How To Declutter Your House, Room By Room

Bedroom

Your bedroom should be a place of zen and calm without clothes strewn everywhere. Reorganising your wardrobes is the perfect place to start your spring clean and by beginning here you can transition into summer knowing what’s left in your wardrobe is everything you love to wear. But it’s not just clothes that get in the way of your bedroom’s Feng Shui – it’s technology such as laptops and phones. Here’s how to tackle the unnecessary clutter so your bedroom becomes a place of rest and relaxation.
 
Top Tips:

• Work through one category of clothes at a time – socks, underwear, T-shirts, shirts, skirts, shorts, dresses, suits etc. Decide which items you love and use – let go of the rest. Be ruthless. If you find it difficult to decide, pick your five favourites in each category, then use this as your benchmark against which the rest of the clothes in that category have to match up to. 
• Start with a category which you have the least emotional attachment to so you can warm up your ‘decluttering muscles’ – by the time you reach the harder items, you’ll find it easier to make decisions.
• If you are short of space and have items you use less regularly (like skiwear or bulky winter coats), then use vacuum pack storage bags: label them by what’s inside and store them in less accessible places, like under the bed or at the top of the wardrobe. This clears space in your wardrobe for more regularly-used items and keeps lesser-used items protected from moths and damp.
• Decluttering your bedroom includes keeping laptops, iPads and phones turned off in another room at night so you can wind down properly. Remove chargers from your bedroom to resist the temptation to keep your electronics in there. By doing this, you signal to your body that once you lie down, it’s time for rest and nothing else. 
• Create a drawer dedicated specifically to travel – one that contains, for example, travel adaptors, passports and travel-size toiletries – so you have these to hand when packing and don’t have to have that annual panic. This drawer might not be in your bedroom – it might be near to where you store your suitcases, but it’ll come in really handy, particularly if you are packing in a rush for the Easter holidays.

Living Area

After your kitchen, the living area is the place where you spend most of your time. Comfort and calm are key, and while the coffee table seems like a tempting place to drop your Sunday papers and post, as the main area to host your friends, it’s got to stay tidy. Therefore, it’s one of the places that needs the most decluttering.  
 
Top Tips:

• Having decorative ornaments on shelves and surfaces can look lovely, but significantly increase the amount of time you’ll spend dusting. Consider whether you enjoy these being on display or whether you could let go of some you no longer love, simplifying your cleaning routine in the process.
• Take the opportunity to declutter your book collection whilst spring cleaning. With books you’ve enjoyed, consider passing on to a friend or family member that loves to read, so you know your favourite stories have gone to a good home. Of the books you want to keep, set aside a space on a shelf for books that you haven’t yet read but would like to. This makes choosing a new book to read more enjoyable, and if after six months you realise there are books you keep avoiding on that shelf, you may want to let them go.
• Let’s be honest, everyone has a ‘junk drawer’ where items that don’t have an official home get shoved. Instead, try making it a ‘useful drawer’ by getting everything out and throwing away things that are no longer useful. For the remaining items, like batteries, elastic bands, and matches, make an effort to keep like with like and use small boxes to order the contents.
• Ask yourself what purpose each piece of furniture serves and whether any are surplus to requirements. If the piece is useful but you no longer love the way it looks, consider repainting or reupholstering it to give it a new look you do love.
• Do you have electrical wires and chargers scattered all over the place? Bring them together in one place so you can match them up to your appliances and recycle any that are not needed. For the ones you keep, label each one so you know your iPhone cable from your Samsung cable. Coil the cables neatly so as not to damage the insides. Pop a binder clip round it to keep your cables from entangling with each other.

Kitchen

Kitchens are a clutter magnet. Food items tend to gather on kitchen surfaces, making those surfaces harder to clean and prepare food on. By decluttering your cupboards (and the dreaded spice rack) you can create room to store items that normally take up space on your kitchen surfaces, especially those items you want to keep but use less regularly than others.
 
Top Tips:

• Be honest whether you need those larger appliances that clog up surface space and are hard to clean. When was the last time you used your spiralizer or pressure cooker? If you want to keep these appliances but they are rarely used, make space in your cupboards – or on top of them – to put them away.
• Clear your cupboards of expired food and condiments. If you have food that hasn’t expired but you know you’ll never eat, donate it to a food bank (most major supermarkets have a collection box close to their tills) or give it to local neighbours via the Olio app – it’s far better this food goes to someone in need than the bin.
• Prevent yourself from overbuying at the supermarket by making a master grocery list on your phone with all the items you like to have in. When you’re about to go food shopping, check your fridge and cupboards against this list and only mark the items you actually need to buy.
• Tupperware seems to multiply overnight. Match pots with lids and work out how many you need each week for batch cooking/food prep, then let go of the surplus.