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Are you feeling a little demotivated after Christmas and out of sorts from the clutter that's built up in your home over the last few weeks. It’s time to start working on decluttering your home, think Marie Kondo and you’ll be done in no time. If you’re not sure where to start, keep reading to check out our list of useful tips for decluttering your home in the new year. 

Make A Plan 

Although this list is in no particular order we would recommend that the first step you take to decluttering your home is to make a plan. Once you’ve made a plan this will give you something to work towards and tick off to see the progress that you’ve made over time. This can be a very loose plan listing the order of rooms that you’d like to work in or can detail the specific tasks that you’d like to get done in each room.

Work In One Room At A Time 

As we’ve just mentioned, making a plan of the order of rooms to work in will help you see the progress you are making in decluttering your home, this leads onto another tip of only working in one room at one time. There is nothing worse than having your whole house turned upside down because you're on a decluttering spree. You can avoid this by starting and finishing one room before moving onto the next room, this way each of the tidy rooms that you see will help to motivate you to keep going with those that you have left. 

Use Hacks When Tidying Things Away

There are so many hacks out there for everything from cleaning your windows with vinegar to storing your bed sheets into it’s matching pillowcase to save space and keep everything in one place. When decluttering your home, life hacks are your best friend, defined as “a simple and clever tip or technique for accomplishing familiar tasks more easily and efficiently”, why wouldn’t you want to make things easier for yourself. We know how annoying it can be to put things away every five minutes, especially when children are around, so why not try labelling some boxes to keep in the house where you can filter all of the things that need to be moved into the relevant boxes. Think of it as filing your belongings away, you might consider labelling your boxes with; things to put away, donations and things to sell. This hack will help you decide quickly where things should go, you should follow your instinct when it comes to putting things into these boxes as this will help you declutter your home of things that you don’t need or have value to you. 

Set A Timer To Declutter Each Room 

If you’re someone who dreads the thought of decluttering your home and can find it hard to pluck up the courage to start, why not try setting yourself a short time limit to work towards getting as much done as possible in this time. By setting yourself a time limit, this will help you move your focus to how much time you have left rather than the work that you have to do in the room, helping you work more productively. 

Keep Your Mind Decluttered 

It sounds really odd, but by making sure other areas of your life are not cluttered will help you when it comes to decluttering your home. Other areas of your life that can be decluttered are; to make sure that your emails are tidy and easy to find, ensure that all messages are read and you don’t have heaps of spam emails that never get read. Cleaning other areas such as your car that you regularly spend time in will help to not only keep your environment decluttered but also your mind. Nobody wants a cluttered mind do they? 

Designate Specific Areas For Things 

By designating specific areas for things such as children's toys, paperwork, cleaning equipment etc this will help you know exactly where things need to go when decluttering your home. In turn, helping you to get the task done quicker as well as avoiding shoving stuff into an area just to tidy the areas visible to people. By doing this everyone in this house will know where things need to go so there is no confusion between those tidying things away.  

Check Expiry Dates On Items 

You might be thinking, how will checking expiry dates on items help when decluttering your home? Well, by throwing out all of the items in your house past the expiry date this will ensure that you are not hoarding items of food, toiletries, makeup etc that you won't be able to use. Freeing up space that can be used more efficiently. 

Discard Things That Don't Spark Joy

Marie Kondo who we briefly mentioned earlier, has a hit Netflix series which uses tidying expertise to help those she visits to declutter their home. The method she advocates is to discard items that don’t spark joy to your life, ensuring that all the items you own have a purpose and will be used. 

She also suggests working by categories when decluttering your home rather than room, so if you’re not a fan of choosing one room at a time this may be the option for you. 

Purchase Some Storage Solutions 

To help organise your belongings, you may find storage solutions useful to help separate draws and cupboards into creating more spaces to store your items. These can often be found in IKEA and other homeware or discount stores.  

Alternatively, if you have larger items that require storage solutions, have you considered self-storage facilities? This way you’ll be able to keep larger items that are not currently needed, away from cluttering up areas of your home. Check out our sister company Plymouth Self Storagefor more information. 

From your clearout, you may be left wondering what to do with unwanted items and furniture, don’t worry we have you covered, check out our website to find out what you can do. Overall you can see that there are many tips that can help when decluttering your home this new year and we’ve just covered a few. If you’ve found any useful tips when decluttering your home be sure to share these with us Facebook & Twitter to help pass the message onto others currently in this process.