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Have you thought about what habits you need to adopt to keep clutter at bay?
You might have gone through your home, room by room and decluttered each space and that is great – well done you.
But how do we keep it that way?
I’ve been decluttering my home for years now – okay not so much in a ‘full on purge everyday’ sense, but in the sense that I’m constantly reviewing spaces in our home and assessing how processes and systems are working for us.
Whether we need to change the way we do things and working out what the little inconveniences in our everyday lives are and what we can do about it.
These are the routines I’m trying to adopt in our household to keep it looking tidy and to stop the stuff accumulating again.
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Surfaces are hotspots for breeding clutter. Kitchen counters, the dining room table, windowsills… it is so easy to dump stuff on these surfaces to ‘deal with later’.
Only later never comes and instead the mess builds and builds.
Keeping surfaces clear has been an absolute game-changer for me.
My kitchen and bathroom now take minutes to clean as opposed to the hours they used to.
I no longer have to clean slimy soap bottles on the side of the bath, or move 101 knick-knacks off the kitchen sides to clean away the crumbs that hide behind them.
I’d thought that minimalising the stuff on surfaces would make my home look bare, which is why I hesitated in doing it for so long, but finally enough was enough.
I was sick of cleaning and the house still looking a mess. Now we can have a batch cooking session and completely obliterate the kitchen but it still takes hardly any time to restore order.
This will be an ongoing process and something that will adapt and change as you declutter each room and space.
But finding a home for every item in your house is key to maintaining a tidy home. Mess is often the result of items with no homes loitering about the place.
Find a space for everything and not only will tidying up become easier, you’ll waste less time looking for things because they’ll always be where they should be.
Okay, so perhaps it’s not feasible to suggest actioning every piece of mail the minute it lands on your doormat.
But rather than sticking into a pile somewhere or shoving it into a drawer, deal with what you can now and create a place for the pieces that need to be actioned later.
For example – takeaway menus and junk mail go straight into recycling. (Come on be honest, when was the last time you actually looked at a menu before ordering your usual pepperoni pizza?).
If a letter is confirming an appointment, put it straight into your phone calendar and into your handbag (if you need it for the appointment) or in the recycling bin once you have noted the details.
If it is for a bill you need to pay, set aside to deal with when you can and also make a note to sign up for paperless bills to reduce the incoming paper clutter in future.
You might also want to think about setting up a Direct Debit so that you don’t forget to pay it and so you have one less item on your to do list.
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If you are going upstairs, look around and see if anything needs to go with you.
Before going downstairs in the morning, I will grab empty glasses from the bedroom or any clothes that need to be washed.
Items often make their way from the room they belong in to elsewhere in the house, so make an effort to return them as you are doing other things and it’ll be less of a job to do later.
Why do we put off the simplest of tasks knowing that we will regret it later?
For me it’s tidying the kitchen up in the evening. I will often leave the sink full of dishes thinking ‘I’ll do it in the morning’ knowing full well that it’s not nice to wake up to a messy kitchen!
If it takes less than 5 minutes, just get it done! Your future self will thank you.
Decluttering is an ongoing process and one that will probably never feel ‘done’.
We are constantly consuming and bring more stuff into our homes, so to restore the balance – make sure stuff is leaving too.
I have set a rule for myself that if I buy a new item of clothing, then an old one needs to go.
This way I am decluttering as I go and it’s not a mammoth task to do at another time.
Little things can make a huge difference and a lot of the time, they take seconds to do.
For example, when I am giving my daughter her bath, it’s easy for me to just leave her clothes on the floor or leave the toys in the bath but that just creates a bigger job to clean up later.
Now I try to do it as I go – put the shampoo away after use, put the dirty clothes straight into the washing machine and put the toys in the sink to dry while I’m getting her dressed.
Tidying up as you go takes no more effort while you are tackling the task at hand but means the cleaning up afterward takes less effort.
Another good example is cooking – once you have finished with something, wash it and put it away. Wipe the sides down as you go.
If you enforce any of these habits, make it this one!
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When you arrive home, it’s easy to toss your coat on the back of a chair and kick off your shoes before slumping on the sofa.
Instead, take a few seconds to hang your coat up and put your shoes away. Instead of dumping keys and bags on the table, hang them up.
Returning things to their home straightaway means you won’t be wondering where you put your car keys later!
I think we are all guilty of this one. If it’s not keeping on top of dirty washing, it’s putting the clean stuff away!
I hardly ever fall behind on my dirty washing and quite often I enjoy the smugness of an empty washing basket. Then I look at my dining table and am greeted with the piles of folded laundry and suddenly I don’t feel so pleased with myself anymore!
I am trying to get into the habit of taking clothes upstairs and putting them away as soon as they’re dry.
Think about it – folding them before putting them away is just an additional pointless task. It is a waste of time!
I am folding clothes which I’m just going to stick on a hanger when I get around to it.
Stop wasting time. Folding laundry is procrastination in its finest form! Just put the clothes away!
I’m not sure where this concept originated but it’s a practice a few Instagram accounts I follow endorse.
It’s basically just tidying up and restoring order to a space – usually at night, so that you wake up to a tidy home in the morning.
Personally, I tend to do 2 resets based around my daughters nap-times.
I will tidy up once in the morning after she’s gone down for her nap and again in the evening once she’s in bed.
It is much easier to keep the house tidy when you don’t have a two year old whirlwind taking out every toy that they own!
I won’t pretend that I’m perfect and practice all the habits 100% of the time. I am only human after all.
But it is something that I am trying to do and when I am on my game, the results speak for themselves.
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