Clutter and how to declutter is by far the most wanted topic in regards to organising, so let’s have a look at what we can do to declutter. There are hundreds of tips out there on how to declutter some brilliant others not so brilliant. I think that when you have an array of different declutter tips and techniques up your sleeve, you can work wonders.

In this article, I’ll introduce, two different ways to declutter; one way is to focus on one area at the time, the other way is picking up like items and bringing them to their ‘home’, which means you can declutter larger areas.

Focus on one area at the time

If you have one messy spot in the house or one area you want to work on. Then only focus on that area and start working systematically through this spot. This could be working from left to right or top to bottom. In this process you will bin things, have a give-away pile, remove things to a place somewhere else in the house, or keep the item in that original spot but make it look better. The items that stay have now what is called in organisation jargon a ‘home’ and an allocated place where they ‘live’.

Picking up like items and bringing them to their ‘home’

If there are stray items all through the house see if these items might be homeless. If there is no allocated spot for them, then naturally they will fall where they fall. Homeless items often get put on the dinner table or the kitchen counter. You cannot possibly declutter a whole house in a jiffy, so this technique allows you to see if there are categories. What I often find is that clothes might be spread throughout the house (both clean and dirty) or shoes might not have a place to live. Clothes should either live in the laundry to be washed or in your wardrobe (this might be another column though). Shoes can live in a box, in wardrobes, or on a shelve in a cupboard. If you were to focus on only clothes or shoes for say 15 – 30 minutes your house could get this massive lift because visually shoes and clothes take up a big amount of space.

As with any technique and any skill that we are trying to master, practice makes perfect. Try these two techniques focus on an area or on a category and find a home for your items. Happy decluttering!