Calling those that have their shit together......

[Oanyerselhen]

My house is just full of stuff. On paper it has good storage but that's just also filled with stuff. It's really getting me down.

Help me to sort it and live a more streamlined life. What do you do?

Read the decluttering book by Marie Kondo & start working your way through the categories. It really is life changing. The book is a quick/easy read.

As well as Marie Kondo (who has been noticeably quieter on the topic of maintaining absolute streamlined perfection since having kids, gosh, who'd have thought it) I also enjoyed The Home Edit (I think it was Netflix) and Stacy Solomon's Sort Your Life Out, both have much more workable ideas in my opinion.

If I haven't used something for 6 months I throw it - except summer/ winter clothes. Those are a year

One cupboard at a time, one room at a time - break the task into chunks.

I start from upstairs or in the room furthest from the back door. In the children's rooms i go through drawers and cupboards and check under beds looking for things that shouldn't be there or has been out grown, everything goes into a big pile and either gets put back in it's place, put it in a bin bag or pushed out of the door. If I still have time I repeat in the next room, if I don't I move on to stage 2 and go through the things on the landing/in the hall and take them to the room they should be in, then wizz round with the hoover. Repeat add infinitum...

To be fair, MK has done interviews talking about how she thought she could maintain her tidy, declutterred house when she had kids, and post kids realized she could not 😀

Thanks all. It's definitely long overdue. It just accumulates. I'm not overly sentimental either so it's not like I'm holding on to stuff for that sake.

I'll just need to remind myself how much better my mental heath will be when it's in order.

It's the upkeep afterwards too - it's constant.

Take it slowly. One area at a time is the way to go, in my opinion. I spent about 2 months slowly going through each drawer & cupboard to try and mitigate the inevitable “looking like a bomb went off” moment. There is now a one-in-one out policy in the house (expect for my shoes, they don’t count….)

Step one: Get a skip, or be prepared to do a lot of trips to the tip. If you really mean business, and want to get on top of things, forget about the wasted money, and commit to chucking the vast majority of it out. Take anything decent to charity of course. Or you could piss about selling it on Vinted if you don’t really want to get the job done.

Step two: STOP BUYING STUFF.

I have gone through this process, and believe me, it’s worth it. We threw out probably 60% of our possessions. We don’t miss anything.

Good luck!

Throw it in the car and take it to the tip.

One room at a time, drawer by drawer/cupboard etc. Put a post it with DONE written on it and stick on said vessel. Only when the room is finished can you remove the post it's and then you stick a post it on the door to the room. It really does feel better.

Please watch Stacey Solomon sort your life out. It will inspire you! Xx

I'm fairly ruthless about chucking things out/giving them away: have I worn/used/listened to this in last year? Am I or anyone in the family likely to read this? If I'm not likely to need this item again, is there someone or somewhere I could conveniently borrow it from if it so happened I did need it? If I want to watch/listen to this again can I stream it easily or is this something that could vanish from streaming services because it's not well known?

And then make decisions accordingly; take to charity shops if suitable, freecycle things like bundles of clothes, they are quite easy to get taken; for books/DVDs/CDs you can try leaving them in a box outside your house and inviting people to take. Even better if you have a street whatsapp group (we do, since COVID) - that's a really easy way to give anything away because everyone is so near that you won't risk 'no shows'

Regularly clear stuff out/throw stuff away. Will be throwing the house away as I call it over the bank holiday.

There's lots of advice on YouTube. I like Dana White's no mess decluttering method. Basically don't pull everything out and put it in big piles. Deal with each item at a time and if you're going to keep it, find it a home straight away. I'd also recommend doing regular runs to the tip and charity shop so you don't get overwhelmed.

I’ve got 4DC a big house, loads of “stuff”.

every 6mths or do I get a skip bag and I’m absolutely ruthless. Just do it.

I start by putting lots of stuff on free-cycle but people piss around and life is too short, so 70% goes in skip.

Honestly, you just have to get rid of it all. New series of Sort Your Life Out is in BBC which might give you motivation.

You need to be brutal and only keep what you truly love and truly need. You'll feel a million times better and things will be easier to manage.