How to De-Clutter Your Home for the New Year

Happy 2017! The start of a new year always brings with it a burst of motivation to make change and improvements, and that counts for our homes too. If you’re looking to start off the new year with a little less stuff, de-cluttering is an easy practice that will help your home stay cleaner, more organized and even help you live a little more stress-free too. We’ve got a few simple tips and ideas to get you going.

• Fill a trash bag: if you want to see how easy you can get rid of things, just start with a trash bag and see how quickly you can fill it. Whether that be with donation items, garbage or items to sell, this exercise will de-clutter and prove to you just how much excess stuff you really have.
• Start small: if you overwhelm yourself from the start, you might be setting yourself up for failure. Start with one room or one area, and just focus on tackling one project at a time. Give yourself time to get through all the rooms in your home, only commit to one each time you schedule de-cluttering.
• Get rid of one thing per day: a very easy way to start small, is to simply commit to getting rid of one thing every day for a year—that’s 365 less things in your home! You can either trash, donate or sell your items.
• Make a list: a less daunting way to get things organized for the de-cluttering process, is to make a list of all the rooms you want to tackle and then take them on one by one, and even week by week or month by month. Taking on one task from the list each week or month will make things easier and crossing things off that list will give a great feeling of accomplishment too.
• The 12-12-12 challenge: one de-cluttering idea circling social media this year is the notion of locating 12 items to throw away, 12 items to donate to charity and 12 items to be returned to their proper home. A simple task that can get rid of 36 items in a snap.
• The four box method: this idea incorporates some of the other concepts listed above, but simply speaking, you need four boxes for this de-cluttering trick. Tackle the room you need to de-clutter by taking four boxes designated for the following: trash, give away, keep or relocate. The simple task of organizing things into the bins will already make your job of organization a lot easier once you know where everything is going.
• Project 333: this is another neat idea we found while scouring the web, this challenge will help you de-clutter your closet in a big way. Keep only 33 articles of clothing—total. The idea is to wear less and donate and restock your 33 items with the seasons. Testimonials from people who have done this task online say you’d be surprised how little you actually need in your wardrobe (and how many bags of clothes you can donate in the process).

There are so many benefits to de-cluttering, it helps you bring a minimalist touch to your home, which means less to clean! Not to mention, most of the things you want to get rid of, can be gifted to charities and non-profits in your community. There are a huge list of organizations in Calgary and Airdrie that accept such donations, so if you have a favourite you like to donate to, please let us know about them on Twitter.