a certain item lost in the clutter fails to positively answer the questions, that you might as well seal it’s faith and throw it away.

5. Make regular household cleanses. Don’t just make just one household cleans and then call it quits. Get in the habit of regularly cleaning and organizing your house, otherwise all your efforts will be in vain. Don’t think like: “hey it’s gonna get messy and clustered anyway, so why waste time cleaning anyway?” Be proactive and keep a keen sense of household aesthetics. This also helps set in the habit of decluttering.

6. Declutter your computer. If you wanna leave a clutter free life, then you have to live it in the virtually space, as well as in the real life. Make sure your computer (see hard-drive) is always neat and organized. If things on your computer aren’t easy to find, then chances are your PC isn’t organized at all. Take some time each week and start deleting redundant and useless files, as well cataloging the useful files under proper directories, sorting them by importance. Also be sure every once in a while to defragmentate your hard-drive and in extreme cases even format it.

On the online side of things make no exceptions, when dealing with clutter there, as well. Delete any expired or unuseful bookmarks and keep special attention on which feeds you let in your RSS reader, otherwise before you know it you’ll get overwhelmed by hundreads of feeds.

7. Get organized. If you live an organized and clean life you won’t need to have anything to declutter in the first place. Stop bringing all kinds of cheap crap into the house, just because you think they might come in handy some day. It won’t. Whenever you see a loose sheet of paper, make sure you put in the proper place, before it stacks up. Throw away even the slightest pieces of trash; don’t just wait for it to pile up some more. Slowly but surely, if you apply these simple ways of life, you’ll achieve a clutter and stress free life in no time.