Declutter Your Home Checklist

A Tidy Mind Professional Organisers are experienced when it comes to helping clients declutter their homes. In this blog post, we share a comprehensive decluttering checklist for you to use whenever you need tips or advice.

Declutter Your Home ChecklistBefore Your Start Decluttering

• You may need to check out local recycling options

• You may need to plan how you can donate and recycle with minimum hassle i.e. recycling banks, supermarket food collection points, battery recycling etc.

• Do you need to check whether you can donate to certain charity shops? Do you need to order bags from Oxfam for clothes donations? Or use a donating service such as the British Heart Foundation.

• Do you need to dedicate bags or boxes for selling services such as Stuff You Sell or Vintage Cash Cow?

• Set up your space. Have some bags for donation, recycling and rubbish ready. Consider having a box ready as an ‘action box’ for physical items (such as items to return to a friend).

• Having a notebook ready to write down actions that become apparent is useful.

Top Tip To Declutter Your Home: In general, focus on decluttering first, then organising, so you know what needs to be organised.General Tips For Categorising

• If there is a lot of floor space or a clear area (such as a bed), it may work best to declutter by categories i.e. gather all the books in a pile and go through each one.

• If your home is quite full, there may not be enough room for this, so you will have to take a more random approach and go room by room. Try to categorise a little if you can i.e. in a kid’s bedroom, go through the toys first, then books, then clothes etc.

• Declutter with your client category by category. Try to finish one before starting the next.

• Examples of large categories: are children’s toys, paperwork, kitchen equipment, clothes etc.

• If a category seems too big, you can subcategorise e.g. in a kitchen, start by grouping baking equipment together, herbs & spices and so on.

• Consider using post-it notes and a sharpie to make a note of your categories (the post can be stuck on the floor or wall).

• As a temporary measure, you might use post-it notes to label drawers, cabinets or shelves to note what items will be stored there. This can help if you’re reorganising a kitchen, as the notes can be swapped and changed if you change your mind about assigned homes.