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A New You: How to Declutter Your Life

Everyone that works the 9 to 5 routine has at least a week or two of vacation time plus some personal time thrown in there somewhere. Believe it or not, taking some time out from the daily grind is a fantastic way to declutter your life.

In addition, if you do not have spare time off work during your regular schedule, set aside one weekend out of the month, and tell everyone that it is time to declutter – you are not available.

Commitment Time

Let everyone in your family know clearly that you are going to be unavailable for one weekend out of the month to declutter your own and their lives.

If anyone has an aversion to this, simply tell them to let you stick to your commitment or they can chip in and help. More than likely, they will opt to leave you to your task at hand.

Sort It Out

When decluttering your life, it is essential that you do not start out decluttering and wind up looking at old photos or worse yet, cleaning. If you are going to declutter your life, you need to start with your home and discipline yourself to just declutter and not do anything else.

Start by sorting out clutter into piles. One pile needs to be for throwing out. The rule of thumb is that if you have not used it or gotten to it in six months, it is never going to happen and you can toss it out.

Next, make a pile for charitable donations – items that are usable but just not for you or your family.

Finally make a pile of “maybe some day”. This pile is the one that needs the most attention because it is easy to keep something for future reference and never use it, or to throw something out only to find out the very next day that you needed it. Think carefully before putting too much into this pile and limit the number of items it contains.

File It and Forget It

One of the most important ways to declutter your life is by getting rid of paperwork. You know it is true. Paperwork that is hanging around is the worst form of clutter there is. Make a filing system once and forget about it thereafter.

Go through all your mail, toss what you do not need, and file what you do need. In this way it is out of sight and out of mind. Once you have a filing system put into place, there is no turning back. A good system cannot be beat. Go out and buy some colored folders and fancy labels and go to town. All you have to do after that is follow through.

Making the commitment, sorting things out, and creating a filing system are three great ways to declutter your home and your life.

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