Our homes have become so much more for each of us over the past year! If you struggle with clutter or not able to create sanctuary spaces for yourself to retreat to please use the tips and guidance of this four-week challenge and jump in at any time. Do as much as or as little as your life needs.
This challenge focuses on clearing the spaces in our home that collect clutter. Each week or segment tackles the clutter in the corners, on the surfaces, and hiding behind closed doors.
Week 1: Sweep the surfaces
Week 2: Clear cabinets & closets
Week 3: Deep clean drawers
Week 4: Box & Bin binge
Clutter collects where items don’t have a permanent home. Horizontal surfaces can be a major source of clutter collection for so many people. They just seem to fill up moments after they are cleared. Know yourself and your family/household members. Are you “Pilers”? If so, identify what lands on those surfaces and find ways to relocate them or collect them neatly. For surfaces that collect the same clutter over and over, create containers for spare change, loose papers, hooks for keys, masks, and other everyday items. Give everything on every surface a home and get in the practice-AKA-Habit of daily, and weekly maintenance to keep things in order.
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Each day this week, pick a room or a category and systematically weed out the clutter, collecting it in bags or boxes to be donated, sold, or given away. Think about these spaces that contain kids’ clothes, your clothes, the kitchen pantry, and cabinets in the kitchen, laundry, and bathrooms! Remember that clutter collects where items don’t have a permanent home. These hidden spaces are the storage workhorses of our homes and need to be regularly maintained so that they don’t get clogged up. Remember the one-in-one-out rule to help keep a handle on the everyday items that live in these spaces.
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Most of us have drawers in almost every room with lots of space for hidden clutter.
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Each day this week, systematically weed out the clutter, collecting it in bags or boxes to be donated, sold, or given away. It’s time to tackle the kitchen drawers *including everyone’s favorite #junkdrawer, bathroom drawers, file cabinet drawers (purge those papers each year), and sock drawers to name a few.
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Like past weeks, pick a category (papers, clothing accessories, kitchen items, etc) and work through each one systematically purging. Kids and other household members can help, assign a drawer, and dive in!
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These are great places to store things that we need to keep but don’t want to see, BUT, for some people that’s out of sight is out of mind. When things get tucked away for long periods, we forget about them & which means we probably don’t need it! It’s time to tackle them! Think about where you have things in bins & decide which ones need to be sorted through. Some baskets & bins get used regularly, those might need a quick review. It’s the stuff in deep storage that can become a hidden burden. It might be the right time to let that clutter go!
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Each day this week, systematically weed out the clutter, collecting it in bags or boxes to be donated, sold, or given away.
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Like the past 3 weeks, pick a category or space (papers, clothing accessories, kitchen items, etc) and work through each systematically purging. Kids and other household members can help, assign a bin, and dive in!
Decluttering & having space to keep what you need in convenient, easy to access storage is one major step in that direction!
Any time is the best time to start! It doesn’t have to happen room by room. You can start creating sanctuary in a drawer, a closet, or a box by decluttering storage spaces all around your home.
As you find ease in these spaces & with the process of decluttering, make it a regular part of your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly home maintenance schedule.
Maintaining the clutter is a part of life! Begin the process before clutter comes into your home. I hope this will be a year with more sanctuary & less clutter in all your spaces.