Mind Over Clutter

2: How to Declutter: Room by Room

Your home should tell the story of who you are and house a collection of everything you love. It can inspire you to go out into the world and do great things, and then welcome you back into a calm, relaxed and happy place to recharge your batteries.

To start the decluttering process, I want you to walk around your home, room by room, and get inspired. Look carefully and critically at each room and ask yourself:

 How can I improve it?

 Can I manage the available space better?

 Is it working storage-wise?

 How can I declutter it?

 What sort of atmosphere and mood do I want – more spacious, effective and functional; exciting and motivational; or cosy, relaxing and calming?

Your overall objective is to create a calm and happy space that you feel good about coming home to – one that works for you, so you live happily ever after. Make the most of each room and it will make you smile every time you walk into it. Good things really do come from a tidy, decluttered home. By getting rid of the things and clutter you don’t want and need, you can embrace the belongings that bring you joy.

Analyse the rooms individually, while remembering that they all fit together into a bigger picture. Think about the sort of mood and environment you want to create in your home as a whole.

It’s Easy Peasy

The TGCO Decluttering Plan is simple. You need to declutter first to organise later. Here are the four essential steps to transforming your home – and your life.

1. Remove

Collect all the items in the room – and I mean all.

2. Sort and purge

Place the items in four piles:

 Keep

 Donate

 Bin

 Sell

Review all the items in each pile and only keep the ones you use on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, plus those you really love. This is the time to be ruthless and to let go of all the broken, old things you’ve stuffed into a cupboard or drawer, out of sight and out of mind. And get rid of the stuff you bought on sale because it was a ‘bargain’ or ‘might come in useful one day’ but has never been used. If it’s still in the original wrapping with the label or tags, the chances are you don’t need it, so get shot of it now. If your cupboards and drawers are filled with unused surplus items, it will be impossible to stay organised and soon the mess will be everywhere, and you’ll have to start tidying up all over again.

3. Clean

It’s now time to clean the room and remove all traces of dirt and dust from the whole area. And don’t just focus on what’s visible on the outside; attack the cupboards, drawers and those high shelves, too, that are usually invisible. Pull out furniture and clean behind and below it. You want everything to be really clean before you start work on the next step.

4. Organise

Once the room is clean, it’s time for the final step: to put things back and start organising. When your belongings are stored and tidied away your home will be more appealing. It will look clean, neat and calm and that will make you feel happy.

You’ll feel great

Whenever I go through the decluttering process with my clients I compare it to an exercise class. You start off really energised and raring to go, then you hit the middle part and that’s when you start to check your watch and wonder when it will end and why you started. But by the time you get to the end, wow: you feel great, you’re blown away by what you’ve achieved and you want more!

Keep the items that make you smile and discard the ones that don’t ... it’s that simple.

How Often Should You Declutter?

Well, it’s up to you and how messy your home is, but I recommend you make lists of what you need to do every day, once a week and once a month, plus seasonal and annual tasks. For example, you’ll need to do things like making the beds every day; but some jobs, such as cleaning the bath, may only need to be tackled once a week, and others, like sorting out your spring, summer, autumn and winter wardrobe, can be done on a seasonal basis. This will make your life a lot easier and will dramatically reduce the time needed when the next tidying-up job arises.

TGCO Top Tip

There are lots of great ways to get rid of the items that you don’t use. You could donate them to charity, sell them on an auction site, pass them on to someone you know who will benefit, or simply dispose of them. Decluttering these items will make room for the ones you do use.

Declutter Your Bedroom

The perfect bedroom should be a sanctuary where you can unwind and escape from the daily grind. It should be a relaxing space, free of clutter, with no clothes strewn across the floor or piles of paperwork, gadgets or kids’ toys. If you want your bedroom to be peaceful and tranquil, you can do without these distractions. They need to be tidied away, moved to another room or discarded.

A stylish aesthetic, while keeping the mood calming and gentle, will make you smile every time you open the door.

Getting started

Your bedroom will feel more spacious and welcoming if it’s clutter-free and everything has its own place. It will be easier to keep clean and tidy too, so you’ll spend less time on household chores. It’s a special and very personal room in your home that often gets overlooked because you (and your partner) are the only people who go in there. Because it’s not on show and may only be used for sleeping, there’s a tendency to think it doesn’t matter as much as other rooms in the house. I think that’s wrong. If you can create a stylish aesthetic while keeping the mood calming and gentle, it will make you smile every time you open the door. You’ll feel more relaxed, less stressed and sleep will come much easier.

Following the four steps of my Decluttering Plan (see here), start off by clearing out anything that doesn’t belong and bin or donate any items you no longer need. Focus on what you want to keep and how best to store it all in your wardrobe, chest of drawers or bedside cabinets.

Every day

Some tasks can’t be put off for later or tomorrow. I make my bed first thing every morning. I see it as the first achievable task of the day. I enjoy plumping up the pillows, smoothing out the creases in the sheets, shaking the duvet and misting it all with some soothing aromatherapy linen spray. This may sound like a lot of work, but it takes me all of five minutes, it makes me feel good and I always smile seeing it looking so calm and inviting when I come home in the evening at the end of a long day’s work.