When faced with me nagging encouraging him to clear out the clutter in the loft office prior to our planned redecoration, The Brainy One admitted he didn’t know where to start.
“Not to worry,” I trilled cheerfully. “I have a plan!”
- Know your limitations – don’t try and clear everything in one go.
- Pick your weapons – bin bags, access to a shredder and a box for recycling make for a good starting point.
- Decide where it’s all going next – there’s no point in moving stuff from Point A to Point B if you have no idea what you’re then going to with it.
- Enlist help – don’t try and do it all yourself.
- Take coffee breaks – but set a time limit of around 20 minutes.
- Don’t be distracted – don’t start reading through all those school reports or letters. Save that for a later date, if you’ve decided to keep whatever it was you were distracted by.
- Follow the one-year rule (or maybe the two-year rule during a global pandemic) – if you haven’t used or looked at something in a year or more, you can live without it.
- Finish the job – sounds obvious, but don’t walk away leaving your clutter only partially sorted.
- Put things back in an organised fashion – dust/wipe things down before putting back in a box or filing cabinet, sort paperwork by year, keep related items together. For things that you are disposing of, book a slot for the local tip/recycling centre and make use of Freecycle or Gumtree.
- Keep up the momentum – you’ll be so glad you did 🙂
This West London Life 
Good advice! I always stick to the rules that my kids were given when studying for exams at school. Allocate a set amount of time for the job then have a break of a designated time scale. Don’t let break time be longer than chore time! Don’t tackle everything at once, only aim to do what you could expect to do within that time slot. Break things down into smaller jobs, better to finish three small chores than not finish one big one. And most importantly end the day with a personal treat to acknowledge how well you have done!
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This is all sound advice and I particularly like the tip to reward yourself at the end! 🙂
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Both you & Deb have offered some sound advice/wisdom for decluttering tasks. Mr Man & I yet to tackle the cupboard, 3 shelves, of mugs. The mugs for some reason represent a lot of emotion to the events or jobs from which they came from, so these wise tips should get us started, a shelf at a time. 🙂
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One shelf/step at a time … and it’s surprising how emotive a collection of mugs can be. 🙂
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Perfect plan! We’re still going through boxes of old family memorabilia, but this is the look-at-everything sort & is taking some time. For the rest of the items in that closet, I’ve got almost everything sorted & processed. Recycling bin was full for pickup this week & there’s a bag of donatable items ready to drop off next week.
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Fun to think that we’re thousands of miles apart and yet we’re doing the same thing. 🙂
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