How to Declutter Your Home in 15 Minute Time Chunks

I'm the first to admit that we have a cluttered home. It's not that we are hoarders or anything, it's just that we seem to have a lot of paperwork and ephemera that comes into our house and never seems to leave.

How many of us are faced with the same cluttering problem? In an ever eco-conscious world, we now hang on things for recycling, recrafting, or repurposing that used to get tossed in the trash. While there's nothing wrong in hanging on to this stuff, the problem is that over time all this clutter makes it impossible to find the stuff that you DO need. When that happens, it's time to declutter your home.

Steps to decluttering your home.

The biggest problem in decluttering your home is finding a place to start. All that clutter is so overwhelming that often times we don't even known where to begin. Here's how decluttering happens at our house.

Step 1: Set a reasonable goal. Our clutter has gotten so out of control that we recently decided that each of us would devote 15 minutes every night to clearing out a specific area. Working in small chunks of time is quite manageable for our busy family, and doesn't interfere with our day-to-day schedule.

Ideal 15 minute projects that you could try include things like cleaning out a desk (or a drawer), decluttering a bookcase or a pantry shelf, clearing off a coffee table, emptying out a night stand or magazine stand, digging into a storage box or tote, sorting through a closet shelf or a laundry closet, and so on. The idea here is to work just 15 minutes every night decluttering something. Setting a time goal means that you know that the project will come to an end after 15 minutes instead of being a vague, endless undertaking.

Step 2: Be realistic about what to keep. My clutter problem stems from a tendency to keep things that I feel my children might find useful when they are adults. The sad reality (as I've discovered) is that by the time this happened, the stuff was out-of-date, unfashionable, weakened structurally, or simply not needed. Being realistic about what to keep means getting rid of items with a limited shelf time or no foreseeable use.

Step 3: Sort the clutter into 3 piles. What works best for me is to sort as I declutter into three piles. Piles are sorted into keeper pile, the recycle pile, and the donate pile.
~ The keeper pile is the stuff that must be kept. This can be returned back to the cupboard or in the case of stuff that's been misfiled, returned to the proper location.
~ The recycle pile are things like paper products, plastics, glass, metal, magazines, and so on that can be diverted to your recycling bin. Dumping recyclables in the bin should be done immediately following your 15 minute decluttering session.
~ The final pile is the donation pile of items that can be donated to charity. To get them out of the house before anyone changes their minds, I lug them over to the trunk of my car and drop them off at Goodwill the next time I'm downtown.

This three step decluttering system is one example of a simple method for decluttering your home. While it certainly isn't a speedy way, it is thorough and will get your life and home decluttered in a method that isn't intimidating at all.