According to Joseph Joseph, 96% of people (respondents/those surveyed) feel more positive and motivated after cleaning.
But when it comes time for a clear out, you might find yourself struggling to get rid of your clutter.
Whether homeowner or homemaker, you can feel empowered to decide when it’s the right time to say goodbye to certain items without a sense of sentimental guilt. And your big clean can release some positive endorphins at the same time.
Room by room – set goals for each
You’ll no doubt have a different vision for each room of your home. On one hand, your living room can be a communal space for you and the rest of your family while your study can be a calm and collected environment for you to crack on with your work.
Listing each room and your goals for each of them can help to visually identify items or furniture within them that stand out as deviating from the atmosphere you want to achieve.
Keep, pass on, bin – the categories stage
Once you have an outline for how you want your rooms to shape up, it’s time to move into what we like to call “the categories stage”. This is when you look at each item in the rooms in question and categorise them as one of the following: a necessity, something that can be passed on to a friend or family member, or something to part ways with and bin.
This is the phase where you might have to get brutal with yourself. We’re not saying to chuck family heirlooms in your 240L bin, but does it have to be in your home? If you’ve got kids heading to university or moving into their own place, you can hand it down to them to give them a feeling of home and a connection to family.
Don’t feel restricted to just using these categories and feel free to add others! Instead of sending it to the skip, you could easily recycle or upcycle it if it’s made of a material that could be safely recycled or if you have a project in mind for it!
At the end of the day, they’re just objects. Attaching sentiment to them is fine, but don’t feel guilty if it’s time to chuck some things away! It’s all part of life’s natural cycle.
Don’t forget about wardrobes, bedrooms, and bathrooms
Clutter can build in many different areas of your home, and while you may not think about it, where we keep our day-to-day items can build clutter very quickly. This is especially true in our bedrooms and bathrooms, particularly spare bedrooms which a survey by HIPPO found to be the room with the most clutter from a survey with 30%. This can be thanks to clothing, accessories, and everything in between spilling out from storage spaces like wardrobes and drawers.
Over time, the amount of clothing we have can become overwhelming. Shirts, skirts, and dresses from years gone by that no longer fit and underwear and socks riddled with holes can take up space, and there’s no better way to encourage yourself to replace them than by throwing them away.
Similarly, check your counters and side tables in your rooms. How many near-empty toothpaste tubes, deodorant cans, and toilet roll holders have you let gather on your sides?
Cleaning up after yourself
When you have clutter in your home, especially if you save your big clean to happen once every few months, you’re more than likely going to have to do some cleaning when you’ve begun. This can be due to dust gathering, or simply becoming dirtier over time. This can be especially true of bathrooms, as various toothpastes and soaps can get spilled and crust up over time.
Cleaning your decluttered area can bring an extra sense of peace. You can relax freely knowing that you’ve gotten rid of what you no longer need in there and that the cleaning isn’t hanging over your head.
