One project we’ve been working on in our home at the start of this fall season is some decluttering in our home. With very little time to be able to tackle such a large project, here are a few tips to help you be successful in decluttering your home one drawer or cabinet at a time.
We were starting to feel a little overwhelmed with our living environment. Not to say that it was over the top but just starting to feel a little too busy for our liking. So we set off by doing a simple decluttering project that wasn’t too overwhelming.
Tips to Decluttering with little time
The first tip is to go through one drawer, cabinet, or cupboard at a time. Don’t try to tackle an entire kitchen, bathroom, bedroom or pantry in one decluttering session. You will get decision fatigue quickly with having to make too many decisions on what to keep, donate, or toss.
The second tip is to decide what to keep by what you love, what you use, or what you might use in the future. If you don’t love it, don’t use it, or don’t plan to use it, then you should get rid of it. If it is worth donating for someone else to get some use out of than you can donate but otherwise you should just toss it.
The third tip is to use what you have already to help organize a drawer or cupboard. If you have extra containers, organizers or other things you can re-purpose use them instead of going out and buying new ones. As buying new ones, will ultimately be adding to what you have and possibly create unwanted clutter.
The fourth tip is to take breaks. If you get to a point where you are having a hard time making a decision of whether to keep or get rid of your things, you probably could use a break. Refresh your mind as best you can and get back to it by telling yourself that you just need to finish the drawer, cabinet or cupboard that you are working on.
Our Decluttering Project
Our kitchen was a great place for us to start because we do so much cooking and canning and have a lot of kitchen appliances, utensils and gadgets. We initially had a bucket on the counter that held our utensils but we wanted to clear the counter tops. Therefore, we set out to move our utensils into a drawer instead of being on the counter. We put a divider in one of our drawers in an effort to help organize these utensils in the drawer.
We have come to realize that despite having multiples of the same cooking utensil, that we typically use the same ones over and over again. So we went through our utensils by keeping the ones we like and use the most and getting rid of the ones that we didn’t like or didn’t use.
While one drawer ended up being two drawers, we are still pretty pleased with our new utensil organization. In one drawer, we have spatulas, whisks and other utensils on one side and wooden spoons on the other side. In the second drawer, we have knives and other utensils that were too large or just didn’t fit in the divided drawer.
Then we kept going through our kitchen and just kind of doing the same process. Simply by closely examining what we have, what we use and what we actually need to keep. And we were surprised to find that that we filled a box with kitchen items we donate or save for our next yard sale.
Our Decluttering Goals
Just by going through our kitchen and going through a few of our cupboards and drawers like this, we were able to pare down a lot of our kitchen utensils and items. Surprisingly, this simple task gave us a lot more room in our cupboards and drawers making it feel less cluttered.
We want to keep doing this just by going through our whole house and tackling one area at a time. Even if it’s a small area or just one drawer at a time and eventually tackle the entire house. In this way will be living as minimally as we possibly can. Our hope is that it will help our home environment to have a more relaxing and calm feel to it.
Not that we don’t feel like our home isn’t like that now but just that when your house is cluttered and busy then it can cause your mind to feel cluttered and busy too. Which we feel can directly prevent us from being as productive as we can possibly be.
We’d love to hear what you think about our project. We’d also love to hear if you have decluttering projects you are working on. Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for stopping by and visiting Sunup to Sundown! We’ll be back soon with another recipe or update regarding our garden or our journey to becoming more self-reliant.
