Hi, my name is stress, one of the things I like to do is come into people’s life every day, every minute, if I am permitted, even, every second.
I like to appear in diverse ways. I reside in the past, present and the future. I can be positive at a time and negative at another.
I fatten from invading the mind which may affects the emotional and physical wellbeing. I make you tired, lazy, procrastinate and indecisive, hence, cluttering your mind and environment.
Whenever you want to declutter, I make it look impossible to do and the cycle repeats again. This is because decluttering your environment gets rid of me and improves your health, but I do not want that.
This, is an illustration of how stress can interfere with our physical and mental stability, very much like a duel between stress and you; so it’s very important to come to a pact with it and help ourselves overcome.
The easy way to beat stress or well, at least reduce it is by decluttering your environment, your home.
To declutter your home is to find peace of mind. Decluttering your space is to declutter your mind. Let me explain;
Before the first phase of the pandemic, my home was a space for me to relax after every work hour and I would do that without having a second thought.
During the first lockdown, moving forward, I had to work from home, aaargh! This felt like I was about to invade my own privacy but it had to be that way.
My home turned to a larger version of itself with my workspace set aside in my home, this served as more than just a place to relax. It was now more of a multipurpose space for me alone.
Since as at this period, I was staying alone, I could manage my available resources on the mark of starting to work from home and attending to home habits too. You know, exercising, my early morning routines, sitting on my way to work, had to be in my home now coupled with other activities.
This was not the case for only me, as it turned to have become norm for many others also. It started alright, and working from home seemed enjoyable, but at a time, I could not continuously meet up with my home habits very easily anymore and this caused a form of disorganization, distraction between me and my work; I was not concentrating as much as I did when I started because my home was now a mess (I would get tired sitting all day while working with a deadline and this disallows me from decluttering).
At this exact moment, everything that you can read in front of you and see around you is taking up space in your brain, more than that, it is competing for your attention and distracting you from focusing solely on this article, this was exactly my lot.
In short, you need to know how to declutter your home to declutter your mind.
A 2011 study conducted by the Princeton neuroscience institute discovered that “having multiple visual stimuli present within range of one’s view would result in no stimuli competing for neural representation”.
Cluttering my home is at the expense of my peace of mind and focus. When I first learned about decluttering, It was an overwhelming situation of “repetition of cluttering” my home that unearthed it.
I had started decluttering my home before I discovered the word and its meaning. I would clean my home every weekend and trash, give or sell whatever that is causing a clutter in my home of course with a consideration of its usefulness to me.
I kept doing that and I found sort of like a new habit, a new favorite hobby cause it keeps my mind relaxed whenever I declutter my home.
Sometimes, I do not know where to start decluttering and even how to start decluttering when overwhelmed, here is the fact, I start it anyway. Okay, NO, I do not just start from anywhere always.
So, to make things easier, I will give you some decluttering tips on how to declutter your home. It will help you reduce stress and increase space.
However, before we proceed, I will advise that you do not take these tips only for the sake of learning how to declutter, do this also for the benefits of it. Once you understand this clearly, these tips on how to declutter your home will change your life. Shall we?
1. CREATE A CLUTTER CATALOGUE
Decluttering your home can be very tough; it can heighten your stress level from within on to the outside.
Take for an instance, sometimes when I want to declutter, the indecision sets in, I start to wonder about how and where to start decluttering, and then, I sit back and watch the clutters aimlessly without eventually decluttering.
So, I thought and said to myself, hey! Why not create a clutter catalogue to help me easily declutter my home? Hmmm! Interesting! That’s what I will do.
I categorized them into 5; NOTE: Yours can be more than that depending on what makes up your clutter.
Here are the five categories I use and that aids my declutter checklist; (Rubbish, Recyclables, Repairs, Donations, and to be put in the usual storage place).
It is a lot easier and less tasking when you have a visual representation of where you need to get started.
You can use these categories to build a declutter checklist for yourself, and still know how to start decluttering when overwhelmed.
2. START LITTLE
Before I tell you how to declutter your house in one day by starting little, one thing about starting little is the ease it comes with, it’s like the dismantling of a seemingly difficult event, the peace it carries is what accompanies starting little.
For every new hobby and habit I try to pick, if I want to master it and not get tired of doing that over and over again, I make sure I start with taking baby steps. This works all the time for me, all the time.
So, reading articles like this on how to declutter your home is not enough call to action, in fact, it gets bulkier unless you take small steps daily.
I started with 5 minutes everyday, I made sure I declutter one thing from my clutter catalogue not minding which of the categories I choose to declutter (though, I like to do more of decluttering in my kitchen to avoid a stuffy environment when I am cooking).
I practiced this act everyday until it became a normal routine for me and it has boosted my soundness and productivity thus far.
3. KEEP A PAPERLESS HOME OFFICE SPACE
The percentage of American workers delivering from home hit a high of 70%, albeit, with a reducing effect. However, most Americans still prefer to work from home even as the government begins to lift the pandemic restrictions.
From this fact reference, you can imagine how the space you have created gets littered with papers containing jottings, mails etc.
An environment like this will look obscene thereby causing distractions, and affecting your productivity.
I have been maintaining a paperless home office space by scanning and keeping in my drive important documents and shred unnecessary ones.
BONUS: Keeping a paperless environment helps to reduce CO2 (Carbon dioxide) emissions.
4. PLAN YOUR OUTFITS
One of the things I used to do that clutters my home is the littering of clothes in my bed. This occurs when I want to select an outfit for an outing, the difficulty in selecting a matching outfit for the outing consumes me and it pushes me into unhanging almost all my dresses just to select one.
You will agree with me on this (many of us tends to change outfits until the last minute). Everything changed when I started planning my outfit for the week; this made it occur to me how much of my clothes I have not worn for months and that explained a lot.
To help you on how to declutter your home, you have to be honest with yourselves and get rid of clothing you no longer need.
5. REFUSE TO TAKE IN JUNK MAILS
I realized that the junk of mails coming in my letter box were taking so much space in my home. It dawned on me that I do not view these mails, some not more than once, and after I read them, I throw them in a corner in my living room where it occupied a large space.
This was what I used to halt incoming junk mails; Stop junk from entering your home with a “No Junk Mail” sign on your letter box.
Those takeaway menus, politician leaflets and supermarket catalogues all end up in a pile in your living room and take up space in your recycling bin. Stop them from getting into your home and use find your takeaway menus online.
6. KEEP YOUR BATHROOM CLUTTER FREE
On your how to declutter your home checklist, you should not neglect your bathroom, because that is where you wash up, it needs to be well maintained.
When a bathroom is cluttered, it can breed germs easily, sometimes because of the moist environment and that is detrimental to your health.
It does not take much time for me to declutter my bathroom. I check my shelves, my window sill, and shower basin for items that are filling up the space in my bathroom and I remove the ones I have never used or the ones I have exhausted. You can give this a try say, twice in a month.
7. VIEW YOUR HOME AS A FIRST TIME VISITOR
This right here is one of my favorite decluttering tips. Like, I practice this everyday. I do not get to declutter everyday by repeating this routine but, most times it gives me a new impression of how my home looks like and I can just make changes at will.
It is easy to forget what your home looks like to a new visitor. Each day you enter your house, view it as a new visitor and you will enjoy the newness it brings you, you will see the need to declutter your home.
8. SEEK A FRIEND’S HELP
In the process of learning how to declutter your home, you need to know that some items may seem as though you will need them but you don’t actually do.
Invite a friend to your home; it has to be someone close to you (maybe your best friend), someone who gets you.
Then, have that friend go through your home and opine on items to trash, donate or sell. This might come with a bit of confusion (when the friends picks an item to trash, donate or sell and you defend the item, wanting to keep it, then your friend has to agree with your points. If the friend does not agree with your reason, the item has to go).
I have tried this tip twice and it was fun having my friend help me out on this, and it was reciprocated.
9. UTILIZE AVAILABLE SPACES
From the walls to under the stairs, to the garage; just like every part of the Moringa plant is useful, such are these spaces too.
On the wall in my kitchen, I have mounted racks for pots, pans et.al, in my bathroom, a toiletries cabinet, under my stairs are drawers installed to store my umbrella, hoover, gloves, hats, et.al
I suppose you are getting the idea of how to declutter your home already? Be careful though, not to over fill your storage as it may get more cluttered than before.
10. ADOPT A MINIMALIST LIFESTYLE
Decluttering will be frustrating if you don’t adopt a minimalist lifestyle. Check it, after you declutter your home, you may notice you have got too much stuff at home.
This stuff you have at home will keep multiplying until you learn and know how to stop impulse buying. I am very careful with what I buy whenever I go shopping so that I do not buy things that I do not need.
Those “wants” are those things you buy that ends up becoming boosters to the clutters in your home. You may check out the article “9 things I stopped buying to save money”, it will expand your frontiers on how to stop impulse buying.
Regardless of whichever among the decluttering tips you want to start with, the aim is to know how to declutter your home. Choose the one that works for you, but you cannot know which one works until you try. Have you tried any of these decluttering tips before now? Let us know.