3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Eliminating Clutter

No matter how hard I try I just can’t keep clutter out of my home. I have tried my best to develop systems to keep clutter at a minimum.

However, life happens and best intentions tend to fall by the wayside.

Sometimes, though, situations arise where there is a need to eliminate clutter. Hosting a party, overnight guests, or having someone move in with you are all occasions that call for de-cluttering.

When I’m faced with the need to eliminate clutter, I always pretend that I’m having to move to another home. Reframing my mindset makes it much easier to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.

Currently, the de-cluttering that I’m working on stems from the fact that we do have our home for sale and are hosting an open house this weekend. So, even though we are not moving yet, we hopefully will be soon. That means we need to decide what to do with all our stuff now.

As I look at all the things I own with the mindset that I’m going to have to move, I will ask myself these three questions to decide what to do with each item:

1. Do I want to spend time and energy packing up and moving this item?

2. Do I really need this item?

3. Will there be a place for this item in my new space?

If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, then the item will be donated, thrown away (if necessary), or set aside for a garage sale.

It’s really as simple as that.

Think about it. If you don’t want to spend your time and energy packing up and moving this item, or you no longer need this item or will have a place for it, then why would you want to keep it now? It’s just taking up valuable space in your home.

One area I have been working on and need to de-clutter more is my home office. Here are a couple of pics showing what it looks like right now.

 

Even though it may not look like it, I did go through all my books on my bookshelves this afternoon. I got rid of two shopping bags full. You can see there is a little space left on the shelves.

I still have my desk to clean off as well as boxes of craft supplies and tools to empty and put away. To be honest, this is the worst room in the house right now. If I can get it looking less cluttered by the open house on Sunday, I will consider it a major victory.

Next week I’ll share how our de-cluttering process went. We are trying to do a lot in a few days, however I know that no matter how much or how little we get done, we can definitely make a difference in the way our house looks.