Clutter can wreak havoc in a household. It can turn even the easiest of tasks into monumental chores, and causes unnecessary stress. We live with clutter, and even make excuses for it. We play the clutter shuffle game, moving the mess from one spot to another, vowing to someday get organized.

“I might need that someday! I’m going to use it eventually. Someday these clothes will come back into style. It just needs to be fixed.” These are all common pack rat excuses for why they cannot throw anything out. Clutter can start out as a small problem, a pile of magazines, or a messy basement, but it grows over time until it is an intolerable situation.

Time To Clean House!

Taking control of the clutter in your life can seem like a daunting task. The thought of organizing your whole house, or even one room, can seem overwhelming. Clutter accumulates gradually over time, and can be conquered in the same way, if you stay committed to the task at hand.

First, you need to face the reality that clutter is not adding anything to your life. In fact, it is probably taking things away from your life. Attics that are used to store clutter can be put to better use as a loft that can be used as an everyday escape room, or a guest room. Basements are much better when used as rec rooms, rather than “wreck” rooms, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to actually use your garage to park your car in?

Clutter Means Guaranteed Loss

Clutter is a sure way to guarantee the loss of time, space, money and even some of the clutter itself! Once you have allowed clutter to take control of your life, it is impossible to keep track of things. The car keys that you just put down, or the important school paper that little Johnny needs signed seem to disappear like socks in the dryer, being swallowed up by the black hole of clutter in your house. How much time a day do you spend searching for items through the piles of clutter around your house?

Clutter also needs cleaning. On a beautiful spring day, clutter lovers are stuck inside the house dusting, wiping and scrubbing their clutter, when they could be outside enjoying the sunshine!

Stored items often get chewed by mice, mildewed, rusty, or ruined by heavier clutter being stored on top of it. Isn’t it nice to know that you are wasting space storing unusable items and materials for mice to make their nests in your house with?

Where Do I Start?

There are several different methods that you can use to conquer the clutter in your life and have the organized home that you have dreamed of. You should start by organizing small things first, such as a junk drawer or a dresser. These tasks can be easily accomplished in a small amount of time, and will help you get started on the larger jobs at hand.

When going through items, have 3 boxes, or bags on hand. These will become your Keep, Donate, and Toss piles. You can mark the boxes if you like, to make the job go a little faster.

Use the two-second rule when going through items. This means that when you pick an item up, you have two-seconds to decide what pile it will go into. Don’t spend time thinking about what you may be able to do with it someday. If you were really going to use it for something, you would have done so already.

Conquering Paper Clutter

Paper clutter is something that affects almost everyone. Whether it is a pile of bills, junk mail, catalogs or magazines, paper seems like it multiplies when we leave the room. There is one word to remember when sorting through paper clutter… FAT. This doesn’t mean that you should snack on fatty foods when going through your paper clutter. It is an acronym for the words File, Act and Toss. All of the paper clutter you have accumulated can be conquered by filing it, acting on it, or tossing it away.

You can stop junk mail from accumulating by keeping a small garbage can in the area that you enter your house, or by throwing it away at the post office if your mail is delivered to a PO Box.

Catalogs shouldn’t be saved for one or two items. Most of the companies that send out catalogs have websites. You can tear off the web site information from your catalogs, store them in a small box by your computer, and when you have the spare time, you can browse through items online.

Magazines are also often saved for one or two articles. Cut out the pages of interest to you, and store them in file folders for future reading or reference. You will be amazed when you cut down your whole stack of magazines into one folder full of papers that are relevant to you.

Business cards and phone numbers that have been scribbled down on tiny pieces of paper and napkins should be immediately transferred into your address book, or rolodex. A great way of storing phone numbers is to purchase an index card file box. Even if you don’t have the time to copy the contact information onto index cards immediately, they can be stored in the index file box until you can do so. This will eliminate the need to search all over for that matchbook that has the information of an important business contact on it!

Fifteen A Day Method

Conquering the clutter in your life can take some time, but you can do it! Using a kitchen timer, spend fifteen minutes a day in each room of your house. Do you regular cleaning first, and then use the extra 5 or 10 minutes to declutter something in that room. Hearing the ticking of the clock can be a great motivator! It is almost like playing a game of beat the clock, and it may help you move faster than normal. Before you know it, you’re house will not only be clean everyday, but rid of clutter as well!

A Room A Weekend Method

Using the Fifteen A Day method usually doesn’t work well in cases of extreme clutter. If walking through your house feels like competing in an obstacle course race, you are probably dealing with a case of extreme clutter. It may only be one room of your house, the one that grew from a junk drawer into a junk room, or perhaps it is your basement or garage. In any case, large amounts of clutter should be dealt with at one time.

Set aside 2 or 3 days that you can totally devote to decluttering a room. The best way to go through this type of clutter is to get a bunch of boxes, pack the entire contents of the room into them, and completely remove all of the items from the specific room that you are decluttering. This allows you to go through every item that has been cluttering that space.

Having the entire room cleared out also allows you the opportunity to paint, or even just give it a through cleaning. It is the perfect time to shampoo the carpets as well. Take the time to clean the room, and when you return the items that you are keeping to the space, do it in an organized fashion. When you are finished, and you look into the room and see a beautiful, clean and organized space, it will give you the incentive that you need to keep it clean, and start decluttering other rooms of your home.

The Fix It Pile

Many of the items that cause clutter in our lives are items that we are saving because they need to be fixed. When you are going through the decluttering process, it is almost inevitable that you will come across items that are broken, but you just can’t part with them. This can be a difficult choice. If these items were that important to you, you surely would have fixed them already, or would have had them repaired by a professional. Think of the reasons why you haven’t done so, and then consider if you really still cannot let go of the item.

Create a fix-it pile for the items that you insist on keeping, but give yourself a time limit in which you will complete the necessary repairs on the items. It can be a week or two, or even a month, but if that time passes and you have not yet fixed the item, get rid of it.

When you bring home your latest find, and it needs to be repaired, mark it with an “expiration date”. If you have chosen your fix-it time period to be one month, place a piece of masking tape on the item and write the date it will be one month from the time you brought the item home on it.

Items that need to be repaired by a professional should be taken out and placed directly in your car so you can drop them off at the fix-it shop when you are out running errands.

Other Helpful Ideas For Clutter Busting

If you plan on having a garage sale rather than directly donating items that you are getting rid of, schedule a pick up time with a local thrift store that is an hour after your garage sale will be over. This eliminates the temptation to invite some of the clutter that you didn’t sell back into your home.

If you plan on giving specific items away to family or friends, place them in marked bags and load them immediately into your car for delivery.

Hats, scarves, gloves, and other warm winter items that have been outgrown can be dropped off at your local school. They come in handy when a child has forgotten theirs at home and playtime is outside on a cold day.

Books can be donated to your local library, but campgrounds, nursing homes and hospitals can also use books for their library collections.

Art supplies can be donated to scout troops, and yarn, fabric or other sewing supplies can be donated to a local craft guild. Many women and men that are involved in craft guilds work on charity projects each year.

Say Goodbye To The Clutter Bug

Keep up on the decluttering process! Schedule routine clutter busting sessions. This will help you continue your fight against clutter.

Find a place to keep everything, and make sure that everything gets put back into its place. Taking a few minutes of your time to return items to where they came from can save you hours of decluttering time in the future.

Once you have realized all of the advantages that have been added to your life by decreasing the clutter in it, chances are you will say goodbye to the clutterbug forever.