Set aside a cardboard box for stuff you haven’t used in years but you’d hate to throw away because it’s still useful. When the box fills up, drop it off at the thrift store and get another box
Focus on maximizing empty horizontal surface space.
Explanation
Have you ever noticed that restaurants and bars often decorate their walls with stuff that would easily be considered clutter on the floor?
Apparently “clutter” is a highly relative descriptor, and the visual-spatial bias behind it privileges horizontal surface space.
You can leverage that knowledge to quickly de-clutter spaces without investing in lots of new storage furniture and organization systems.
It’s by far the cheapest trick I know.
How (basic)
Move and reorient items from horizontal surfaces to vertical ones.
Horizontal surfaces include table tops, floors, chair seats, and so forth.
Vertical surfaces are everything else: shelves, hanging storage, stackable cubes, upright bins, baskets that can sit on top of cabinets, boxes that slide under beds, wall-mounted anything, shelving beneath any horizontal surface, any storage above eye level, etc.
Even just stacking things can make a space look less cluttered.
How (advanced)
Once you start getting creative with this concept, you can build it into the planning of your living space.
For example, you might figure out what stuff can live in wall-mounted dispensers instead of occupying the space of a counter/vanity/floor.
Similarly, you might find visually appealing ways to store “clutter” out in the open, such as a ceiling-mounted pot rack or a stainless steel prep table used as kitchen island storage.
One of my favorite side-effects of this technique is that once you’ve minimized the footprint of items lying on horizontal surfaces, cleaning becomes a snap.
For example, fewer obstructions on the floor lets you use cheap sweeper bots on a schedule that keep interior dust levels low.
Likewise, wiping off counter tops and bathroom vanities takes mere seconds when you don’t have to move anything.
ETA: tldr — “picking up,” interpreted literally, is an endlessly useful principle of housekeeping.
I have the exact same problem, this is what I’ve been trying these last weeks and I’m already seeing some improvement.
I started by setting up three easy daily tasks:
- pick up all dirty clothes for laundry
- sweep all the floors
- clean the dishes
I don’t do very thorough sweep, just so it looks clean but since I have to do it every day something gets tickled in my brain that tries to find something to sweep because the broom is not picking anything, so I just recently realised that I’ve been moving out the way or completely removing stuff that impeded me from sweeping small corners that I didn’t sweep the day before.
I’m so happy with how it is working that I’m about to add dusting into the routine. If the same logic applies, I’ll be throwing away lots of stuff that make dusting harder.
I started doing it to learn to adopt habits and clean more often, the decluttering part was unexpected but welcomed. I still have a long way to go but I feel optimist.
Invite a judgemental friend or relative over for dinner. Best way to force you to clean and declutter your space.
Honestly inviting anyone over is motivation for me to clean. In my own space, there’s stuff everywhere, but when someone’s coming my standards for personal cleanliness and organization shoot up dramatically.
Abdication is both quick and brutal.
Buy a small box (should be about the size of a cat; not too big and not too small) you can put in a place where you’ll see it frequently but it’s not in the way.
This box is your “physical inbox”. Any clutter you find or anything in your space that is out of place or doesn’t have a good ‘home’ goes in this box.
Once a week (or more often if you’d like), go through the inbox and resolve or find a new proper home for each item (even if get home is the trash).
I don’t use a box but I do the same thing. I call it a junk pile. If it topples over or I have nothing else to do, then I just start working on the junk pile. That means cleaning it or adding to it. Sure that one spot will never be clean but now at least the rest of the house is.
Vital to get into the habit of only putting clutter in that spot, though. Having a physical inbox is useless if you still put junk everywhere else (unless you are really good at scanning the rest of the areas to declutter to the inbox).
Take a weekend to thoroughly clean your home. At the end, take a mental snapshot of each room and each surface.
Going forward, at the end of each night before bed, reset each space back to that mental snapshot you have of how that space should look when it’s “clean”.
Doing this every day ensures that mess never gets out of hand.
Thinking of it as a “room reset” rather than cleaning” helps my perfectionism from jumping in and having me end up cleaning the baseboards every night.
Use the Poop Method
“If this object had poop on it, would I wash it, or throw it away?”
That explains my hand-me-down family poop knife.
oh dear god… there are two poop knifes in the world?!
More proof that poop knives are real things!
Thank you for helping me settle a marital dispute that has been running for 10 years. 🙂
I know a guy that had one in his house as a child. True story!
I had one growing up on a farm. We had to cut the large turds up so the septic system could handle them.
Guess I’m not brushing my teeth anymore.
Stares uncomfortably at wooden cutting board.
just give it a good wipe down of food quality mineral oil every so often
what, the poop??
Well that’s a super-cool website!
Ohhh, POOP!
People Order Our Patties!
Register poopmethod.com, put static text on it and some ads, you’ll make millions with the productivity people.
On it, might as well “write” and publish an ebook on Amazon!
best tip - stop buying shit you don’t need and throw\give shit away you don’t use.
Take pics of sentimental things of little value. Then throw out the thing and keep the pic
Make an album with the pics. Once that album is full, take a pic of the album and throw it away.
When’s the last time you actually used the item, whether it’s clothing, an appliance, dishes, etc? Some things only have a special purpose (holiday decorations, seasonal clothing), but if the item has no special purpose and you haven’t used it in the past 5 years and holds no sentimental value, you should toss or donate it.
A note on sentimental value: If you are tying sentimental value to EVERYTHING or dozens of things of the same type (I don’t mean a collection, I’m talking like “My dad died 10 years ago and instead of keeping 1 or 2 shirts he really liked, I’m keeping his entire wardrobe in 10 crappy old carboard boxes in my living room and they’re all full of clothes moths now, but I won’t throw them away because they have sentimental value to me” kind of behavior), this is an unhealthy coping mechanism that you should address with yourself or with help from a therapist.
Once you have your stuff narrowed down, find a place for each item, and then that’s where that thing lives. The place they live must be reasonable and logical. Clean clothes live in the closet/dresser, they do not live on the floor, draped across furniture, or in the hamper after you’ve washed/dried them.
Appliances live in one spot on your kitchen counter, or in a cabinet/cupboard. Books live on the bookshelf unless you’re actively reading them. Knick knacks live on the shelf, not the floor or in a box on the floor because you plan to some day put them on the shelf and just haven’t gotten around to it. If you’re not gonna put them on the shelf within the next month, box that shit up and put the box in a closet/garage/attic, etc. Storage is an acceptable place for a thing to live, provided you have the room and you’re not just accumulating crap and storing it like a squirrel with nuts that are then forgotten about a month later.
FOOD GETS STORED IN THE KITCHEN. Do not store the half-eaten box of crackers on your nightstand or on the floor next to the couch. Do you want ants? That’s how you get ants.
The food one is very good.
Moving to another continent with just two suitcases
- Don’t buy crap
- Don’t keep crap (recycle, don’t trash them)
- Stop wishing of buying more crap.
Any impression this incredibly wise list of advice could be based on personal experience (and on multiple failures at following them) would be correct. My life changed and the clutter vanished the day I stopped wanting to buy always more stuff and decided to only keep what was… worth keeping aka actually of any use/importance.
What do I do if most of my clutter is previously purchased crap that I don’t know how to responsibly dispose of? The recycling facilities in my area are awful. I literally have bags/boxes of shit that I feel too bad to throw in the waste.
- You look for alternative. I’m not what you mean by awful but I would go to another one. So, I would start by searching where they are located and when they’re open. Here where I live I can call a number in tow town and get someone to come pick a few cubic meters of trash, for free. That’s limited (in volume and type of stuff they will collect) but it works well and it should be easy for you to check with your own city if they offer such a service.
- Also: you can try to donate stuff, thrift stores, yard sales,…
- If that does not cut it, you need to focus. I mean, don’t try to get rid of everything at once. It won’t end well. And be fine with trashing stuff. Work one box/bag/closet/drawer/room at a time. Make sure to put aside the things you really need to keep and then put the rest in trash bags. Since you made sure there was no alternatives to trashing them, you should not feel bad… use that as a reminder to not buy crap anymore after that.
- If it’s too much work for you it should be easy to hire some youngster/teen you may know or from the neighborhood willing to help you and earn some cash while doing so.
I sometimes order stuff off of temu or wish. You know, those situations where “crap quality product” is what you’re actually after.
But I have a rule of never ordering before a week has passed. If I still need or want the item after a week, the purchase can be justified, but I have to pick an item I already have to get rid of first.
One piece of crap in means one piece of crap out.
Things I’ve bought like this: Phone holder for my night stand (a simple one that allowed me to keep my phone in portrait mode. I WFH with my bed as my “office”).
Maunesium (the kids were curious once I mentioned that metal can burn). Moisture detection stickers (they turned out pretty good, actually. I use them at work all the time).But I have a rule of never ordering before a week has passed
This a great way, I used to do that at the beginning but I don’t need to anymore… I simply don’t want to buy anything anymore unless I really need it.
Regarding phone holders: I made mine out of… cardboard, recycled from the phone packaging. Contrary to what many people think cardboard can be real sturdy (and is very easy to work with) ;)
Get rid of stuff you don’t need.
Yes, you might save 20 bucks in five years by saving that plastic widget, but you’d have to pay loads more than 20 bucks to store that thing somewhere.
Also that “sparks joy”-lady has a point.
Occasionally get drunk and break things. When sober throw Away broken things.
Only keep things that are functional, attractive or sentimental. I like the poop plan for things that are on the edge of these.
