I’m not saying everyone needs to be as minimalist as I am. 

I don’t expect anyone to reduce clutter that much, nor do I think they’d even want to. Everyone has his or her ideal level of simplicity — what matters most is keeping what’s essential to you and getting rid of the rest.

Why Should You Simplify?

What’s the problem with clutter? Well, nothing, if that’s the way you like things. Everyone lives differently, and I’m not saying the decluttered lifestyle is better than the cluttered one. I prefer the decluttered one because I function much better when there is less clutter around me.

However, I’ve found some benefits of decluttering from my three decades of experience:

• Less stressful. Clutter can be a lot of visual distraction and mental stress. It’s basically a bunch of things you have to do (put away clothes, file papers, etc.) that you’re procrastinating doing. While you don’t want to think about them, in the back of your mind you know they are there.
• More efficient. I don’t know about you, but I work much better in an uncluttered home or workspace. There aren’t as many distractions, which means I can focus better. I actually have trouble thinking when there is too much clutter. I wonder if you do, too.
• More peaceful. I can really relax in an uncluttered home. I feel much more at ease when there is less in my environment.
• Saves time. Clutter comes with a time cost — you have to look for things, move things, store things, take things out of storage. Decluttering takes time, but in the long run I’ve found it saves a lot of time.
• Saves money. Clutter comes with a price tag, as well. You need a bigger home and closets and more storage space for all the clutter. Sometimes people buy extra storage space to store all their excess.
• Frees up space. Less clutter means more space for living and playing and working. A garage is a good example. Some people have so much clutter that their cars don’t fit in the garage. Then they have to park outside. But declutter your garage and you have room for cars, or maybe a home gym instead.

Fundamental Simplicity Principles

Before you tackle your clutter, there are four basic steps to decluttering to keep in mind. Let’s take the example of decluttering a single drawer. These are the fundamental steps:

1. Collect. Take out everything and put it in a pile. Empty the entire drawer and pile it all on a counter or a table. Take everything out, down to the last paper clip. Do not leave anything behind.
2. Choose. Pick out only the few things you love and use and that are important to you. Just sort through the pile, picking out the essential stuff. Be very selective. Put the important things you pick out into a separate, smaller pile.
3. Eliminate. Toss the rest out. Don’t be sentimental with this step. Either throw everything into a big trash bag or find a new home for the usable items. For example, donate them to charity.
4. Organize. Put back the essential things. Clean the drawer out first, of course, and put the very small pile of things you chose back in the drawer, grouping like things together and leaving space around the groups. Having space around things makes everything look neater and simpler. It's best to use drawer organizers for this step. It makes everything look better and easier to find.

This process is repeated for every drawer, shelf, tabletop, counter space, floor, closet, or any other area you’re trying to declutter.

10 Ways to Get Started

When you first decide to tackle your clutter, it can be overwhelming. Don’t let that intimidate you! Just get started. Tackle one small thing at a time. Don’t worry about the entire mess, just focus on one area. It doesn’t matter what you choose — just start small.

Here are some other strategies for getting started — choose one and give it a try. If it turns out to be too hard, try another.

1. Start clearing a no-clutter zone. What you want to do is clear one area. This is your no-clutter zone. It can be a counter or kitchen table. Wherever you start, make a rule: nothing can be placed there that’s not actually in use. Everything must be put away. Once you have that clutter-free zone, keep it that way! Each day, slowly expand your no-clutter zone until you've completed the entire house.
2. Clear off a counter. You want to get your house so that all flat spaces are clear of clutter. Maybe they have a toaster on them, maybe a decorative candle, but not a lot of clutter. So start with one counter. Clear off everything possible, except maybe one or two essential items. 
3. Pick a shelf. Now that you’ve done a counter, try a shelf. It doesn’t matter which shelf. It could be a shelf in a closet or a bookshelf. Don’t tackle the whole bookshelf, focus on just one shelf. Clear all non-essential things and leave it looking neat and clutter-free.
4. Schedule a decluttering weekend. Maybe you don’t feel like doing a huge decluttering session right now. But if you take the time to schedule it for later this month, you can clear your schedule. If you have a family, get them involved, too. The more who pitch in, the better. Get boxes and trash bags ready and plan a trip to a charity to drop off donated items. You might not get the entire house decluttered during the weekend, but you’ll probably make great progress.
5. Pick up 5 things and find places for them. These should be things that you actually use, but that you just seem to put anywhere because they don’t have good places. If you don’t know exactly where things belong, you have to designate a good spot. Take a minute to think it through. Do this for everything in your home, a few things at a time.
6. Spend a few minutes visualizing the room. When I’m decluttering, I like to take a moment to look at a room. I think about how I want it to look. What are the most essential pieces of furniture? What doesn’t belong in the room but has just wandered there? Once I’ve visualized how the room will look uncluttered, and figured out what is essential, I get rid of the rest.
7. Put a load in your car for charity. I do this all the time. I go to donation regularly. If you’ve decluttered a lot of items, you might have a “donate” pile that’s just taking up space in your room. Take a few minutes to box everything up and put it in your trunk. Then tomorrow, drop it off.
8. Pull out some clothes you don’t wear. As you’re getting dressed, and going through your closet for something to wear, spend a few minutes pulling out items you haven’t worn in a few months. If they’re seasonal clothes, store them in a box. Get rid of the rest. Do this a little at a time until your closet (and then your drawers) only contains things you wear.
9. Clear out your medicine cabinet. If you don’t have one spot for medicines, create one. Get rid of the outdated medicines, the medicine you’ll never use again, and the ointments that never had an effect. Simplify to the essentials.
10. Pull everything out of a drawer. Just take the drawer out and empty it on a table. Then sort the drawer into three piles: 1) things that really should go in the drawer; 2) things that belongs elsewhere; 3) things to donate or discard. Clean the drawer out, then put the things in the first pile back. Be neat and orderly. Deal with the other piles immediately!

The Next Steps

Once you’ve gotten a start, here are some other steps you can take to keep your momentum going:

1. Tackle one spot at a time. After doing one or two spots in the section above, choose another. Do only one spot at a time. Don’t worry about the rest of the house. Each time you tackle a spot, you’re making another uncluttered space. Set aside a little time each day to do this, or big chunks if you can find them.
2. Designate a spot for incoming papers. Papers often account for a lot of our clutter. This is because we put them in different spots – on the counter, table, desk, drawer, top of our dresser, or in our car. Designate an in-box tray or place in your home and don’t put papers down anywhere but that spot. Got mail? Put it in the inbox. School papers? Put it in the inbox. Receipts, warranties, manuals, notices, flyers? In the box! This one little change can transform your paperwork. Sort the contents regularly.
3. Create a “maybe” box. Sometimes when you’re going through a pile of stuff, you know exactly what to keep and what to trash or donate. But then there’s the stuff you don’t use but think you might want it or need it someday. Create a “maybe” box and put this stuff there. Then store the box somewhere hidden, out of the way. Put a note on your calendar to look in the box in six months. Then pull it out, six months later, and see if it’s anything you really needed. Usually, you can just dump the entire box because you never needed the contents anyway.
4. Create a 30-day list. The problem with decluttering is that we can declutter, but it just comes back because we buy more. So, fight that tendency by nipping it in the bud: don’t buy things in the first place. Take a minute to create a 30-day list, and every time you want to buy something that’s not absolutely necessary, put it on the list with the date it was added to the list. Make a rule never to buy anything (except necessities) unless they’ve been on the list for 30 days. Often, you’ll lose the urge to buy and save yourself a lot of money and clutter.
5. Learn to file quickly. Once you’ve created your simple filing system, you just need to use it regularly. Take a handful of papers from your pile, or your inbox, and go through them one at a time, starting from the top paper and working down. Make quick decisions: trash them, file them immediately, or make a note of the action required and put them in an “action” file. Don’t put anything back in the pile, and don’t put them anywhere but in a folder or in the trash/recycling bin.
6. Teach your kids where things belong. If you teach your kids where things go and start teaching them the habit of putting them there, it will go a long way to keeping your house uncluttered. Of course, kids won’t learn the habit overnight, so you’ll have to be patient with them and just keep teaching them until they’ve got it. Better yet, set the example for them and get into the habit yourself.
7. Set up simple folders. Sometimes our papers pile up high because we don’t have good places to put them. Create some simple folders with labels for your major bills and similar paperwork. Put them in one spot. Your system doesn’t have to be complete but keep some extra folders and labels in case you need to quickly create a new file.
8. Have a conversation. Sometimes the problem isn’t just with us, it’s with the person or people with whom we live. An uncluttered home is the result of a shared philosophy of simplicity of all the people living in your house. If you take a few minutes to explain that you really want to have an uncluttered house, and that you could use their help, you can go a long way to getting to that point.
9. Learn to love the uncluttered look. Once you’ve gotten an area decluttered, you should take the time to enjoy that look. Make that your standard!

Keeping It Uncluttered

Once you’ve tackled most of your clutter, you want to keep it fairly uncluttered from here on out. And trust me, clutter will come back if you let it. You have to make decluttering a continuous process — not necessarily every day or week, but something that you regularly revisit. More importantly, create systems and habits that will keep the clutter from overwhelming you again.

Here are some ideas:

• One in, two out. Make it a rule: for every new item that comes into your life, you need to remove two.
• Limited storage. I like this rule because it fits in with my philosophy of self-set limitations: don’t allow yourself to have tons of storage space. The more storage you have, the more you’ll keep.
• Clear floors and flat surfaces. Keep them clear. A room looks so much cleaner if all flat surfaces, from the floor to tabletops to countertops, are clear of clutter. Remove everything from these surfaces except perhaps one or two decorative items. Clearing surfaces regularly is a good routine.
• Designate a home for everything and be a fanatic. When you find stuff on flat surfaces, or draping over a chair, it might be because you don’t have a designated spot for that kind of thing. If you don’t, designate a spot for it immediately. Revisit this process often.
• Regular decluttering sessions. Put them in your calendar. Even the best of us need to declutter regularly. If you’ve decluttered your home, things might be great now, but you’ll need to do clutter maintenance. Put it in your calendar: perhaps once a month, once a week, or once every few months. Experiment to see what interval works for your lifestyle.
• Reduce your desire for more. If clutter is coming into your life at a rate that’s too great for you to handle, you might need to look at your buying habits. It’s important that you take a look at these desires and see if you can address them. Reducing your desires will go a long way to reducing your need to fight clutter.
• Change your habits. Clutter didn’t create itself. It’s there because you put it there. Change those habits, one at a time. Take 30 days and focus on a clutter habit. See if you can create a new habit that will reduce your clutter.

Declutter Deck® and Hack Decks®

Declutter Deck® is a quick and easy card game that helps you declutter and organize your home in small, bite-sized chunks of time.

We are professional organizers who specialize in decluttering and organizing homes. We have organized hundreds of homes, closets, pantries and laundry rooms, just to name a few spaces. For this reason, we are considered declutter experts. In fact, we are Certified Master Organizers in the KonMari Method® (Marie Kondo). 

Our 52 organizing prompts break down the home organizing process into small and manageable parts. When pulling a card, Declutter Deck® guides you through the main areas of your home that need organization. This includes many areas of the home where organization is often forgotten. Declutter Deck® shows you ways to declutter your home, including closets, pantries, laundry rooms, mud rooms, kitchens, and living spaces. It even gets you outside to declutter your car.