3 De-cluttering Tips You Can Use Today Start 2015 with a Clean & Organized Home

Getting organized will help you feel more relaxed and allow you to enjoy your home. The New Year is a natural opportunity to de-clutter and we wanted to share some tips for Venice and Mar Vista residents that will help you make the most of 2015 by helping you start the year with an organized and beautiful home.

Here are 3 De-Cluttering Tips you can put to use immediately!

1. Start Small

Choose a single table, cabinet, or area in your home where you want to start. Writers complain about “writer’s block”, the challenge of the empty page and getting started. For you the challenge is also about getting started, but instead of an empty page you have an overflowing closet, cluttered living room, or mountains of paper. Instead of stressing out about the amount of work and deciding to do nothing you should choose a single space (heck, even a single piece of paper) and work up from there so you can build momentum.

Choose a space that you can organize in 30 minutes or less so that you can see the progress. Using an egg-timer or the stopwatch on your phone can help you stay focused and productive and give you a clearly defined end time.

2. Use Forced Decision Making

The de-cluttering process can go on endlessly if you’re indecisive. Instead of wishy-washy decision making you should set yourself up for rapid choices by labeling four boxes (use paper-bags if you don’t have boxes) and be disciplined about placing any item you pick up in your defined organizing space into one of the 4 boxes.

Label the 4 boxes:

• Keep
• Donate
• Trash
• Relocate to Another Room

Do not let yourself pile things outside of the 4 boxes. Any such pile will delay decision-making and make it easy to get sidetracked. The Relocate to Another Room box is helpful because it keeps you physically located in your organizing space instead of getting distracted by relocating items one at a time. The forced decision making of putting an item into one of the 4 boxes will help you power through the task in a productive manner.

3. Learn to Let Go

The most important, and hardest, part of decluttering is getting comfortable letting go of things you no longer need. We tend to value our stuff because, well, it’s ours! But holding onto things you never or rarely use takes up physical and mental space. Ask yourself the following questions to understand whether the item is really something worth holding onto:

• When is the last time I used this item?
• Do I love it?
• Can it be replaced?

Remember that just because something was a gift, does not mean you have to keep it. Also, if you’re holding onto it because you paid a lot for it, keep in mind that you can’t get that money back and you might be better served selling, donating, or giving the item away. Another tip: if it’s broken just say goodbye to it! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people holding onto old printers, broken TV’s, and clothes with holes in it claiming that eventually they’ll fix it.

Looking for more de-cluttering, organization, and storage tips? Check out www.blog.clutter.io