You’ve set about decluttering your home. Let’s not forget about what to do after you are finished. Here are my easy tricks for Keeping Clutter-Free for the long-haul.
So, I’ve made my way through my clutter. I’ve set up new storage solutions, using bins, totes, and labels. I’ve hauled what feels like tons to the trash and to my local charity. Now what? It’s easy to go back to old habits when life starts getting in the way. But after all that work, I feel an obsessive need to stay in control and clutter-free from here on out. In fact…it’s feeling a lot like a great diet…work really hard and lose a lot of weight. Take your eye off the ball for one minute, and you gain all that weight, and then-some, back again. I cannot let that happen! So, here are my tricks for Keeping Clutter-Free so that it’s easy, and not a chore.
Making it a Habit
Tip #1 Start with a Clean Slate
Starting with decluttering and spring cleaning now gives you a clean slate. Appreciate all the work you’ve done! From this point on, your focus can be on maintaining your beautiful, stress-free, clutter-free space. The biggest, and hardest job is done.
Tip #2 Get the Family Involved
To stay clutter-free, everyone needs to be on board when it comes to maintaining. Hopefully, you had your family help with your store/toss/donate efforts. Celebrate your family success together to reinforce the great work that was done. Positively reinforce your family team, so everyone engages in your new clutter-free lifestyle. Share the responsibility of noticing, and doing something about, an area that’s getting a little chaotic. Remind them this is a team effort.
Tip #3 Have a Place for Everything
The best way to keep up with your clean and orderly home is to have a place for everything, even if that means a catch-all place or bin. Everything should go somewhere – stored away in its designated place, tossed, or donated – otherwise the clutter will build again. Here are four quickies!
- Make a commitment to ditching junk mail the minute it hits, ideally before it even comes into your home (think garage recycle bin).
- Make sure you have enough hangars in your coat closet, or enough hooks in the mudroom, so coats are hung up right away.
- The baking supplies you only use on occasion (think cookie cutters, colored sugars, etc), are in a catch-all bin on the top shelf of your pantry or cabinet.
- The “junk drawer” is neatly organized so you can find the “junk” you need (use a drawer organizer to keep it neat). Pens and pencils are corralled in a spare cup, or inside your desk.
Tip #4 Declutter When You Clean
Cleaning day, or anytime you clean something, is a great time for a declutter double check. If needed, put everything back in its designated place before you clean. It’ll make cleaning so much easier and allows you to keep up with decluttering. I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t want to have to do a total declutter all over again! No sirree!!!
Managing the Forgotten Spaces
Do you have random, unused areas in your home that tend to collect clutter? I certainly do, and they’re worse than the used and cluttered areas!! It’s so easy to put something in an unused or unseen area and forget about it for another day, especially when unexpected guests arrive. Do that often enough, and you’ve got a real mess on your hands…like me! When my husband and I got married and bought our home 20 years ago, we combined two good sized households into one. While we both cleaned out a lot before our move, we still had a “ton” of stuff. So much went into the basement until we could sort through the combined stash. Much of it is still there.
A few years after moving in, we decided to start finishing the basement. Studs, electrical and lighting went in, my office was built…then daughter went off to college and our jobs changed. We didn’t really need the basement finished anymore. A good quantity of materials are still there. Years later, we renovated our kitchen and dining space, areas we do use a lot. Planning to re-use the old cabinetry, it went into the basement. It’s still there, un-re-used.
I share these nightmares because I know I’m not alone. If you happen to live in an area of the country where homes have basements, odds are pretty good you’ve got a nightmare area, too. If you don’t have a basement, I’m guessing you have an attic or garage storage area that gives you agida (heartburn) or you wouldn’t have gotten this far through this post!
Get in the habit of checking the areas you don’t spend a lot of time in. They might be your basement; spare bedrooms, their closets and dressers; attics; under stairs and beds; outdoor sheds; under the deck; or garages and garage attics. It’s not like you need to do a daily sweep, but certainly a seasonal sweep of some sort will help.
The Basement
If you have a basement in your home, without a dedicated living space, it might not get used much. You might have a washer and dryer, and just a bunch of storage. While it’s great to have a lot of available storage, this can easily become a cluttered drop zone. Now is a great time to start going through boxes and clean up the area. Basements tend to be a bit damp. Get yourself some plastic totes for things you absolutely need to keep/store in the basement (think holiday decorations), and label them clearly. Clear out a corner and stack them neatly, labels facing out. Consider building shelving, or buying a shelving unit, so you can keep things off the floor (water damage risk), and keep it neat. Then, commit to NOT putting anything on the floor!
A note on plastic totes – take it from someone who’s dropped totes on herself causing a severe deep tissue bruise (yup, that’s me), keep totes to a manageable size . I know those long and deep ones with the wheels look like a godsend, but they’re unwieldy and there’s a very good chance you’ll pack it way too heavy and never be able to lift it or move it. Be sure you get totes that will stack neatly on top of each other, and not slide around. Get the kind with some sort of locking secured lids so they stay on. Final note, some people aim to color code their totes – red for Christmas, orange for Halloween, etc. If that’s your gig, go for it. But I like a clear tote so I can actually SEE what’s inside.
Your Bedroom Closet
When was the last time you went through your bedroom closet? Not just the front where it might be pretty and organized, but the back or underneath your hanging clothes where you store old shoes and purses you never use, or seasonal clothing you rarely remember to pull out. Take this opportunity to start going through it. If you have limited space, pull out the purses you’re not using, especially dressy clutches, tuck the straps inside, and stack them neatly in a tote. You don’t need them taking up precious closet real estate. You can store the tote in your neatly organized storage area!
Pull out the sparkly heels you only wear for black tie events, and pull out your black-tie attire, too! Corral it in a garment bag and store it in an unused bedroom or the basement. Or, get your hands on one of these babies like I have. They’re awesome and perfect for black-tie storage or off-season storage. Speaking of off-season, tote bin your summer tops in winter, and your winter tops in summer. Only keep handy what you know you will use for layering or an unexpected chilly day. And for the love of Pete, you don’t need a ka-zillion skanky old t-shirts (I’m guilty of this)! Two, maybe three, should suffice for most adults’ dirty work! As pops used to say, “You only wear one at a time anyway!”
Storage Under the Stairs
The area under the stairs is often used for items that don’t get used often, but don’t have another place. Go through this storage area to see if any of these items can be donated or thrown away. Or, use it only for stock-up space. As a kid, I remember my dad building shelves under the basement steps and that became our “fruit cellar”. When my mom did summer canning, her goodies were stored there, not in the kitchen. That’s a great out-of-the-way space for oddball items like that, or perhaps paper products, laundry soap, and the like you buy in bulk but don’t need daily.
Outdoor Spaces
Many outdoor spaces may get used but don’t really get cleaned often. Some folks make a habit of emptying and cleaning the garage every spring. We are not some people! Or maybe you have a back or side yard area, like us, where things get stashed. For us, it’s underneath our elevated deck. Start cleaning and decluttering these areas if they have been used for extra clutter storage.
If you need to use the area under your deck, like us, keep it neat. Make sure what’s under there is there because you need it nearby. I keep my wheelbarrow, garden cart, dog pooper scooper, and a small collection of garden hand tools under our deck. Most of my gardening happens in the backyard, and it’s so much handier to have the tools nearby.
If your shed or garage is cluttered, consider using tool organizers to herd your stuff together. I use a wall-mounted tool organizer for shovels, rakes, hoes, and the like. Plain old hooks on the wall will work, too! I also use an old Craftsman tall tool chest to hold extra garden gloves, garden twine, plant sticks, seeds, hose nozzles, spray bottles, and all the other miscellaneous gardening stuff I use. The big bottom drawer holds extra potting soil so I’m not having to hoist the big bag all the time!
My Favorite Tools
Here are my two favorite tools for getting decluttered and organized, and keeping my storage spaces neat inside my home:
And, my favorite tools for organizing outside my home. I also use an old mailbox under the deck to hold handtools:
(Note that if you click through these images and make a purchase, as an Amazon affiliate member, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you)
There you have it, my tricks for Keeping Clutter-Free. I hope you find them helpful. I’d love to hear what else you do to stay clutter-free. Comment below!
