Calm and professional advice about how to declutter. When there’s just too much stuff at home or at work; when you’re downsizing; when you’ve been bereaved or your life has changed in other ways. Tips and tricks to help you when you feel overwhelmed.
Do you have room to breathe? Country living doesn’t stop many of us from being busy, busy, busy and stressed, stressed, stressed.* We don’t smell the roses, let alone take time for friends and family or go for walks across the fields, on the beach or in the mountains.
If you declutter and simplify your home, would it really help and make your life easier?
Yes.
In a word, yes.
And it might do a few other things too.
[* It’s the same for town and city living, of course.]
Declutter and simplify and you’ll have more time
Having time is one of the greatest luxuries today. It’s become a precious commodity and it flies, whether you’re having fun or not.
When you’ve simplified your house a little or a lot, you’ll have time for other things. You’ll be able to spend time on things you want to do, without being in a perpetual rush. You might even have time for a big rush that you won’t forget at Rib Ride or Zip World!
You’ll be able to just get to the beach or out for a walk without forgetting something – dog lead, keys, phone.
And the day-to-day routine of (select and add as appropriate) animals, garden, school, shopping, work and perhaps hospital visits will be simply easier. Easier sounds good to me.
You’ll feel much better
Like many people who’ve decluttered and simplified their home, you’ll feel so much better. This is what they say.
I feel more in control of my own life now.
I feel calmer. I’m not so stressed.
The house is cleaner because there isn’t so much stuff.
I’ve saved money because I don’t buy duplicates any more. I know where everything is. And I’ve found money too!
I enjoy what I’ve got because I can actually see it clearly now.
Declutter and simplify and you’ll have more space and more choice
When you’ve decluttered, there’s going to be less mess and more space. How wonderful to be able to find what you want!
And, strangely, having fewer things seems to offer more choice. That’s more choice in what you do with your time, your money, your life!
If things aren’t going right for you, don’t add things. Instead of adding things, you could try taking things away. People say that this helps them to focus on what’s really important.
You’re convinced? What next?
It is worthwhile to take the time to declutter and simplify your home. Or, indeed, anywhere you live.
Five reasons it’s worth paying a professional organiser and declutterer?
But I should be able to do it myself!
Well, maybe, but so often things at home and at work seem to conspire to get in the way.
It can be worth paying a professional organiser and declutterer like Uncluttered Wales to work with you. Together, you’ll get your job done – making a bit of space, downsizing, organising or whatever!
So here are five reasons a professional organiser in your life is well worthwhile.
You’ll be supported as you make a start and have company as we work together
Reason 1 – Getting started is often the hardest step to take and it’s very common to get stuck before you begin. A professional organiser will help you get the ball rolling.
Stuff! We understand how easily it can build up. And we understand how overwhelming it can be to sort through it.
We’ll talk about what you want to achieve and how to do it. Then we’ll make a start.
Getting the ball rolling
Reason 2 – You’ll have friendly and non-judgmental company and support as we work together.
It’s completely confidential.
We know that decluttering and organising can be hard emotional work. There may be difficult decisions to take. That’s why we’ll make sure that you’re comfortable with what we’re suggesting.
You’ll make good progress
Reason 3 – Distractions are tempting but a professional organiser will keep the work focussed and on track. So we’ll make good progress in our session. Another pair of hands helps too.
Paying a professional organiser is an investment
Reason 4 – A member of the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers, like Uncluttered Wales, is verified, insured and registered for data protection. APDO members are professional and follow industry standards.
Reason 5 – Look on a professional organiser’s assistance as an investment in your life.
Whatever your aim, within a very short space of time you’ll have moved much closer to where you want to be.
Working together
It’s worth thinking about
You’ll start with a plan. You’ll make good progress and reach your goal (or move a long way towards it). And it will be a friendly and supportive process.
A professional organiser is certainly worth thinking about.
Oh, yes, we’re into autumn now. The mornings are cooler – and the nights too! Soon the clocks will be going back. A spot of autumn decluttering and organising is well worth doing to get yourself straight for whatever comes along next. That’s because:
we’ll be spending more time indoors now and we need space
the weather will be much more changeable and
you’re going to need more clothes to hand – coats, hats, scarves, brollies and the rest
it’s going to be darker
the busy festive time is coming up later in the year and you’ll need the room.
Let’s be organised and prepared so we can enjoy the autumn and handle what it throws at us. This feels good.
Autumn weather can be lovely, so get out and enjoy it when you can! This feels good too.
Autumn decluttering – put things away
It’s really worthwhile putting away your summer and holiday things before you get your autumn and winter stuff out. Put these things away and you’ll have more space.
What am I talking about here? Well, clothes, for starters.
Although I wore a sleeveless top last week I’m pretty certain that I won’t be wearing it again this year. Give the summer and holiday clothes a wash and put them away – except that now is a good opportunity for a mini declutter. Those clothes that didn’t work this year are unlikely to work next year. Recycle or rehome them.
Clean your garden furniture and get it under cover so it doesn’t deteriorate, doesn’t look a mess and is ready to go when the warmer weather returns. Bonus points for cleaning the barbecue.
Clear up the outside toys. Once again, a bit of decluttering doesn’t go amiss here. If your children have outgrown toys you could pass them on. You’ll have that warm feeling from helping someone else. If some toys don’t work any more or are dangerous, then it’s time for them to go. Feel good for thinking about safety.
Get autumn and winter things out
Get out your winter clothes and check them over. Remember your hats, gloves and scarves, your brollies and your boots.
Find your torch and check the batteries (unless it’s a wind-up one, of course).
Break out the blankets for those draughty corners that almost every house seems to have. Mmm, cosy.
Autumn decluttering – tidy up inside and outside
Tidy up and you’ll have more mental space. Definitely.
It’s so much easier when there’s a place for everything. If you find something without its own place, try to give it a home. You know, somewhere sensible.
A little autumn tidying up in the garden will make an immediate difference, and it will really lift your spirits in bad weather.
Look ahead a little and make some preparations
Look ahead to the festive season and prepare a little. A bit of decluttering and preparation now means you won’t feel so swamped and overwhelmed, come December.
Look even further ahead to the spring. It is coming! Everyone loves spring-flowering bulbs so plant yours now.
You probably don’t have much time to read this so here are the basics about decluttering and organising kids’ clothes and toys.
Involve the children from the very beginning.
Give everything a home.
Label that home if necessary.
Reset (aka tidy up) every evening.
Now read on.
Give those piles of clothes a home
Drawers are a good place for clothes. Different ones for tops, bottoms, underwear, socks. You could label the drawers if that helps. Children like sorting so get them involved them.
Folded clothes take up less space. Take two or three deep breaths – not strictly necessary but it focuses your attention. Shake out each piece and fold it. It doesn’t have to be very very neat.
Outgrown clothes – put them in their new home, whether you’re keeping them for the next child, or passing them on to a friend, or giving them to charity. It’s the same routine. Shake out clean clothes, fold and put them in their new home. It could be:
• A big transparent box in the loft, labelled with something that makes sense to you. Trousers and tops 4-5 yrs. Wet weather + skiing 8-10 yrs. Something like that.
• A black bag for passing on to a friend or charity. Label it! You don’t want it going out with the rubbish.
Talk to your kids from the beginning about passing clothes on to other people. Perhaps clothes are already passed on them. ‘Passing clothes on’ is so much nicer than ‘getting rid of them’! You’ll all have a warm feeling knowing that your clothes are going to a good home and someone else (your cousin, a friend, a child you’ve never met) will enjoy wearing them. And it’s the same with toys.
Line up shoes in pairs
Categorise and curate toys and books
Broad categories help a lot so you don’t waste time micro-sorting when you’re tidying up. Books, puzzles, building blocks, cuddly toys – that kind of thing.
Get your children (however small) involved in deciding categories that fit in with how they play. They’ll feel a sense of ownership and that will pay off further down the line.
Some kids have so many toys they become overwhelmed. And so does the room or the house. Talk to them about putting some toys away for a while and bringing others out. Rotate them.
Just like clothes, chat about passing outgrown toys on to other children who might like to play with them. Like I said, you all get a warm feeling.
Give toys and books an easy place to call home
Kids get older and their interests change so think about storage that will still work in a few years. And you might like to label where things go.
Bookshelves are brilliant for books (obviously) but are also good for toys, clothes and other things.
Open-topped boxes work well as it’s easy to fling things in when you’re tidying up. They’re not hard to find or you could make your own like this repurposed box below.
Janka’s toys
Cube storage looks neat.
Wall-hung storage keeps things off the floor.
Dual-purpose furniture, such as beds with drawers, saves space.
Routine is your friend with kids’ clothes and toys
Have a routine where you and your child tidy up regularly at the end of every day. A five minute burst is quite doable for kids and you can get a lot done in that time.
Have you ever trodden on a plastic dinosaur in bare feet?
Get a good thing going
A good system will go a long way towards keeping things going through the summer holidays and beyond.
Paperwork is the single most annoying thing in most people’s homes. In this post I’m going to tell you how to be a paper warrior and to keep it simple. We’ll cover stopping paper and paperwork getting into the house, keeping it all in one place and taking immediate action, and dealing with it once a week. We’ll also look at filing, and emergency action when it’s all got out of hand.
Pile of mail. Thanks to Charles Williams (CC BY 2.0).
Paper and paperwork? It’s a force of nature. It’s often unrequested, and it gets dropped and forgotten. It ends up in piles and heaps all over the house and attracts more clutter as it goes. We’re talking about forms to sign, magazines, junk mail, bills, catalogues, newsletters, newspapers, letters, postcards, lottery tickets, raffle tickets … And all the rest.
Yes, paperwork when it’s out of control is annoying. And piles of paper are the thing we notice most often in other homes – long before dusty corners or unwashed mugs and plates.
What’s more, paper and paperwork when it’s out of control is very unrestful. That’s because it’s unfinished business. How can anyone relax with unfinished business about? They can’t.
What a long way from the paperless paradise we heard about a few years ago. Time to be a paper warrior!
Be a paper warrior and be strategic
Take control. This is the only way to prevent paperwork becoming paper clutter.
1. Stop as much paper and paperwork as possible from getting into the house.
2. Put all the paperwork that does make it inside in one place. Deal with as much as you can immediately. Put the rest in your in tray.
3. Set a regular time to deal with your in tray.
4. Have a simple filing system and use it.
1. How to stop paperwork getting into the house
Prevent junk mail
You can stop quite a bit of junk mail from getting through your letterbox by registering with these four organisations:
Mail Preference Service – a service funded by the direct mail industry to remove consumers’ names and home addresses in the UK from lists used by the industry.
Royal Mail Door-to-Door – opt-out form. (Be aware that registering to opt out means that you will not receive leaflets from central and local government and other public bodies. This includes unaddressed voting and election material, and information about local recycling and so on.)
Review and reconsider
Review your subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. If you don’t read them then it’s time to stop them coming through the letterbox. You could consider a digital subscription.
Reconsider any magazines you buy in shops and from newsstands. Are they one-off or regular purchases? Once again, do you read them?
Manage your ‘paper and paperwork’ online
This is a good idea but, of course, it can generate more email. (Keeping that under control is a story for another day!)
Online, you can, for example:
manage your bank and other financial accounts
pay your council tax through a direct debit
manage your utility meter readings and bills
read magazines and newspapers
keep a ‘look book’ for design projects on Pinterest.
2. Keep all paperwork in one place and, if you can, deal with it immediately
All paperwork in one place
This will stop it from going walkabout in the house. Choose a place and use it. It doesn’t matter what you call it – ‘command centre’, ‘landing pad’, ‘my desk’ – put all your paperwork here and do that consistently.
The bridge, the nerve centre of a tugboat
Deal immediately with as much paper and paperwork as you can
This takes away paperwork’s power to clog up your head with unfinished business.
Recycle immediately – junk mail flyers, unwanted catalogues, takeaway menus, other adverts, free directories, spare envelopes etc etc etc.
Shred immediately – charity request letters and other junk mail with your name and address on.
Open letters (I use an old vegetable knife to do this quickly and easily). Recycle or shred the envelopes and anything else you can.
Do what you can straightaway. Then it’s done and out of the way and out of your head! Sign school permission slips and reply to invitations, send money to school or other places. Note any important dates. Once again, recycle or shred anything you can.
Put the rest in your in tray. This will probably be paperwork to think about, file, scan and so on. (By the way, you don’t have to use a tray. I like using one because it keeps things straight and I know I’m going to go through it at the end of the week. For some people it means that things get buried. Choose what makes sense to you.)
You can use whatever comes to hand as an in tray. Some people use this kind of paper tray. Some people use a cardboard box.
3. Set a regular time to deal with your in tray
Every successful paper warrior I’ve met sets a regular time to deal with their paperwork. It’s usually once a week and it becomes a habit. They focus on their in tray and whisk through it, quickly and effectively.
Work through your in tray.
Sort through it. I put similar things together so I’m dealing with them all at the same time and I don’t have to change gear.
Read paperwork.
Pay bills.
Reconcile accounts.
Write letters and cards.
Take action on anything else that requires your attention.
Recycle or shred what you can.
File what’s completed.
Some paperwork will need more information before you can deal with it. Other papers you may be undecided about. Put those back into the in tray for next time.
4. Your filing system
Know what paperwork you need to keep and for how long.
Have a filing system. Keep it simple.
Only file what you need.
Neat and tidy files make it easy to find paperwork again but you probably don’t need to keep as much paperwork as this …
What you need to keep
There are some papers to keep because they are essential and other papers to keep because they may make life much easier for you in the future.
Papers that are essential – for example, birth and marriage certificates, insurance policies, examination certificates.
Other papers to keep (and this depends on you and your circumstances) – for example, school reports, current passports, business documents, some financial documents.
Filing system
The main thing here is to make it easy for yourself, so choose a system that will be easy to use! You want to be able to file paperwork quickly and without fuss – and to find things again quickly and without fuss. Depending on your circumstances, you could choose a filing cabinet, a concertina file, a banker’s box (these are the right size for files or folders) or other boxes.
Thanks to Hiro (in the banker’s box) and Mitch Barrie for this image. CC BY-SA 2.0
Set up simple main categories that make sense to you, and label each folder or file accordingly. You could have one for each person in the house, each animal in the house, bank and other financial institutions, health, and business, for example. And each main category can be divided into sub-categories, if necessary.
5. Emergency action
This is for when your house is awash with a sea of paper. Or perhaps it’s the house of someone who is ill or has recently died. Emergency action is required.
Walk through each room and collect all the paper and paperwork. Put it into a bag or box.
Find a space where you can sort it. Sort all the paper and paperwork into three piles:
Anything you need to keep. You can get to this later.
To shred. That’s unwanted paperwork with names, addresses or financial details.
Recycling. That’s everything else.
Good luck with decluttering and organising, Paper Warriors!
This post is a bit of fun about decluttering and signs of the Zodiac but just might offer some insights …
Aries 21 March – 19 April
Aries, you know how enthusiastic, optimistic and active you are but sometimes your energy is scattered in different directions. When you’re decluttering, turn off your phone, stay centred and focus focus focus.
Taurus 20 April – 20 May
Taurus, you don’t like change, and some call you stubborn, but you can be practical and reasonable in difficult situations. You need to be surrounded by love and beauty. Looking promising for decluttering and organising your home.
Gemini 21 May – 20 June
Gemini, you have so many things going on that you don’t always have time to plan or be organised. It’s also not unknown for you to be indecisive and procrastinate. But you are so enthusiastic that decluttering will always be fun!
Decluttering and signs of the Zodiac – the second quarter of the astrological year
Cancer 21 June – 22 July
You’re the most emotional sign of the whole Zodiac, Cancer, and very attached to your home and relationships. If you have to organise or declutter sentimental items after a bereavement or at other times, then it may be hard going.
Leo 23 July – 22 August
Leo people, you are warm, big-hearted and love to be in the limelight. Clothes and accessories are all part of that and, as you guard your possessions closely, there could be rather a lot of clothes in the wardrobe!
Virgo 23 August – 22 September
Virgo, you are organised, prepared and a good problem solver. Does that mean you’ve got too much put by ‘just in case’? (Full disclosure: Uncluttered is a Virgo.)
Decluttering and signs of the Zodiac – the third quarter of the astrological year
Libra 23 September – 22 October
Libra, it’s no secret that you seek balance and love beauty, harmony and peace. You sometimes find it difficult to make a decision, though, and that can lead to stress. Focus on beauty when you’re decluttering.
Scorpio 23 October – 21 November
Scorpio, you know what you want and you go for it. If you’ve decided to sort out your stuff then it’s going to be pretty straightforward. Put in the time, get the job done and move on to the next thing.
Sagittarius 22 November – 21 December
Sagittarius, you prefer leave the past in the past and to focus on things that are the most important here and now. But are you decluttering as you go? Or do you just push stuff to the back of the cupboard?
Decluttering and signs of the Zodiac – the final quarter of the astrological year
Capricorn 22 December – 19 January
Capricorn, you like to be in charge of your own environment and you’re pretty organised so you probably declutter your own space as a matter of course. It is possible to overdo decluttering. I’ve known a Capricorn buy things back from the charity shop!
Aquarius 20 January – 18 February
Aquarius, you don’t like monotony and so you can be a bit unpredictable and inconsistent. Home organisation depends a lot on your mood. You’re very sociable, though, so at least declutter so your guests have somewhere to sit!
Pisces 19 February – 20 March
Pisceans! You sweet, kind idealists. Perfection may be a little way off (as it is for all of us) but you’ll make progress with decluttering one step at a time.
Can you find a spare 10 minutes in your day? Then you can declutter or tidy somewhere in your home, quickly and easily. This post lists 10 places you can declutter in just 10 minutes.
A quick tidy up is simple and makes a big difference. Take 10 minutes to clear the decks and stop clutter building up. Set the timer and work through each room, clearing the surfaces and putting stuff where it should go – junk mail in the recycling, clothes in the laundry basket, crockery in the sink or dishwasher. You can get quite a bit done in 10 minutes and you’ll feel much better about how things look.
Places you can declutter in the bathroom
Declutter those small bottles of bubble bath, hand and body lotion and soap from hotels where you’ve stayed. Yes, they remind you of holidays past but you’ve probably got photos. Toiletries do go off, you know, and they also collect dust and grime in the bathroom. Have a clean sweep. You deserve it!
Do you actually like all those mugs you’ve got in your cupboard? Are there simply too many of them? Are there some that you never, ever use because they’re chipped or downright embarrassing? Wave bye-bye to mugs you don’t like and say hello to space in the kitchen.
Photo credit: Ewen Roberts (CC BY 2.0)
Herbs and spices don’t last forever, you know, and fresh ones make your food taste so much better than stale ones. Go through your collection and throw away those with little or no smell, and those that are past their best by or use by date. Invest in new herbs and spices and taste the difference!
If you haven’t used those small packets of sugar and condiments from takeaways by now, then you probably don’t need them. Fish them out, chuck them in the bin and wipe the shelf or drawer clean. Trust me, you aren’t going to miss your mini soy sauce collection.
More places you can declutter quickly
Let’s face it: you don’t really need those old biros, bits of crayon, broken pencils and feeble felt pens. Crank up the music, sit down at the table with some scrap paper and find out what works and what doesn’t. Tip: include those pencils that will never sharpen properly because their lead is broken all the way down.
Photo credit: stu_spivack (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Is there any house without a bag of bags, often bags for life? Probably very few. Use the bags for your charity shop donations or just hand them straight over to smaller local charity shops which don’t have their own branded bags.
Declutter the bedside table so you can find things in the dark without spilling your glass of water. Give the table a dust and polish and you’ll have a much better night’s sleep.
If you love growing plants, as I do, your collection of plant pots seems to grow as well and soon becomes clutter. Luckily, more and more garden centres are recycling them. Get rid of pots which are broken, very small or an odd size or shape.
Sometimes a theme emerges from Uncluttered’s professional organising and decluttering work. Recently, it’s been cables and chargers. There have been bags, boxes and drawers of tangled cables in every home and office I’ve visited. And that’s not to mention all the loose ones lolling in corners and trailing from any surface you care to mention. And the earbuds and headphones, of course.
Photo credit: Juhan Sonin (CC BY 2.0)
Different cables and their connectors
Technology continues to race ahead, leaving some devices high and dry and others deeply unfashionable. We’re talking about phones, tablets, laptops, other computers, printers, radios, televisions, videos, cameras, fitness trackers, e-readers, games consoles, bike lights …
They’ve all got cables, connectors and possibly chargers. There are the networking cables like coaxial, ethernet, HDMI, and the USB cables and all their different connectors. Somewhere you’ve probably got cables and chargers you don’t use but that you’re keeping, just in case. It’s time to sort them out.
How to declutter and recycle cables
First of all, make sure that all the working devices in the house have the necessary cables. Check with everyone else. Remember that not all new devices come with cables or a plug so some cables have to do double duty or even more.
Next, discard cables and chargers that don’t work. And discard broken headphones while you’re about it.
Then, discard cables that don’t connect to any working device. And discard non-working devices while you’re about it.
Finally, reduce the number of similar cables if you can, but make sure that there are still enough for all the personal devices in the household. This should help to avoid tension and squabbles about recharging.
Label each cable with a sticky label or masking tape.
Then wind or fold the cables loosely. You could secure them with elastic bands, wire, ribbon, string or velcro cable ties.
A further step, if you want to be very neat, is to put each one (or each type) into freezer bags, old toilet or kitchen roll tubes, or old sunglasses cases. You could also consider a cable organiser or electronics accessories case.
Photo credit: Tim Walker (CC BY 2.0)
Where to store the cables and chargers
Where do you store your labelled and neatly rolled cables and connectors? It boils down to:
with the device
near the place you charge the device
in a central location.
It could be a basket, a drawer, slung over a kitchen roll holder or in a box with a lid. At the end of the day, somewhere that makes sense to you is the best place.
This post is about weeding books. It’s contentious, I know, but there are times when you have to do it. Let’s talk about it.
A few points about books
For me, books are not clutter. They pass on human knowledge and experience and develop ideas. They help to stock the mind. Whether fiction or non-fiction, books take you beyond the here and now.
A personal collection is just that: personal. Built up over years, it reflects your own particular interests and, to some extent, yourself. Judging by the furore that greeted Marie Kondo’s apparent pronouncement that you should have fewer than 30 books in your home, there are a lot of book lovers out there. And for that we should be glad!
One of the times when weeding books becomes necessary – and sometimes essential – is when space runs out. This is when the shelves are full and there are piles of books everywhere. You might find it difficult to move about or to sit down.
Another common time to weed is when you move. Perhaps you’re moving into a smaller home and there simply isn’t the room for all your books. Perhaps you are moving into an existing household or setting up a new home with someone else, and you want to bring your collections of books together.
Weeding books gives you …
I’ll offer you five possibilities and, of course, there are more.
Space on the shelves or the floor – don’t underrate it!
A look in the mirror, which may not always be pleasing or flattering. Be prepared for this.
Great joy on finding books once again – this can be wonderful.
Great shock on finding boring or embarrassing books.
Pause for thought and reminiscence on finding books associated with something in your life, far away and long ago.
Photo by Philippe Donn from Pexels
Questions to help you weed
How obvious to say that your book collection is made up of individual books! Yet being aware of this is the way to weed. The journey starts with a single step: looking at a single volume.
Questions to have in mind as you are weeding books:
Is this book a duplicate?
Is it out of date? Learning moves on. To encourage you, I recently let the 1999 encyclopaedia with the broken spine go.
Do I feel I ought to read this book but I don’t want to? Most of us probably have books like this.
Do I have this book because someone else liked it or wanted me to read it? If I don’t like it or don’t want to read it, then it’s time for it to go.
Is this a book that was so-so and I’ll never read again? Or even a book that was simply bad? I’ve read quite a few of these and it’s one of the reasons I use the library so much.
Is this book part of my life now? Sometimes it’s very difficult to answer this question and sometimes it’s simply blindingly obvious.
Is it beautiful? I have books I keep because of their hand-drawn illustrations.
Where does a book go when it leaves?
My advice is to get the books out of the house as soon as possible but to where? When it’s time for a book to leave, where does it go? Here are some possibilities.
Pass it on to a friend or member of the family, and ask them to pass it on too.
Most charities have shelves of books in their shops. Some charities have specialist bookshops where books are sorted by knowledgeable volunteers.
Universities, colleges, schools and other libraries may accept specialist books or collections.
You could try to sell your books through a trade-in site such as We Buy Books, Ziffit or Music Magpie.
Almost two million people worldwide use BookCrossing. It’s the act of releasing your books ‘into the wild’ for a stranger to find, or via ‘controlled release’ to another BookCrossing member, and tracking where they go via journal entries from around the world.
At the end of the line, some books are for pulping. Sad, perhaps, but true.
