For most people, decluttering your house is a really hard exercise. It’s seen as too difficult to do, so people put it off, and stuff just accumulates.
One way to help that is to try and do a little, every so often. Maybe pick one room to do each month, rather than building up to this huge once-a-year job of the whole house that you will dread.
But another thing that helps is having a checklist of questions so it’s structured and you can apply the same basic principles whenever you declutter, rather than getting rid of everything one day when you’re feeling particularly ruthless, or getting rid of nothing on another day when you’re feeling sentimental.
Here’s a checklist that I use to help me declutter my house:
Questions to declutter books
- If I haven’t read this book yet, is it because I’m not actually very interested in it?
- Did I love this book?
- Will I ever read this book again?
- Does it have any particular sentimental value?
- How will I feel if this book sits on my shelf for 10 years and never gets touched?
Questions to declutter clothes
- How often do I reach for this?
- Does it fit me? (be honest here if you know you’ll never squeeze into it again!)
- Do I like how I feel when I’m wearing it?
- Is it still me, or has my dress sense changed since I bought this?
- Do I need to restyle this piece, or is there nothing that goes with it in my wardrobe?
- Do I already have something very similar to this?
- Would I be comfortable wearing this to most places I go to?
- Is it so dressy/unusual that I’ll probably only wear it very occasionally?
- Is it worth the limited space in my wardrobe?
Questions to declutter household objects
- Does it have a purpose?
- How often am I using this?
- Is it broken in any way?
- If it’s decorative – how often do I even look at it?
- Does it make me feel bad when I see this because I’m not using it enough?
- Why am I holding onto this?
- Does it have sentimental value for me?
- Could someone else get more value out of this than I do?
Hopefully those questions may be helpful for you when you’re next decluttering your house.
The single most important question that you can ask is: How will my life be affected if I no longer have this item in my house?
You might be surprised that for all the stuff we have, there are only a few items that really impact our life.
