Life is Simpler when You Declutter

If you've ever felt that a great weight was lifted off your shoulders after you finished cleaning something, you probably discovered the joy of decluttering. And you probably noticed the area you've just finished cleaning looks much more appealing and decorative too.

Clutter weighs heavily on our hearts and minds. Letting clutter accumulate is like adding more and more thoughts, worries, concerns, and responsibilities to our lives. When you have a room full of this and that, it just seems as if you have more things in your life to deal with or worry about.

If however, you simply start taking away some or all of that extra clutter, you'll quickly find that you're happier, feeling less stressful, and are more satisfied with your life in general.

Most of us accumulate large amounts of clutter over long periods time though, and it happens slowly enough to not be overly noticeable. Once you've decided to tackle and reduce it though, it becomes readily apparent just how cluttered your home is, and the job feels extremely overwhelming.

Try to remind yourself that all that clutter took a long time to accumulate though, and since it didn't just appear in one day, you don't have to try and clear it all out in one day either. In fact, taking small steps is one of the easiest ways to start reducing clutter in your home, and in your life.

The first step to reducing all that clutter is to choose a section of your home to begin with. Maybe this is an entire room, or maybe it's just one small table in that room. My preference is to start with an area that's been getting on my nerves, and this is usually an area which is used frequently. The living room may be piled with boxes, knick knacks, magazines, and more for instance, and that might be too much to try and tackle in just one day. So start with something smaller and less intimidating instead: The coffee table or TV area for instance.

Grab a trash bag and take it to the area you plan to start decluttering. The goal is to get rid of as much stuff as you can. Old magazines don't need to be kept and piled up for instance. If there's a special picture or article in them that's important for some reason, then just tear that out to put into a scrapbook or file folder, then throw the rest of the magazine away.

Common clutter that needs to be thrown into the trash or recycle bin includes newspapers, magazines, junk mail, old shopping lists and sticky notes, old tv guides, outdated phone books, sales flyers, and anything that's broken, expired, or no longer usable for some reason.

As you're throwing things away, you should also be creating piles of things that have to be kept, or that you want to keep but don't belong where they currently are. If for instance, you have office paperwork sitting on the coffee table, it doesn't belong there. So put it into a pile of things that need to be moved to the office. Maybe you have dishes sitting around on the table too, and those of course need to be moved to the kitchen. Bills and important mail can be moved to a mail station area of your home too - don't worry if you don't have one yet, you'll be setting it up in time.

Once all the trash is picked up, go ahead and move things to their proper locations. Even if this means you're adding clutter to another area of your home, go ahead and do it because you're currently focused on decluttering a different area. You will get to the rest in time.

Put kids toys in their rooms, dishes and snacks in the kitchen, books back on the shelves, and so on. Once you're finished with this step, the only things left in the decluttered area are those which must be there, or those which you want there for decoration.

The coffee table for instance, might be completely empty once you're finished. Or it could have a nice candle centerpiece and the remote control laying on it. Or maybe you have a family scrapbook, photo album, or bible that's displayed there instead. Whatever your personal preferences, that table should now be completely cleaned and decluttered, and looking much prettier than normal. Plus you're feeling some weight lifted, and personal satisfaction with your obvious accomplishment!