Simplifying and decluttering your home does not have to take all weekend. Sometimes when we start on our tidying adventure we go all gung ho and think it will be all done quickly.
But life rarely gives us that much time all at once.
I have found that when you start to declutter your home, it will end up being a months-long process. And then even over the years you will go through spurts of re-decluttering. Life and stuff just seems to often creep in.
Besides having one big purge over a weekend or month, you can also take time daily to get rid of things that are no longer loved or serving you. By doing daily decluttering, you will keep up with the constant influx of things that come into your house.
Daily tasks that are under 5 minutes are also very doable and can be fit into any busy day.
Here is a list of ten decluttering tasks that can be done in 5 minutes or less.
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1. Expired products - go through one drawer or shelf in your medicine cabinet and toss all the expired products.
You will be surprised at how many items you have just-in-case that you have had for years. It is normal.
2. A kitchen drawer - go through one drawer in your kitchen and get rid of any utensils that you never use.
You may find some that you aren't sure. Maybe you "might" use it when you make one certain dish. In this case you may want to ty hiding it somewhere not in the kitchen. See how many times you really want to use that.
I did this with a garlic press. I normally use a microplane zester to mince garlic. It is wonderful and multi-functional. But a garlic press seems like such a staple to have in the house. So I hid my garlic press to see if I would miss it, and 6 months later I totally forgot about it.
Needless to say, we now have no garlic press in the house.
Find those items that you keep because you "think" you use them, and either get rid of them right away or put them in another location to really help you evaluate their use.
3. The sock drawer - go through your sock drawer and match up all the socks. Any without a match, toss. Any with holes in them - toss.
4. Writing Utensils - Go through every single room in your house and gather all the pens and pencils and put them in one centralized location. You do not have to do anything with them at this time. The important thing is to find them all and have them in one place.
You can decide if there are any writing utensils that can be kept separate. Fort example I have a set of markers that I keep near my wall calendar, and then we also have one designated spot for "art stuff'.
Other than that, every pen and pencil is in one spot in the house and everyone in the family knows that is where they are. When they go looking for a pen they go to one spot.
After gathering all of them, you are sure to have many that do not work, that will be decluttering tip #5.
5. Get rid of broken pens - once you have gathered up every single pen and pencil in your house, go through them and see which ones work. Which pens no longer have ink in them. Which pens do not write smooth.
Ask yourself - how many pens does the household really need? How many pens can we get by with as a family? Does one house really need 200 pens?
Believe me, when you find ONE spot in the house for all the pens, you will no longer need a large amount. People will always be able to find one because they will not be traipsing all over the house looking for them.
6. Old make-up - go through your cosmetics ad make-p drawer and toss any that is very old, or just not your color. Most people save those one or two eye shadows for a special occasion...that hasn't happened...in 5 years!
Old make-up can harbor bacteria as well. You do not want to expose your face to that.
It might also be a good chance to start trading out your make-up that has more chemicals in it for more natural, less toxic make-up.
7. Receipts - go through your wallet or purse and take out old receipts, business cards and other pieces of paper no longer serving you. If they are not important receipts just toss, but if they are and you need to keep them, either have one spot in your house for them, or scan them right away.
I started a google drive for important receipts. On my phone I can access it and open it up and take a picture of the receipt right away. This has helped cut down on paper clutter so much.
8. Download those songs - Do you have a bunch of CDs lying around with songs you love but having them on a CD is dated? Take a few minutes to download those songs on a computer or ipod so that you still have the music but not the clutter.
This may even be something you can set-up and while it is downloading you can go do one of the other 5 minutes tasks on this list.
9. Paperless Statements - Paperwork is one of the work things that clutter our homes. It just never seems to stop coming in. One way to stop that amount of paperwork that comes in is to sign up for paperless statements.
Go to one or more of your accounts and sign up to receive statements through email. Now you will have cut down on a t least 12 pieces of paper that you get each year. If you did that for 10 accounts that is 120 less papers a year!
10. Shred/toss 20 pieces of paper - This has actually become a daily habit now for me.I am hoping that as a go through all the piles of school paperwork that accumulated last year, I can cut the number down to 10 or 5. Eventually I hope to get to a point where I am only spending a couple minutes a day dealing with new paperwork, and all other paperwork will have been dealt with.
But every day I put in my planner 20 pieces of paper. And everyday I go through my house looking for pieces of paper that I can toss, recycle, shred, scan, etc. I even keep a tally on my planner so I can feel accomplished. I have noticed that just doing this for the past few weeks, the piles of paper in my house are truly shrinking and becoming much more manageable.
And in a month I will have gotten rid of ~600 pieces of paper.
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