5 Benefits of Decluttering Your Home This Spring
Amy P Photography – Birmingham Photographer
Spring time means so much, but one thing we all dread, but must do, is clean! Yep! Spring cleaning!
Don’t let clutter overwhelm your home and cause stress and chaos in your mind. This is one of my goals this year for sure. I am writing this from my bedroom where 2 laundry baskets of clothes are staring back at me and 1 pile has been waiting to be put up in its rightful place for about a week now. I may not be qualified to give you all of these tasks or examples but they are a few that I have gathered and that spoke to me, so I thought I would share them…And at least you know you get no judgment from me whatsoever. Glass house over here. It gets hard…We have lives, busy busy lives, jam packed schedules, kiddos, kiddos in extracurriculars, jobs, you name it, we do it and our home gets neglected. But y’all, not this year, I want my home to be relaxing and calming and a refuge for us and everyone who enters it as well.
I want to start with 5 reasons why you should spring declutter and the benefits you will reap in doing so.
- Less time cleaning. The less you have the less you have to clean and pick up and put away and tidy. I don’t know about you, but that in and of itself does it for me. Getting my kiddos on board with this one might take a little more convincing but I feel like once they do, they’ll appreciate the things they have so much more.
- No more buying/Less spending. This one will be my husbands number 1 for sure…For me to do no more spending. The more you remove and declutter, the less inclined you are to bring extra “stuff” into your home. It shifts your whole perspective about what you actually NEED in your space. **Added bonus: If you can sell your items on marketplace or a yard sale or mercari or wherever and make some money in the process.**
- Time in general. Once you are finished with this process, your home will be clean and neat and you’ll also be left with extra time. Time to spend with kiddos, time for date nights, time for gardening, time to take a cooking class, time to take up a new hobby, time for a nap, time for a part time job with the amount of decluttering our house needs. Whatever you choose to do with your time is up to you but I think we can all agree that we could use more time in a day. Ta-Da!
- Organization. It’s easier to organize 10 things than it is to organize 100. Pretty self explanatory. Everything in their place will also provide you with a sense of peace and purpose in your home and contribute to its overall cleanliness too.
- Be present. This is goal #2 for me this year. To be more involved and active and present in the moment and not so much the stress and hustle and bustle of it all. This is a very hard one for working Mamas but I can make excellent strides towards achieving this. It’s so easy to get caught up in having more and or wanting more but if your mindset is to declutter, I believe that a switch will get activated where you are no longer searching for what’s next and what can we do now and rather focus on what we have and truly enjoy the moments that we’re in while we’re in them.
P.S. When you get your home just as you want it, reach out to Amy P Photography to schedule an in home lifestyle session. Your house will be beautiful and you can capture this peaceful transition for you and your family with lasting images for years to come. Maybe make that your goal…You’ve been wanting family photos and you’ve been wanting your home in order, what better motivation to get it all done?
Here I’ve listed 5 ways to make spring decluttering less stressful and overwhelming. When you have a lot, you know this task is going to be a lot, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming and daunting. Follow these tips and take it 1 thing at a time.
- Declutter 1 room at a time. It is not all going to get done in 1 day. Make realistic goals and have realistic expectations about how this process is going to go. It will be far less stressful and also more effective if you do 1 space at a time. Once that one is completed, you’ll be so motivated to move onto another.
- Declutter by item and not space. Case and point…You start with your closet but you store some clothes in the attic and some in a guest room as well. Bring all of those items (clothes) to the space you’re working in and go from there. Avoid hopping back and forth from all 3 spaces though.
- Declutter by taking it all out. This make s a huge mess but it is necessary for you to lay eyes on everything so you don’t miss things. Once everything is out, it also affords you a wonderful opportunity to deep clean and wipe down that space/surface. Marie Kondo has a wonderful tidbit to offer in this department where you actually put your hands on each individual object. You pick it up, see if it sparks joy and is necessary for you to keep or if you no longer have a use for it.
- Decluttering is messy. It’s a process. A means to an end. The end result will be so worth it but the process will literally make you feel like your home has exploded on multiple occasions. This is another reason that it’s so important to stick to 1 room/space at a time. Accept the process and know this from the start. I think this helps to manage your expectations and alleviate the stress that this causes.
- Declutter from easiest to most difficult. If you collect items that you know are going to be difficult or taxing to go though, if your book collection rivals Beasts library, you have more clothes than a department store, don’t start there. Start in an area that will be easy and non sentimental and work your way up to the more challenging difficult areas.
Here’s are 5 of the easiest things you can do to spring declutter your home.
- Kitchen/Pantry. Clear out the kitchen drawers and cabinets (including that God awful tupperware cabinet), empty the refrigerator after, declutter the kitchen table/island which are often catch alls, and then go shelf by shelf in your pantry.
- Bathroom. Counters first and then under the sink, sort through makeup and products as well once you’ve wiped and cleaned everything.
- Dressers/Nightstands. Take them all 1 drawer at a time but once these areas are more organized you’ll begin to feel a shift. Also, like tabletops, these surfaces are often drop off areas so make sure to address the tops of them as well.
- Closets. When you do closets, I think it’s easiest to start with purses, handbags, hats, shoes, and accessories first. Just clearing that space of those items will already give you a feeling of accomplishment and allow you to continue to sort and declutter with ease.
- Mail/Papers/Magazines. The best way to do this is to sort into 3 piles KEEP (bills, appointments, and reminders), FILE (important info to hang on to or kiddos school art work etc.), TOSS (everything else). **Bonus area if you want to tackle email…Some of you (me 100%) need to just delete it all and start over.
Once you’ve followed all of those steps, maintenance is vital for this to continue. How do you maintain a clutter free space?
- Do a quick declutter monthly. Make it the first Saturday of the month, or whatever day works best for you, mark it on the calendar, get your family involved (turn it into a game like who donates the most items or who can clean their area the quickest), just take the time to continue this process so it doesn’t become your resolution again next year.
- Always keep a bin for donations. Choose a spot in your home, a corner or an area in a closet, anywhere, that you can get rid of items frequently instead of allowing them to pile up and sit in your basement or garage for months on end.
- Stop buying new things. Again, all the husbands of the world rejoice. It isn’t 100% avoidable but if you’re minimizing the amount of items you bring into your home then your space can remain clutter free.
- 10 items at a time. When maintaining, it’s often an easy thing to take 10 minutes and find 10 items from 1 space that are not used or not purposeful. Take 10 minutes and end your day with 10 less items. It’s a small thing but decluttering doesn’t always have to be time consuming and significant if you’re doing your part to incorporate it into your everyday life and making mindful choices.
- The 9 month rule. If you haven’t used it in 9 months you aren’t going to. Get rid of it. There’s no “just in case.” You can make a whole baby in the time since you’ve last used that purse, those shoes, that broken seagull you keep saying you’ll fix. Make this less about sentiment and focus of the rational decision to declutter your home, mind, body, and soul.
Amy P Photography
Voted Best Birmingham Newborn & Family Photographer
My studio is located in Fultondale, Alabama (see the space)
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