Decluttering your things will instantly make your house spacious and neater. Actually, you can tidy up many things that pile up every day, won’t use anymore, or have worn down through time.
You can reuse, store, donate, or discard them—it’s up to you. But if you’d want to make an extra buck and the item is in fairly good condition, consider doing a garage sale.
As for keeping your house clean and organized year round, here are the items you should look out for when you declutter:
1) General Waste
Empty pens, discarded paper, grocery receipts, gift tags, and more are the first things you should discard. They are easy and light to throw away, but they can pile up easily day after day.
It’s better if you throw away plastic bottles before you get home so you’d have less clutter to worry about. Make sure you throw them in bins labeled for recycling or recyclable items.
For food wrappers, you should consume them immediately to minimize your waste at home and then dispose of them in the garbage. That way you’ll have less cleaning up to do afterward.
2) Bathroom Items
Move to the bathroom and remove expired items like aspirin, lotion, mouthwash, and soap, among others. Next, replace old toothbrushes, shavers, blackened containers, and the like.
Collect them all in a garbage bin or brown paper bag and put them into the main trash bin so you don’t have to make multiple trips to carry the rest of the litter out.
After you’ve done them, clean and arrange all the bathroom things to make the room look nice and organized for those who use it.
3) Clothing and Footwear
Place all the scattered clothing in your closet on the bed. Fold and arrange your clothes the Marie Kondo way (if you know how to) or just properly, like you always do.
About the KonMari way, it’s kind of like arranging things in a minimalist and eye-pleasing way.
Some of what she recommends is to sort out items by categories and arrange clothes vertically in a rectangular case to save space, instead of stacking them on top of each other.
If there are clothes you won’t use, you might consider giving them to a relative or to charity. As a result, you can make a person happy and give them something to use; make sure the clothes should be clean and decent.
Furthermore, shoes, sandals, and slippers can be lined together on shoe racks. Not only does using a shoe rack tidy up your footwear, but it can also leave you with plenty of space to use for other things.
4) Plates, Pots, Cutlery, and Food
Your kitchen also needs to be decluttered especially since there are a lot of kitchenware and utensils there.
First, you can throw away and replace stained plates and rusty kitchenware with new ones. Food safety and hygiene should always be on the top of your list even though it may cost you a little.
Stack similar plates on top of each other, and store the juicer and pitcher in the cupboards. If you have collected toothpicks from restaurants, you can tear open the plastic and place them all in a case.
Straws can look disorganized when opened from its plastic, so we suggest keeping this inside the refrigerator. But when you’ve used them all, don’t buy a new one since they’re bad for the planet.
Speaking of fridges, arrange the veggies and fruit while making great use of the space inside. Also, discard expired food, group items together, and try to finish a drink that only has a little left.
5) Broken Gizmos and Furniture
The likeliest place where you can find these junk items must be your basement or attic. Having them around serves to only make these areas dingier and more cramped.
If you can, try to get torn pieces of furniture repaired and steam-cleaned because they could still be revived. Give old smartphones to a recycling company, sell broken gadgets to the junk shop, and then do a dust-busting cleanup.
Moreover, for heavier-to-move boxes, furniture parts, and steel, it may be best to call a junk removal company. They will handle all the heavy lifting for you and leave your place clean just like before.
