Be honest; you would write to your local MP if the road leading to your house was blocked with rubbish, right? You would call your local plumber if your toilet was blocked, too, and you’d certainly seek medical help if your arteries were clogged.
Similarly, an intervention is called for when your home gets so cluttered that you’re found wanting for space and comfort.
The issues caused by a cluttered home are myriad. Not only does clutter make it difficult for you to enjoy your home, both physically and physiologically, but in extreme circumstances, it also increases the chances of rodents, flies and other unwanted visitors infesting your house.
Don’t give those guests places to hide or yourself stress and distraction from all that ‘stuff’ blocking clear passage through your home. Instead, check out these solutions to clutter and a lack of space.
Set Yourself Goals
Decluttering isn’t easy. It takes time and can be physically and emotionally demanding.
But it is worth it.
To make things easier, before you get started you need to sit down and work out just how you intend to declutter, and how long you think that it will take. Planning your project and setting yourself a timeline will make decluttering a lot less stressful; this isn’t something that should be approached lightly or haphazardly.
The first thing that you need to do is to create a map of all of the rooms in your home that need to be decluttered. Once you have done this you can then grade each room according to the severity of the clutter found there. The rooms that are most cluttered should be tackled first.
When you do start decluttering, make sure that you only do one room at a time. If you try to do more than this, you will burn yourself out and lose interest in the project.
Once you have identified all of the areas and prioritised them according to severity, you can then go ahead and set yourself completion dates for each stage in your home’s clean-up.
Make sure that you set yourself realistic timelines, ensuring your decluttering project can be scheduled around your other commitments; you wouldn’t want to clutter up your calendar at this stage, after all.
With the sentimentality involved in ‘stuff’, and everyone’s tendency to hoard to some degree, you might also want to consider asking your friends or loved ones for help. Having a second opinion, ideally from someone not emotionally invested in your clutter, can help you be ruthless and clinical in your approach.
Sort, Strategise & Streamline
You need to create a system by which you’ll sort your home’s clutter. The reason for this is so that you do not end up throwing things away that you want to keep. A sorting system is easy to create and shouldn’t take a lot of time or effort to implement.
You should sort items into four categories:
- Daily items are items you use (or will use) on an almost daily basis. Every time you come across something that fits into this category put it into a storage container and move it into a dedicated room. You could also mark it with coloured tape.
- Donations are a category that, as the name suggests, will be donated either to charity or to friends and family. The items in this category should still be usable. You can’t donate broken or useless items. You should also include items that are going to be sold in this category.
- Storage should include items that you aren’t going to use every day, but that you want to keep. Make sure that you label this category’s boxes properly so that they don’t get thrown away.
- Rubbish is a category of item that is going to be thrown away, regardless of how useful it might be to anyone. This could include items that were given to you by people to whom you no longer speak – or really anything that you just want to get rid of. If something does still have life left in it though, you might want to consider giving it away to charity and recategorising it. Throwing away things that can still be used is, simply put, selfish and bad for the environment.
Removing Clutter By Donating, Recycling & Selling
As we mentioned earlier, donating your used items is one of the most effective way of decluttering your property. This is because you don’t have to worry about contributing to landfill or hiring a skip; you can just put it in a bag and donate to a charity shop.
In addition to donating, you can also sell things that are no longer useful. Selling items that aren’t useful anymore is a great way of making a little extra money while ridding yourself of unnecessary junk.
An effective way of decluttering is to hold or attend a carboot sale, or you could use online apps such as Depop, Vinted, eBay, Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace.
If you come across items that can be recycled, then you should definitely do this. Recycling is a good way of extending the life of objects that were created at a detriment to the environment, reducing the demand for further production of those items in the future.
Read: 5 environmental resolutions to make in 2023
Proper Disposal Of Waste
Of course, this streamlined, minimalist, breathin’ easy and thinkin’ clearly approach to life is somewhat compromised if you don’t dispose of the items in your ‘rubbish’ column respectfully and responsibly.
As the disposal experts at JustHire Tyne and Wear tell us, skip hire is a great option if you’re planning to get rid of large amounts of waste. Skips come in different sizes and can be hired for short or long periods of time, depending on your needs. They are easy to fill up with rubbish, and once they are full, the skip hire company will take care of picking them up and disposing of them properly.
The main disadvantage of skip hire is that you have to pay for the whole skip even if only a portion gets filled with rubbish. Additionally, you may need special permits from your local council in order to leave them outside your property for any length of time. Plus, some items such as hazardous materials cannot be disposed of in skips due to environmental regulations. Do your due diligence regarding the regulations of household waste disposal so you don’t fall foul of the law.
Aside from skip hire, other options include:
- Taking your waste to a local household waste and recycling centre
- Arranging collection of any large waste items (such as an old sofa) through the local council
- Taking your waste to a permitted private waste site
Storage Smarts
Finally, and perhaps most effectively, consider investing in a storage locker. A storage locker not only protects your property from pests and damage but also ensures that it cannot be stolen. Storage lockers are best for long-term storage, of course, with the various restrictions put on regular access.
The Bottom Line
Though the ‘Queen of Clean’ Marie Kondo may have recently rescinded on some of her commitments, saying she had ‘kind of given up’ on tidying at home, there are some instances where a similar giving up is a luxury.
Should clutter be blighting your life, clarity of thought, and focus, then there are certainly ways you can address the issue.
Don’t let things stack up. Instead, tackle them head on and enjoy a clearer, clutter-free life in the process!