I debated with myself about this last How to Declutter _________ topic for the kickoff of the Big Decluttering Party. I’ve covered kids’ bedrooms, kitchens, and clothing.
So what else is there? Well . . . we could talk about the garage or the attic, but those are often considered storage areas. And for storage areas, I just need all my basic decluttering strategies to get through large amounts of stuff in the shortest amount of time possible.
So I chose Living Areas. Not living room, but living areas.
I know. You should really consider every inch of a home “living area” . . . but I’m not there yet. To me, living areas are the spaces where I can logically corral, confine entertain my guests. They are the areas of my home that need to be easily pick-up-able.
If I can make these rooms easy to pick up (and therefore easy to dust and vacuum), then my house as a whole doesn’t feel like it’s completely out of control. If these rooms are livable, I can open my front door and let people come inside.
How do you make a room easy to pick up/clean?
Minimize the stuff.
I’ve been asked if I’m a Dirty Slob or a Clutter Slob. If I had to choose, I’d say a Clutter Slob. I’m a germaphobe who loves it when things are sparkling clean. It’s clutter that escapes my Slob Vision and magically appears overnight(ish).
BUT . . . part of my total-honesty-with-myself deslobification journey has been accepting that clutter problems cause cleaning problems. You can’t really clean when there’s clutter everywhere. And I would put off cleaning because before I could clean I had to declutter. And decluttering is overwhelming.
Cleaning isn’t that overwhelming when there’s no clutter to deal with first.
Hmmm. Think on that for a minute.
My living areas (living room, gameroom, dining room) have come a LONG way in the past few years. Rather than rearrange or add storage, I’ve just purged them and purged them.
And purged them again.
And now, when it’s time to pick up, it’s just picking up. Not straightening, not stuffing in drawers, not shifting into another room just for right now.
Seriously. Minimize. Life is easier that way.
You can start with the Decluttering Tour (black trash bag method) and then keep eliminating from there.
Define the purpose of the room.
I learned this from y’all. From readers. One of my favorite rooms in our home has a long history on this blog. We have a “second living area” that was a storage room for the first several years we lived here. Honestly, I believe that room was what sent me over edge. It was my Rock Bottom. The frustration it caused me finally brought me to the point where I started this blog (over four years ago now!).
I made progress just decluttering. And just decluttering again. But when I tackled it as a once-and-for-all project as part of a series in 2012, your main encouragement to me was to stop calling it an Office/Gameroom/Whatever room. And you were SOOOO right. Defining the purpose of the room made a huge difference. I arranged it according to how we truly used it, called it a gameroom, and now that room is (for the most part) easy to clean. While there are still some clutter corners that need to be purged, it’s a defined space that doesn’t easily fall into chaos.
Containers and Limits
And then there are the other basic decluttering strategies that I’ve been babbling on about all week. Use existing containers to naturally set limits.
The bookshelves in the room determine the number of books that can be kept. However many DVDs your TV stand can hold is how many DVDs you can keep.
As always (based on my own way-too-extensive-decluttering-experience), I advise that you declutter first. Just declutter.
Personally, lasting progress happens when I first focus on ONLY getting the junk out. If I start out by trying to figure out the best way to organize, I end up buying new shelves and buckets and such that end up sucking more space out of an already-too-crowded room. When I just declutter, the room feels comparatively organized, and I often realize I don’t need any additional organizing.
My Living Area Decluttering Projects
Tackling My Dining Room (That’s the very first dining room project around here, and you can see from the before pictures how bad things used to be.)
The One True Storage Space in my Living Areas
Big Things Going on in the Gameroom
Removing the Desk from the Gameroom (which made it more gameroom, less office)
The Big Stuff is Done! (A Gameroom Update)
Big Thing In, Big Thing Out (The One for One Concept even works with big stuff)
Random Living Area Posts
My State of the Home Post (This post shows the time it took to clean up living areas.)
Posts with Checklists
How to Clean a Messy House and Get It Ready for Guests
What are you decluttering this week?
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--Nony
I loved this post! Your blog has really inspired me. You are real and your strategies work. If you need another how to declutter topic, I vote for how to declutter paper! It’s my nemesis!!!
It’s my nemesis too!
Mine too Sarah! I’m making serious progress in all the rooms of my house except my OFFICE/HOMESHCOOL ROOM. Its paper! Notes, finished worksheets, flashcards, bills, notebooks. I started off the school year so strong and organized and now I’m drowning in here.
Ugh. I have very cluttered living areas and honestly there’s probably too much stuff in them but with a small house (2 bedrooms upstairs, living dining, kitchen downstairs) my two main living areas have to do double and triple duty as rooms. My living room is the entertainment/living room/playroom and the dining room is the eating/kids craft room/scrapbook room. It’s annoying that even though I have purged tons of stuff they still threaten to explode. Sigh. Sorry. Just needed to vent.
I just learned something from today’s post. It’s a whole lot easier to read about someone else decluttering their house than it is for me to actually declutter mine. I’d love to find a clutter genie in a bottle somewhere, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I will, however, tackle a couple of jobs today…including the bookshelves in my office.
I’m with Sarah on the paper clutter thing. If anyone ever figures out how to do that quickly – and without causing a nervous breakdown – let me know. At this point it would probably take me forty-five years to purge mine. Okay, so maybe not quite that long, but there’s too much.
Something that helped me a bit, to at least get started, is the same idea as the rest of the clutter clearing: Do the easy stuff first and just get rid of the trash. I’ve heard the rule to handle each piece of paper only once, but that didn’t work for me. I went through my pile first with a paper bag for recycling and a shredder for stuff that needed shredding. Everything else went into a box. The next time through the stuff that was left in the box, I pulled out everything from last year. This was filed. No decisions to be made since it was all old stuff and only keepable if it needed to be filed. This year’s stuff went back in the box. I now need to tackle that. It’ll be the hardest. Some will be filed, some will require action, some will need to be kept for a bit longer then dumped, etc. BUT it’s a much smaller pile now than when I started. I’ve also been trying really hard to dump the junk mail before it gets added to the pile.
Clutter stresses me out. Paper clutter is a real culprit. I have started taking a photo with my IPAD of bills, receipts, recipes and papers I want to keep. I have created separate files in my photo APP for easy access. I can then shred the originals and not only are they out of the way, I can always find the copy I need. It is also much easier to purge them as they become unnecessary to keep. Of course I keep the originals of all important or legal papers and file them away for safe keeping.
You had some brilliant stuff in that post. Like:
clutter problems cause cleaning problems
and
Cleaning isn’t that overwhelming when there’s no clutter to deal with first.
You’re good!
I agree. Clutter DOES create cleaning problems. I have never liked clutter but get it sometimes due to other people living in my home. It is so much quicker to clean without having to move objects and “STUFF”. One of my daughters has knick knacks and ornaments all over her house. No wonder it takes her forever to clean. That would drive me batty. But she likes her “stuff” It is an ongoing battle for me to keep things clutter free—the way I LIKE it, but no one gets what they want ALL the time,do they?
I’ve been reading/cheering/admitting with you for over a year and my living area is so much better. My whole family has embraced the container concept and there is no arguments from my boy’s because mom and dad live this way too. We’re not perfect and we revisit basics often but you’ve given us a firm foundation. Thank you!
Today my decluttering project is my living room and kitchen. I just recently painted and redecorated my kitchen. So I removed everything from the walls, top of the cabinets and the counter tops and placed it in the living room. Now it’s time to put items back where they belong but not all items are staying. So my dilemma is: what do I do with the items that I don’t want? They’re too good or nice to just throw away and I have no where to stage the items until I can finally have my long awaited garage sale. So wish me luck as I tackle this humongous task. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
Today I am decluttering the kitchen cabinets. No, wait, the buffet. Because the buffet is where I’m going to put the dishes. So, declutter the buffet today, move the dishes tomorrow.
Here is my dilemma: I look around the living room. One big problem is stacks of books. There are books on the end tables, on the coffee table, on the TV table, on the floor… Now, I have bookshelves in my bedroom that would hold all these books. There are empty shelves! But between me and the empty shelves (on the far side of my bed) are piles of clothing, shoes, hangers, blankets, and miscellaneous other detritous that makes a very effective barrier between me and putting away the books. So if I want to declutter the books from my living room, is the answer to do the bedroom first (a truly daunting job) in order to be able to then walk all the books in and put them away? Because otherwise, there’s simply nowhere for the books to GO if I pick them up from their (now) semi-permanent status on every surface of my living area. (It’s a pretty small house. And full of stuff.)
Hi Melissa,
The answer is yes & no… Get the stuff in front of your bookshelf to another corner, pile, bed etc. & bring in all your books. Then dust your bookshelf & books & first choose the books you love & want to keep, after that the ones you like if you have space & then if no space the rest get donated. What this will do is get them out of the living room (making it look better) fill an empty bookshelf in your bedroom (now useful) & will release energy for you to deal with your clothes/stuff pile another time cos you’ll want to read your books & have access to them. Remember what Dana says “Do the easy stuff first” declutter & purge, no hard decisions & you’ll build traction & confidence. Hope this helps x