The Art of Never-Ending Decluttering (And Loving It Somehow)
There’s really only one secret, trick, or hack to maintaining a clutter-free home:
🤫 You’re always decluttering.
I mean… 🤷♀️ it’s that, or stop bringing anything into your home that won’t be digested in some way. No new-to-you clothes, toys, entertainment, furniture, etc.
Super sustainable! Not really practical.
“Always decluttering” looks different for everyone and it depends on where you’re at in your clutter journey and stage of life.
Oh! And in case no one has told you, you get to define what clutter means to you.
Feel like your clutter is overwhelming?
The goal is simply to start decluttering.
Identify a routine that works well for your schedule, every day or every other day, capitalize on when you have the most willpower, and make it as easy as possible for yourself.
⏰ Try timing yourself to find 15 items in 15 minutes that you can donate or dispose of.
☕️ Race to beat your coffee maker every morning to find 10 things.
🪥 Find 5 things morning and night while wandering around the house brushing your teeth.
🐌 Build momentum by finding one thing every day for a week. Then two things every day on week two. Three things a day on week three. So on and so forth.
It doesn’t matter how you do it—only that you do it. There’s no “right” way and the only way you can declutter incorrectly is to not do it at all.
Don’t worry about where to start. Just start.
The items don’t have to come from the same room or have a theme (though finding 15 items of clothing may take less than 15 minutes). And get your kids involved! It can become a fun game to help you meet the goal.
Have a box or large container ready to catch these items, and donate or dispose of them weekly.
It's a practice, and you're building a skill.
Give yourself grace and remember that every day is a chance to start again. It's ok if you skip a day. You're human. Life happens.
Don’t overcomplicate it.
I know it’s tempting to want to sell rather than donate. We all have the best intentions to follow through. But… idk if you know this… that’s a lot of work. 🙉
Know thyself! Will you really follow through? Or will that make it seem harder—like even more work—and keep you from just starting?
It’s okay to cut your losses and just give it away. I’m personally a big fan of my Buy Nothing group. (find yours!) I’ll put everything on the curb, snap a photo, and share. Someone usually picks it up within a day. I don’t have to interact with anyone 🙌, I get rid of everything as lazily as possible, and I still feel like I’m contributing to my community.
Ask yourself: Is your time, energy, and the space you’re sacrificing in your home really worth the money? Some of those things you can’t get back.
Feel like your clutter is tolerable?
But have a suspicion it could be better? The goal is to focus on one problem area at a time.
Don’t get lost in the next 40 steps or the five different areas you could work on.
Pick the area that’s causing the most friction and change something—anything. You likely already know what’s not working, which means there’s a good chance anything different will work better.
Now, here’s the hardest part.
When you’re working on making change in one area, it’s likely going to impact multiple areas. You’ll come across something you want to keep but not in the space you’re working on. Rather than veering off course to find or make the “perfect” home for it in another room, set it in the space it’ll be moving into (or in a designated spillover area) and forget about it for now.
Some spaces are going to get messier before they get better—unless you have a lot of time and help to keep you on track.
I know this sounds counterintuitive but…
Jumping between spaces burns you out faster.
Instead of getting that ✨ dopamine hit ✨ from a completed project, you may feel further behind and like everything is in a partial state of chaos.
Pick a small area, zone, room, or set of drawers/cupboards and give yourself a month to complete it. I mean a small space. And yes, one month.
Go slow.
That hall closet can be broken down into smaller sections: one shelf, the hanging coats, the floor. If you had the time and energy to tackle the whole closet in a day you probably would've done it by now. 🫠I know some days you can’t go slow and you have to hyper-focus. If that’s the case, don’t allow yourself to leave the space to move something to a different room until you’re done—that’s where you lose time, focus, and energy. This is why you get distracted from completing the project. (And why I’ll lovingly ❤️ threaten to tape you to a chair.)
Lastly, don’t be afraid to rework a space every couple of months. If it’s not staying clutter-free, something isn’t working. 🙈 And that something might be that you still have more to declutter.
Feel like “what Clutter?”
You’ve arrived at your clutter threshold! 🎉 👏
And yes, it’s as majestic as this dog. You can finally “reset” the main living areas / surfaces in your home in just 15-20 minutes a day.
But you’re never done. You still need a decluttering routine.
At least twice a year, you’ll want to declutter closets, cabinets, the storage room, and the garage. Pretty sure this is what fall and spring cleaning were meant for. 🤷♀️
Often, the things we don’t use or need anymore get shoved somewhere, and they’re taking up the real estate we need for what we do use.
Or maybe those spaces have simply followed the universal law that everything moves toward chaos.
Let’s humanize organizing, shall we?
Here’s our kitchen “junk drawer.” No, I don’t micro-organize it—and no, I’m not going to. Sure, that’d be visually pretty, but the frustration I’d feel when things aren’t returned to the right tray wouldn’t be. 😅
Know thyself! And the people you share your home with.
My husband and I both know exactly what belongs in this drawer, and that’s good enough.
Biannual decluttering is lowkey my favorite thing because it makes my home feel so-fresh-and-so-new. 😍 Check back for my simple and lazy AF strategy, coming soon!
In the meantime, use the previous strategies to declutter. Slowly sort small spaces when they start to feel uncomfortable. (I’m not touching that junk drawer until I experience the first sign of friction with opening and closing it because it doesn’t feel cluttered to me.)
Don’t wait until they’re problem areas.
Because that’s when life will come along to remind you who is actually in charge. 😬 (Or something will get caught and I won’t be able to open that junk drawer without getting pissed.)
🥂 Here’s to your decluttering journey.
Remember, the process is yours—and it’s already happening. You don’t have to tackle everything at once. The goal isn’t perfection, or even “progress,” because that implies there’s an end point.
You’re practicing. You’re building and strengthening your decluttering muscles—one small space, one simple habit, one intentional decision at a time. Trust that those little steps add up.
Just one small step in front of the other, and eventually, you’ll end up somewhere.
Why not make that somewhere a home you love being in?