Five decluttering tips to restore your calm

By Kaya 959 Lifestyle

If you felt the urge to declutter and organise your home during the pandemic lockdown, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Home after all is where we’ve been spending most of our time, so tackling the clutter was just a natural side effect of our lives becoming simpler over the last year and a half.

Besides making a space more organised and making it look better, decluttering can also improve your mental wellbeing.

By ordering the things you can control, like your own possessions and the space around you, your mind instantly feels calmer, and has a better ability to focus, process information and see the bigger picture.

But while you may be feeling the urge to declutter, you may also be feeling a bit overwhelmed about how to start. Here are five steps to get you going:

READ: Hoarding: Are you a clutter freak, how to clean up your closet

1. Imagine your space

Before you start tossing things into cardboard boxes, start with a vision of how you want your space to look and feel. Grab your favourite home décor mag or start pinning a Pinterest board to get you inspired and to visualise your ideas. Having a clear idea of what you’re after can make you more motivated to start.

2. Start small

If like most of us you’ve spent years, or even decades accumulating stuff, getting rid of it can feel like too much to face. But rather ignoring the problem, approach your decluttering mission as you would with any other big project: take it one step at a time. Try dedicating an hour or two a day to the task, or start with a single drawer or shelf in one room. Breaking it down into bite-sized chunks can help you break that mental barrier.

3. Tackle the space that bothers you the most

Whether it’s your bedside table that’s driving you crazy, the “catch-all” kitchen drawer overflowing with takeaway menus or the garage that’s harbouring dusty DIY tools you bought during lockdown but never used, start with the part of your house that causes you the most anxiety. By facing your biggest problem area first, you’ll feel more satisfied to continue through the rest. Another option is to start with the area that impacts your daily life the most, such as that Tupperware cupboard in your kitchen, or your bathroom vanity.

4. Don’t forget the big stuff

Many people focus on the small items when decluttering, such as papers, books, ornaments or toys. But too much furniture in a room – or objects that are too large for it – can also make it seem crowded. Jocasta von Merveldt, owner of interior design company Curtain Drops, advises that you think about your room in terms of spatial balance. “Make sure your bedside tables are proportionate to your large king-sized bed, for example,” she says. “And in your lounge, couches and chairs should fit in a way that you can still move around them easily.”

If you can’t change your couches, maybe a solution is to swap out your large coffee table for a smaller version, or perhaps take out your multiple chests of drawers and replace them with one sleek bookshelf?

Customised furniture and storage is fast becoming a popular design solution, such as these customisable bookshelves from Mable – a local furniture company manufacturing modern bookshelves made from Baltic birch plywood. Functional, but also a design element, these type of storage solutions look good, stores all your goodies and also fits your space perfectly.

READ: Unathi normalizes going to therapy and talking about mental health

5. Declutter by category, not room

In her KonMari method, decluttering queen Marie Kondo recommends you sort your possessions by category rather than by room. So when it comes to your clothes, for example, create a pile of every single item of clothing you own from every location in the house – whether it’s your wardrobe, your coat rack, or that forgotten storage chest – and then sort from there.

The KonMari method specifies five categories for your possessions: clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous items and sentimental items, which can be notoriously tricky to let go of!

These tips should help you get a handle on your decluttering mission. Happy sorting!

Written by: Tamlyn

declutter your home decluttering tips Mental health restore calm