If one of your goals for the new year is to get control of household clutter, this post is for you! For the last year I have been on a mission to work on that clutter that just seems to appear overnight! Check out these tips for controlling household clutter and start your journey to controlling clutter in your home!
Tips for Controlling Household Clutter
Household clutter tends to sneak up on you when you’re not paying attention. It may start with something as simple as a basket full of unopened mail, a junk drawer that has gotten out of control, or a closet full of clothes you (or your children) can no longer wear. The next thing you know there may be piles of clutter everywhere, but there are some things that you can do to help keep your household clutter under control.
Remove It!
The first step to controlling clutter in your home is to remove as much of it as possible. It can be really hard to get and keep your home clean if there is clutter to be found everywhere you turn. A good rule of thumb to removing clutter is that if you haven’t used it in a year, you probably don’t need it. Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean you should toss it, you can always try to sell unnecessary items for a little extra cash.
Donate It!
You know whether or not you have used the ice cream maker or espresso maker very many times since you bought it, but it can be a little harder when it comes to the clothes in your closet. Go ahead and purge any clothes from your closet that you know you can’t or won’t wear or that your kids have outgrown. If they are in good condition be sure to donate them to a homeless shelter or charity instead of just tossing them out, there are a lot of struggling families right now. For the rest of your clothes, turn the hanger around backward until you wear it. The next time you clean your closet out if the hanger has not been turned you know that it is safe to get rid of that clothing item.
Unsubscribe From It!
We have already mentioned that mail can be a big part of household clutter. Unsubscribe from any mailing lists that you no longer need, cancel magazine subscriptions that you don’t read, and develop a system for dealing with your mail as it comes in instead of letting it pile up to deal with it later.
Toss It!
Your kitchen cabinets may be another home for a lot of your household clutter even if you can’t see it behind closed cabinet doors. Is there anything worse than opening the cabinet for a container for your leftovers only to have the whole stack fall out on top of you? Or to get your food in a container that you can’t find the lid for? Go through your kitchen cabinets and toss the containers you don’t have lids for and those that you don’t need, toss out any expired canned goods from your pantry, and consider getting rid of kitchen gadgets that you don’t use often. You might be surprised at how much space it frees up.
When you are removing clutter from your home, don’t forget bathroom cabinets, drawers, and closets. Toss out any old make-up, empty or nearly empty shampoo bottles, towels that have seen better days, and medications that have expired. Don’t flush your medications though, you can take them to your pharmacist and they will dispose of them properly.
Just Do It!
Make sure that you are purging clutter from your home regularly. This can be a spring or fall deep cleaning, or a monthly or quarterly donation to a local charity or shelter that can use it to serve the community. To this end, pick a place in your home to put a donation box so that family members know where they can place items they no longer want to be donated when they stumble across them.
Once you have your household clutter under control make sure that it doesn’t sneak back up on you. Think carefully about whether or not you really need or want things before you bring them into your home, and encourage other family members to be mindful about it too.
