You might not realize this but a cluttered home can influence your mental health.
There comes a time when all those boxes of items you don’t need start haunting you. Because often, they are not even in boxes. Bills, mail and other paper lay unsorted in some drawer. Clothes and shoes are all over your wardrobe even though you are wearing only a few T-shirts that you really like or you wear the shoes that are comfy.
If you ever feel like you spend too much time organizing and cleaning your home, here’s how to make your like easier.
First of all, make a simple plan. It’s very important to plan ahead in order to know what will go where and what will go out forever.
Second, rate your clutter. Make sure that you know the places in your home that get you most stressed and that you spend the most time cleaning. For example, examine the amount of dishes you are using in your kitchen when preparing meals on daily basis. If you find that there is stuff that’s standing around most of the time without being use – do something about it. Pack it away or give it away altogether.
Third, make sure that you give complete focus to one room or space at a time. You don’t want to be running around the place trying to do everything at once. This will save your time and energy.
Some more suggestions include:
Clean off all flat surfaces. Your kitchen table, coffee table, any table! Because you know that you don’t need soooo many stuff lying around.
The 12-12-12 Challenge. Locate 12 items you own but you want to throw away, 12 items that you wish to donate, and 12 items to be returned to their proper home. That makes it 36 things! If you are married, like me, and your wife does the same that makes it 72. You see the way this is heading…
The 80/20 rule: When it comes to clothing, we generally only wear 20 percent of the clothes we own 80 percent of the time. This rule tends to hold true for other things as well, such as video games, computer parts, books, DVDs, toys and more. Your mission is to get rid of the things you don’t use 80 percent of the time.
Project 333. Courtney Carver invented Project 333 to challenge people to wear only 33 articles of clothing for 3 months. If 33 articles of clothing seem too little, adjust the rules as you need by picking a new number. The important thing is to challenge yourself to live with less and see what you learn from the experiment. But, I’m not sure do the socks and underwear count.
Remove Decoration. If you are like my grandma, you probably have a thousand small figurines all around your place. And you keep convincing yourself and other people it looks good. It doesn’t! No one likes the mix of so many colors and the dust those things are gathering. That’s also the case with too many picture frames, plants and cables.
Also check The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Decluttering Your Home
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