How To Declutter Your House In One Day

Does the thought of walking through your front door send shivers down your spine? If your home’s jam-packed with so much stuff you can’t think straight, being in your house can make your stress levels skyrocket. Needing fast relief is understandable, but how can you declutter your house quickly so you can breathe?

Set aside one whole day to declutter your house, and divide your time into small, manageable chunks. Group things by category and donate, toss, or sell anything broken, worn-out, or that you don’t use or love. Arrange to have some help to keep you on track and focused, and get rid of anything you plan to let go of that very day.

Kicking your clutter habit can seem overwhelming, especially if you haven’t gone through your things for a long time. But one day is all you need to start seeing dramatic results and feel calmer when you’re in your home.

When you’re faced with a house full of clutter, it’s easy to close the door and say you’ll do it another day. It can seem like it will take you forever to go through all of the clothes, books, toys, and random kitchen utensils.

All of the stuff can feel like it’s squeezing you out of your home, making you tired and anxious. But take a breath and tell yourself, one step at a time. (Just like eating an elephant — and when it comes to clutter, it’s definitely the elephant in the room.)

The good news is an organized home reduces stress and can improve your overall well-being. So let this bit of info be a motivator for you to get started. Focus on one thing, not the big picture, and you’re more likely to move ahead instead of stopping in your tracks.

For example, instead of thinking, “I have to declutter my whole house today.” Say to yourself, “I’m going to start gathering all of my books,” or “It’s time to take back control of my house. I’ll focus on the front entryway first.”

Once you get started, you’ll find your momentum will start to build. Before you know it, you’ll be moving along doing what you thought was an impossible task.

Many assume the best way to start going through the clutter is to go room by room. And you can do it this way and likely get one room clutter-free in 20 to 30 minutes. (A good thing to know is it never takes as long as you think it will, promise!)

However, an excellent way to get rid of unnecessary items and start organizing your belongings is to go by category. For example, instead of jumping to organize your whole kitchen and randomly going through things, group like items.

Gather all the baking supplies into one pile, all the pots into another, etc. Pare it all down to what you want to keep, and you’ll enjoy a clean kitchen.

Do the same for other things in your home, including all the clothing, towels, books, random toiletries, and other items. Work through one category at a time.

When you start grouping everything you own by category, you get a clearer picture of exactly what you have. Once you see you have five blenders, it becomes a lot easier to get rid of a few.

Choose a day for decluttering when you can have a friend or family member help you out. Or, if your budget allows, hire a professional organizer to lend a hand and a pair of unbiased eyes. You can find pro organizers for roughly $30 to $60 an hour through sites like Thumbtack or by asking others for recommendations.

If you have a large home or excessive amounts of clutter, enlisting help is a must to tackle your goals in one day. Make sure your helper knows you plan to work all day and be thoughtful. Have plenty of snacks and water for them, and be ready to provide lunch and dinner.

You need five key boxes to declutter efficiently. These five boxes are DONATE, SELL, TOSS, KEEP, and ELSEWHERE. The first four boxes are self-explanatory, but what’s an elsewhere box?

As you declutter, you’ll come across some random items that belong elsewhere. Don’t stop and put these items away as you find them. It wastes time.

Instead, toss them into the elsewhere box and keep going. Later, you can spend about 10 to 15 minutes returning all of the items to their proper places.

Note: You’ll need more than five boxes total because you’ll likely end up with a lot of things to box up for donations, etc. But these five boxes are the primary ones you’ll have in your staging area. Once one of your primary ones is full, transfer the contents to a corresponding box that leaves your house.

Don’t go full-steam ahead when you declutter. Can you imagine a football team playing straight through all four quarters with no breaks, time-outs, or halftime? The players wouldn’t perform as well, tire out faster, and likely not stay as focused.

Therefore, don’t try to declutter your house in one day without allowing yourself regular breaks. Stay consistent; work some, and take a break.

So, it might be you declutter for 45 minutes, then take a 15-minute break. Or maybe, when you’re first starting, you need to declutter for 20 minutes and take a 10-minute break. As you gain more momentum, you might adjust your pattern to working for an hour, then taking a 15-minute break.

Clutter can make you miserable, anxious, and overwhelmed. It can be extremely hard to do anything when you feel this way. A study in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that clutter makes it hard to focus because it provides too much visual stimuli.

Therefore, the clutter you want to get rid of is the same thing holding you back from getting started. But following the above tips will help you get past the initial hurdle and start moving. Once you’ve crossed that first milestone, you’ll find that it gets easier and easier.

Clutter doesn’t have to be a way of life. You can enjoy a tidy, clutter-free home, and it doesn’t take as long as you think. Plan a day when you get someone to help you, whether a pro organizer or a friend or a family member.

Set a schedule of what you plan to do and stick to it. Make sure to take frequent breaks, stay hydrated, and don’t forget to eat. Gather items by category and sort them into donate, toss, keep, and sell piles.

As soon as you have things to donate or toss, remove them from the home. If you know you won’t list sale items immediately, donate them. It’s worth it to have a clutter-free space. Or let a friend list them for you and give them a cut of the sale price.

Once you’ve gotten the clutter out of your house, set a plan to keep it that way. Limit new items, take 10 minutes a day to tidy up, and put things away as you find them.

And you don’t have to do it alone. If there are others in the household, get them all on board. Everyone benefits from having a clutter-free home.