Declutter and Decompress: Simple Steps to Keeping Your Home and Life Clutter-Free

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of items in your home? Does it cause tension with loved ones, or simply just frustration when you can’t seem to find what you are looking for?

Research has shown that a cluttered space can have a direct negative impact on stress levels. You may end up losing things like your car keys or important documents and this will cost you time and money. And a cluttered space is hard to keep clean.

Reducing clutter and creating order in your home is a simple way to create a happier and calmer living environment.

In today’s chaotic world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and out of control. That is why it is so important to create order in our lives! Developing simple habits for decluttering our homes can do wonders for calming our minds and enabling us to feel lighter, freer, and less overwhelmed in life.

It can feel like a major task to declutter but, with a strategy in place, it can be done easily.

Here are a few simple tips to get started:

01. Make a list.

Go through your home with a pad and pen and note down any areas that feel overcrowded. These will be the places you will begin working on.

02. Create a schedule.

This may be one morning per week that you will work on clearing a section at a time. If there are other members in your household, delegate tasks and get everyone involved.

03. Tackle each step at a time.

Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with one pile of papers or one overcrowded shelf. Decide what can be given away or sold, and what needs to be given a proper place to live in your home.

04. Create systems and dedicated areas.

These can include filing systems for bills, letters and other paperwork. Or rather than having the kids’ pencils, pens, sharpeners and paper dotted in every room, create a dedicated area for their art and put more shelves up if necessary.

05. Decide on milestones to meet.

Make a commitment to yourself that each room will have been completed by a certain date. These might be relevant days like birthdays or Easter. Mark these dates in your calendar and reward yourself when you meet the deadlines.

Reap the Rewards

As you clear physical clutter from your life, there is no doubt that you will notice positive ripples in other areas of your life. 

You may find that it’s easier to organise your time, that you begin to naturally implement systems for remembering significant events, and that you find it easier to delegate or simply say no to the things that don’t align with you.

However you notice these effects, decluttering is bound to lead to a calmer and happier you.