Getting rid of the clutter in your home is the biggest step to getting organized and freeing your mind. For some people clutter seems to be a crutch. They are attached to all the unused junk piling up in there home. You may be poor be hey you have all this stuff! There is no way to get organized in your life if you don’t take the first step and get rid of all the extra junk in your home. Everyone seems to have that one room in their home where everything gets shoved when company is coming over. Aren’t you tired of living that way? It will be so much easier to organize your home if you are only organizing what you need and use.
There is no point of having boxes and baskets stacked everywhere and 90% of it is stuff that is either broke, never used or in the case of clothing outgrown and out of style.
Do yourself a favor and set small goals. Start with the hall closet. Dedicate just a few hours to completely emptying that closet. Throw out everything that is outdated or no good. Take things that you can no longer use and put in a box marked “Donate”. Take anything that belongs in another area of your home and put it away. Make sure any trash you get out of the closet goes immediately to the trash can for trash day. Work your way up from there. Start with the smallest room in your home. Take care of all the junk piled in the corners. Have a few boxes handy. Mark each box with “Donate/Sell”, “Keep”, “Other” and of course any obvious trash goes right into a trash bag.
Use the “Donate/Sell” box for anything you can sell at a yard sale or eBay. Make the effort to set a date for a yard sale within 3 weeks. Also have a date set for 1-3 days AFTER your yard sale for a local charity to come pick up everything that did not sell. The box marked “Keep” will be for all the items that are used regularly or needed in your home. The box marked “Other” will be for items that belong in another area of your home. Once you go through a room completely you need to go through the “Keep” and “Other” box once last time and try to get rid of more items.
Ultimately what you are left with are items that you need or use. By this time you should have freed up a lot of space in your home and organizing what’s left should be a snap. If you don’t have the time to hold a yard sale, do yourself the favor of immediately calling a local charity to come pick all the items up. There are plenty of people who can use the items that are just taking up space in your home. You will feel a lot better and your mind will be a lot less cluttered too!
Amy Spagnol is the webmaster of http://www.frugaltown.com
The site is dedicated to helping you get rid of clutter, get organized and live a more frugal and less stressful life.