Free Ideas for Organizing Clutter

Free Ideas for Organizing Clutter

Free Ideas for Organizing Clutter - Your how to guide to clear clutter from your home. How, why and the way forward.

Clutter reduces the size of your home – imagine the more unorganized storage you have, the smaller your home office or lounge becomes. Your room can literally shrink in front of your eyes, how constricting does that feel? When you feel trapped or contained, so does your mind. Clutter happens from our multi-faceted lives, a lack of time, not enough organised storage, our obsession with buying more and emotional attachment. Aim for a clutter free home for mental wellbeing.

1. Change your buying habits

Today, we are obsessed with consumerism. To live a greener lifestyle, it’s time to move away from shopping trips and reprogramme our minds with a more traditional outlook.
• Repair, recondition, repurpose, renew
• Swap or swishing
• Sell or EBay
• Charity, donate, give away, recycle

2. Invest time in organised storage

Planning storage is the most effective way or organising the home. Spending a little time brainstorming and analysing your interior makes life a lot easier in the long run. It’s a process for the whole family to have fun with. Don’t feel confined to ready-made shelving units and cupboards, as using those ‘awkward’ places in the home for made-to-measure storage solutions will create more space. Clever, practical and functional designs are what’s needed.

Free Ideas for Organizing Clutter
Here’s my how to guide:
• Evaluate your existing storage – size, location, function, contents, effectiveness, ease of use.
• Identify areas where you could have more storage e.g. walls, corners, cupboards, awkward spaces.
• Break the home down into zones and tasks and analyse the household dynamic – who uses what at what time of day.
• Each zone will have a few labels e.g. daily use, regular use, seasonal use, once yearly use.
• Each task will have some storage associated with it e.g. ironing, toys, home accounts, magazines, golf clubs, DVDs.
• Brainstorm what extra storage would help streamline the home.
• Decide the best place for storage from your zones & tasks.
• Think variety & diversity e.g. storage trunks with a seat, open shelves, corner units, tall cupboards, low credenza, built in, free standing.
• When you have your new storage plan for all of your belongings, add an extra third.
• Use a container in each room to put clutter in e.g. box or basket – one with a handle if possible
• Make sure every room has a rubbish bin
• Establish a quick 5 minute tidy up at the end of every day
• Don’t fight clutter, accept it and organise it

Emotional associations & patterns

We often put off clearing away clutter, clearing out our wardrobes, packing away boxes or tackling a pile of papers as a way of avoiding something in our lives. When we have a clean, organised and tidy home this is reflected in our state of mind.

We buy more and more these days to keep up with the neighbours, to give ourselves a sense of security and just because it’s a habit. We become attached to everything we own, and often hold onto things unnecessarily as mementos or keepsakes. Emotional attachments to ex partners, happier times and treasured family memories are difficult to let go of. The trouble is, they could be holding us back in life. What we need to look at is why we do so, and how we can take control back. Patterns are not easy to break free from, but with determination and willingness to change there is always a fresh way ahead. Speaking from experience, having a disciplined outlook is the best plan.

Free Ideas for Organizing Clutter
My 2 top tips are to stop buying for the sake of it and have a major clear out every year. Are you bad at clutter hoarding? Be brutal, clean up clutter and make some space! It’s the most refreshing thing you can do.

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