181 | 5 Things to Declutter Today

 Decluttering a few things today is better than not purging anything at all. You have to begin this process somewhere. And when your goal is to have a more organized home, you want to be able to find things easily when you’re looking for something. If you need it, you need to be able to access it. The only way to do this is. To start this big organizing project with the decluttering process the decluttering has to take place before the organizing today i’m going to share five things that you can easily de-clutter in every room of your home to start this a process right now

You want to get organized and you have been listening to the intentional edit podcast for a while. Now, then you know that when you start an organizing project and you have goals of a long term organization, there’s one thing you have to do first. It is [00:02:00] significant. And if you decide to skip it and simply organize the clutter, you will not be able to sustain the work that you put in and you won’t get the benefits of these long lasting long-term results.

So, if you want to start this process and this big project of getting organized. Then you have to do the purging first. That’s the first step. I’m always going to tell you that any organizer is going to tell you, you have to get the clutter out of there. You have to remove that clutter before you can do the physical part of the organization.

 There are three things that are imperative for you to do for anyone to do really for longterm organization to actually have the results that you want, a bringing less stress to your life and keeping your home so that it is functioning for your family. The decluttering is the first step. It’s always the first step you have to declutter.

You have to purge. That’s the same thing. Then you can do the organizing. The organizing comes after you have removed all the clutter. And the third part happens kind of simultaneously with the organizing. But really step three is implementing the intentional routines and coming up with those, creating those intentional routines. And the goal with the routines is that they eventually become habits to maintain the organization in your home. The reason you need these routines in addition to maintaining the organization is because this is what simplifies everything.

When you put those three steps together, the purging, the organizing, and the good routines, those systems that we have in place. It manages the physical thing. So all of the objects in your home are put back because they have a place to go because you’re organized, but it also manages how everything functions and you create these intentional routines to make your home run as smooth as it possibly can because the routines eventually become habits and they become the way that you do [00:04:00] things.

And the way that you go about your day to truly simplify every. Everything. And that’s where the ease of the day-to-day tasks. Checking things off the list and making everything as simple as possible. That’s where that comes into play. And that’s why I say, when you reduce the mess, you stress less because all of these things now are happy and they’re getting checked off the list because it’s just the way that you do things.

And that leaves you with more time to spend doing the things that you actually want to be doing. I teach all of this in a very detailed way, broken out for you by every single room of your house in the simplified home masterclass. that is available. You can click on that in the podcast description. If you’re ready to skip ahead and go straight to the masterclass, the link is available there.

If you want a small dose of this, just to see how it works, sign up for the challenge that is also available. It is so simple. Sign up it’s five weeks. It’s the symbol home habits, five week challenge. And that link is also in the podcast description. Wherever, you’re listening to this. Scroll down to the description, click on the link. You can sign up for it. You can start it whenever you want, but it’s a five week challenge that helps you.

Do one, a decluttering task each week making a. Intentional routine that goes along with that. So you can see how these three, three things play into each other and work together to give you ultimate organization and bring that simplicity to your home. By adding into the routines you want to do the organization. You have the desire to have this organized home that flows easily, and you want to remove some of the stress and the overwhelm, and you have to have those three things. You have to do the decluttering. And then the organizing and you for sure have to add in those intentional routines and systems to keep everything.

Going as smooth as it possibly can. Today, I’m going [00:06:00] to give you five things that you can declutter today, kind of to kickstart your journey. These are easy tasks that you can do. All you really have to get is a box for donations and a large trash bag. And you can get started on this and tackle these five things today or this week.

T think about taking this a step further and turning that desire into something that is an action that you decided to take. Instead of talking about wanting to have an organized house or one day you will have an organized house. Take action on that. If that means joining the five week challenge, the simple home has its challenge. Then start there otherwise get the simplified home masterclass, the sooner you get it. And I start going through each module.

Which teaches you how to organize declutter and create those systems. And we go through the decluttering and the organizing of every individual room in your house. So there is a lot of detail in this program. The sooner you start, the sooner you see results and you get to that end result. Of an organized home that is streamlined with good systems in place.

That allow your home to function better and simplify all the daily tasks and chores. Because you took the time to set up the systems properly. for today, let’s talk about the five projects that I’m going to give you. So when you are done listening to this episode, grab a box for donations and a large trash bag for the trash.

get to work on these projects. The first thing that I want you to remove from your house, because you can declutter this stuff easily are the boxes and the packaging materials that come when something is brought into your home, something new. If it is shipped to you, if you get a delivery, if you love placing online orders and you know, these boxes come to you, and if you are in the habit of opening the box or the package and not throwing it away or [00:08:00] recycling it right away, then these are piling up.

Somewhere, if you are keeping the extra packaging or you’re just not taking the time to get rid of it, your assignment for today is to go get those boxes, break them down, put them in the recycle, Recycle all of those materials that can be recycled trash, the rest.

And get that stuff out of there purge those things. So that would be number one. The second thing that you can tackle are anything along the lines of junk mail, flyers, newspapers. Catalogs magazines, all of that stuff. If you haven’t looked at it and it’s more than a week old. Go ahead and put it in the recycle. If it can’t be recycled, then put it in the trash. If you have large quantities of catalogs and magazines that are school appropriate. A lot of times teachers, especially art teachers love to do projects with these. You can donate these to your kids at school, but if that is not an option for you, at least recycle them and get them out of your house, remove them from your house.

They’re dust collectors, and they are simply clutter. So that’s the second thing. The third thing. Is anything that is broken or anything that is staying, and you’re not going to use it again. If you have been hiding it away, thinking that you’re going to fix it, or try to remove the stain for more than six months.

Remove it from your home, it has become clutter. It’s collecting dust. It’s not doing anything for you. You’re not going to fix it in the future. Give yourself permission to let it go. If it’s still partially functioning and you feel like it can be donated, then place it in your box to donate. Otherwise, put it in the trash. It is trash because it is right now, clutter, it’s not being used. It’s not going to be used in the future. So that would be the third thing. The fourth category of things that you can get rid of right now is anything that is expired or really old, where you think that it might be expired [00:10:00] or not be good anymore or anything that.

It would be stale, so expired, stale, or really old items. That can not be used because they are past their dates. These can be found in usually the bathroom or medicine cabinets, the pantry where you keep your food. Even thing is that you may have put in the freezer. If it’s past a couple of years, it’s time to get rid of those. Use your best judgment on this.

But take your trash bag in. And really go through these items, look for the dates. Something is, do not last as long as you think, especially in the makeup categories. And there are other episodes that you can listen to from the intentional edit podcast that gives you more specific dates on how long makeup lasts.

It’s definitely not as long as you think. take the time to look through these items and throw away all of the things that could be doing more harm than good and are definitely not doing you any good by just sitting on yourselves and filling up your drawers, taking up space, because they’re really clutter. They’re not adding to your life.

They’re taking away from it because they are clutter that you’re having to manage on a daily basis. That was number four. The fifth thing is anything that you haven’t used in the last one to two years. A lot of organizing experts will even shrink that timeline down significantly more, but I’m going to give you one to two years.

If it has not been used in one to two years or more, Remove it from your home, put it in the box for donations and once your box is full, grab another one. If you need to put it in the back of your car and take it to your Preference for where you want to donate things, remove it from your house, get it out of your home.

Stop managing and maintaining this clutter remove some of these things by purging and decluttering. All of the things that you no longer need, use, or want I’m going to go over that list of the five categories that we talked about. Again, the first one was the [00:12:00] packaging and the boxes.

All of that type of staff can be recycled. The second thing, junk mail, newspapers, catalogs, flyers, all of that kind of stuff. Go from room to room. If you have a stack of magazines and catalogs, Kellogg’s next to your bed, but you rarely read those. Get those out of there, free up the space. Don’t let it be a burden to you because you keep thinking that you’re going to read it. But instead that you’re not getting to the reading and you’re not looking at the pictures and that stack just keeps growing, remove the clutter.

The third thing is anything that’s broken or stained. The fourth thing is expired items or things that are stale and no longer can be used. And the fifth part of this is the things that are in your home and taking up your space that have not been used in more than one to two years. This should be a great kickstart for you to start the purging.

With the result in mind that your home is going to be organized and orderly and function better for your family. Start with these things. Think about signing up for the simplified home masterclass. Or joining us in the simple home habits, five week challenge. A simple project with minimal supplies. Like I shared with you today, because all you need for this is a trash bag and a box for donations.

And you can be all set to remove these unwanted items from your home. This is a great kickstart to your decluttering journey, and that is the journey that will eventually get you to an organized simplified home.