How to Declutter Your House in One Day

Have you ever encountered a healthy person living in a house full of clutter and junk? Probably not!

If this realization hit you because of a phone call from your judgy relatives coming over, we would show you how to declutter things you no longer use to keep your home clean and organized. We know you’ll get started by the end of this article, or maybe you’ve already!

Cluttering Impacts On Mental Health

People often tend to hold on to inanimate objects and associate them with their mental peace. They feel like holding on to things will help them remember specific memories. It is called ‘Memory Hoarding.’ Eliminating junk will help you ease off all the emotional and physical baggage that comes with ‘Memory Hoarding.’
In America, research in 2009 proved that a cluttered environment produced more cortisol among women. Cortisol is a hormone that induces anxiety, stress, and depression when produced in higher amounts. Getting rid of the clutter and organizing your whole house will bring you mental peace and satisfaction.

Decluttering Brings Financial Independence

After getting on top of the clutter, You’ll know everything you have at home and put them in the right place. So next time you go shopping, you won’t overspend on unwanted things just because you misplaced them.
Nearly 59 per cent of Americans spent every penny of their monthly paychecks. In addition, 30% of Americans have between $1,000 and $5,000 in credit card debt, 15% have $5,001 or more in credit card debt, and about 6% have more than $10,000 in credit card debt, according to a recent GO BankingRates survey. As a result, we buy stuff we do not need and end up cluttering our homes and indebting ourselves. Getting your house decluttered helps us not get caught up in a vicious impulse-buying cycle.

Decluttering For a Clutter-Free Home

Instead of diving straight into months of clutter and giving up after getting your hands dirty, you should focus on one room or an area at a time and get it done.
Start by doing the easiest tasks and follow our steps to declutter for the best results.
Focusing on surface decluttering motivates you to dive deep and get more complicated things done once you notice the progress with your own eyes.
First, pick up something that doesn’t belong, such as dirty dishes, laundry, lost socks, broken items, towels, slippers, and everything that contributes to easy or over-the-surface clutter.

Declutter Saves Cleaning for Later

Resist the urge to start cleaning up layers of grime and dust lying underneath the stuff you pick up. If you give in to the temptation of sweeping the floor or dusting the shelves, you will most likely give up after 15 minutes of unintended struggle.
The goal is to declutter and leave the cleaning to another day. Clutter accommodates dirt; if you’re determined to clean the house, stick to decluttering the house first.

Dedicate a Day to Declutter Your Entire Home

As adults, we have hundreds of responsibilities to be taken care of. School picks and drops, house chores, meetings to attend, and things you know that will intervene if you are going to declutter.
If you are keen on organizing and getting rid of all the clutter in your home, you need to make sure you carve out 1 full day for it and take out one item at a time to get it done quickly.
Getting started might be one of the hardest things, but it will be worth it in the end.
If you’ve got one uninterrupted day to focus on an entire mountain of clutter in your house, remember that it can change how your home looks.
Cancel all your usual to-do things for this decluttering session and devote the entire day to your house.

Purge Unnecessary Items

You might come across a million things never put to good use in a trillion lightyears, but you never had an official trash collection day to put away useless stuff.
Take 5 minutes and use plastic bags to bag up everything that needs to be wasted wholeheartedly.
To free up space, you need to remove all the unwanted stuff despite your emotional attachment to it.
When your goal is to organize in a day, make categories for things to be donated, disposed of, recycled, or sold. There are different thrift stores near all of us. Some well-known American thrift stores are the Salvation Army and The goodwill thrift store to pick donations up from your house.
Setting up a garage or yard sale with your neighbours is also a good idea to sell things that are of no use to you anymore.
Set up a ‘Curb Alert’ on Craiglist and watch all your junk disappear like magic!
You could list ‘Curb Alert’ items on craigslist and deliver items you plan to dispose of.

Declutter by Category, Not by Room

Concentrating on every room rather than a category will most likely burn you out after a little effort.
Resist the urge to go room by room because it will shift your focus to a different room if you want to declutter as much as possible.
Start by tidying up areas related to specific categories i-e gather all the laundry in the house and put it in the laundry basket, or start by organizing the cloth wardrobes.
Make a to-do checklist to keep you going in the right direction. If you want an internet variant, there are hundreds available on Pinterest.
The cardboard boxes or trash bags you label relevantly should be your ‘Categorized Dumping Grounds’ for objects of the same kind. Plastic bags are a great tool for keeping as many items as possible.

Declutter on a Budget with Trash Bags

The best way to declutter in a day is to utilize what you have at home instead of spending a fortune on space makers, organizers, and track systems.
Shoeboxes, Drawer organizers and dividers, Bookshelves, Cardboard boxes, and plastic and paper bags will help you keep the clutter at bay.

Divide and Conquer Decluttering

If you cannot do it alone, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Call a friend, ask them for help, or Engage your kids. Engaging your kids helps develop a sense of responsibility among them.
Most people will tell you to shoo your kids and spouse out of the house for a decluttering session; we ask you to do the opposite. If they help you, they will think a hundred times before tossing things around.

Declutter Your Pet’s Area to Create More Space

The pet’s toys should be checked and laundered regularly to save them from mould or harbour bacteria.
Chewed-out rubber or torn-out soft toys should be disposed of immediately instead of later or elsewhere in the house.
Leashes and collars should be checked and replaced to ensure your pet’s safety.
Finally, check for expired items such as cat or dog food in your pantry and throw them out.
Serving expired food mistakenly can cause food poisoning and even a life-threatening situation for your pet.
Any pet food items disliked or disapproved by your pet should be donated or given away, especially when our homes are cluttered.

Decluttering Tips for Hall Closets

Discard broken or torn-out umbrellas, Old and frayed shoes, Hardened up and old leather jackets, and coat shoes you won’t use.
Out-of-season stuff should be organized separately according to the current season. Depending on the closet size, one or two pairs of shoes I-e, flip flops for hot weather and snow boots for cold, should be kept in the closet for each person.
In addition, we should hang outerwear such as raincoats and jackets just in case. The remaining out-of-season shoes and outerwear should be double-wrapped in huge plastic bags and stored in a dry and non-humid place.
Clothes you have grown out of, ill-fitted clothes, and out-of-fashion stuff you do not wear or like anymore should be donated to people in need.

Kitchen Decluttering:

Check out all the kitchen cabinets and your pantry; watch out for expired items such as canned food and beverages.
Moving to the kitchen will help you notice that countertops are the literal dumping grounds for random paperwork such as mail, bills, bank statements, etc. Stack them up neatly and put them in a separate paper bag to be read later.
Relocate extra dishes, plates, and cutlery to empty cabinets.
Give away machinery and electric appliances that do not work anymore. Also, donate food that you do not intend to eat.
Dirty dishes should be put into a dishwasher or basin, and spices should be placed into a spice rack. For convenience, we should devote a separate cabinet to an entire section i-e one for herbs and sauce, one for cutlery and extra dishes, etc. If you don’t have a separate pantry, you should put all the food items and beverages in one cabinet.

Living Room and Dining Room

Gather old newspapers and put them in recycling boxes; broken toys and games with missing puzzle pieces into the disposal; dispose of dirty table linen, candles, and ashtrays with cigarette stuff. Don’t forget to shred paperwork containing personal information before putting it into the trash.
Put repair items you planned to repair in a separate box or container, such as cushion covers, Curtains with broken hangings. Put items like torn-out upholstery on your repair list. Finally, put that unread book into the bookshelves back where it belongs since you haven’t touched it for days!
Put away dishes and cutlery that are not being used on the dining table.

Home Office or Workspace

Sometimes, multitasking hurts your mental health by releasing more cortisol stress hormones. If you want to be able to focus, keeping these spaces tidy is all your need for peace of mind. Clear up your working space first, which includes your desk, of course. When collecting and piling up all the paperwork, ensure you shred all the papers that are supposed to be wasted.
Use different folders and files to pile up documents belonging to other natures. For important documents, use additional coloured files and label them. It will save you a lot of time and effort next time you plan to declutter your entire home in a single day!

Bedroom Decluttering:

All you need for peace of mind is a clean and tidy bedroom. Looking under the bed is a great start! Take out any object that needs to be disposed of or relocated and put them in the appropriate stack. Remove expired or empty makeup on your dressing table.
Put away the things you use daily such as your skincare products or everyday makeup, on your dresser; the rest can be stored in the drawers beneath.
Similarly, the bedding should be changed twice a week, if not daily, as they can be the breeding ground for bacteria and various parasites. So change your bedding twice a week to be a bit more on the hygienic side.
Nobody likes a bed with pillows and cushions; put the extra ones in the linen closet.

Wardrobes, Linen Closet, and Medicine Cabinets

Firstly take out all those body care products, detergents, laundry softeners, expired meds in your med cabinet, and relevant stuff you do not intend to use. Donate or discard them accordingly.
Make different sections for everything, such as storage boxes or organizers to place body care products, Toiletries, bedsheets, and comforters, and tag them if needed. Wardrobes in the rest of the house should be organized and decluttered according to everybody’s needs.
We should keep towels and bed accessories in the linen closet daily after usage.

Bathroom Decluttering:

Use a bathroom organizer rack to get more organized and clean up. Next, if you clean out your bathroom cabinet, eliminate expired medicines and body care products that you know you might not use later.
Try to organize things that you use daily, i.e., toiletries and body care products, in different sections on the rack. You don’t have to think a lot over it; put the haircare products on the top shelf, facial care beneath, and body care products at the bottom on a 3-tier frame.

Garage, Attic, Basement, and Store-room:

Decluttering your entire house also includes areas like the garage, attic, basement, and store room which will most likely be left unattended. We suggest you organize them on another day since you’ve done a good job hoarding them with every kind of junk possible. Hence decluttering them requires one full day.
But if you are determined to do it on the same day, it is possible to declutter your house, including your garage. Start by moving all the items against the wall. You’ll now have empty spaces in between to move around.
We suggest you buy tool organizing racks for tools such as wrenches, pliers, hammers, nails, car jacks, etc. Auction out kids’ old bicycles and toys in a garage sale or thrift store to make more space.
Use garage shelving and track systems to make the most of vertical space.
Use cartons and cardboard boxes. Put the same kind of things into each box and label them. You will have a lot of empty spaces to fill in next time while decluttering in a day!

ALSO READ How To Declutter Your Garage Quickly In Easy Steps

Wrapping up Decluttering Process

Decluttering might be an energy drainer for many people, and you might start feeling overwhelmed. But following these great tips will make half of your worries wash down the drain along with all the mind clutter. After everything is put back where it belongs and all of your boxes have been emptied through donating, recycling, selling, and throwing out – congratulations!

It’s time to give yourself the gift of having a clutter-free home. So make yourself a cup of hot chocolate and enjoy your accomplishment! First, get inspired by this article if you need to declutter your home in one day. Then, let your friends and family know about these simple yet effective decluttering tips, and encourage them to start decluttering too!

Do what you love, spend what you have, and invest what you earn. Don’t waste your time, money, or energy on the things you don’t love.