Decluttering home is an important thing for a large section of minimalists. Decluttering gives more financial and spiritual freedom to people. Decluttering is spiritually important as it offers you an opportunity to clean less, organise less. Psychology says decluttering reduces stress as clutter may cause nausea. Also, it makes a habit of less debt. It is the first stage of an approach towards anti-materialistic philosophy.
Here are 8 ways of decluttering homes.
- Start with one item a day
- Four box method
- Donate your excess clothes
- Take before and after photos
- Decluttering checklist
- 12-12-12 Challenge
- Pay attention to vertical space
- Replace your organisers with basket
If you give away one item a day, in a year you can remove 365 items from your home. Gradually if you increase this to two items a day, then it becomes 730 items a year. Imagine that you are visiting your room for the first time. It is an easy way to forget the old ambience of your room.
Make four boxes, labelling as ‘trash’, ‘give away’, ‘keep’ and ‘relocate’. Choose a room and fill the boxes with appropriate items. It may take a long time to complete a task like this. But you will come to know what is necessary to you and what is not. But you have to do it without skipping a single item. Each item is significant here.
Take all your clothes together and sort out which you wear and which you do not. You may give a trial even to check which one fits you. Keep those clothes separately, which do not fit on you. Put those clothes on a hanger, which fit on you. Keep all of those in front of your eyes. After a month sort out which you wore and which you did not in this one month. Give away those clothes which you never used in this period.
Take a photo of your room before cleaning off and after cleaning off. After a few months you will get the difference in how much you have cleaned off. This will inspire other aspirants, as well as yourself. It will help you plan for the future also.
If you can map out everything before doing it, decluttering will be much easier. Decluttering checklist is a kind of chalked out mapping that suggests what should be cleaned out and what should not.
This is a very popular method of decluttering home. Here you have to make a list of 12 items to trash, 12 items to donate and 12 items to relocate to their original locations and then follow it. This procedure of enlisting items will psychologically prepare you for the give-away.
You may use your vertical space making shelves to keep essentials. It will increase the usable space on the floor. Thus, it will be a good treat to eyes too, as this kind of arrangement is known to be nausea-reliever.
Sort out first which organisers you can replace with baskets. For example, you can replace your bathroom cabinets and kitchen cabinets with baskets. It is cheap also as well. Even you can keep your clothes in a basket.
Decluttering will largely help you to sort out things and you can very easily remove your unnecessary items. You may donate these for the welfare of human beings. It is considered as a way to modify the relationship between your mind and the living space in order to get away from stress, depression and anxiety. According to the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a retrospective space acts as a stress reliever.
