The signal for me to know that a declutter project is in order, is the moment I realize our excess is not only taking up space in our home, but it is also taking up too much of my time to tidy. When my time is spent washing extra things, moving things around to get to what I actually need, and organizing and reorganizing stuff I never even really use, I find myself feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Decluttering and organizing gives me that time (and peace) back!
When I avoid or procrastinate decluttering, I find that I am more agitated because tidying seems futile, and I have less time to engage in my favorite downtime activities. I also tend to want to blame my kids for every cleaning session I am occupied by.
When I sense it is time to pare down a bit, this is what I do to get started:
Depending on the season (summer vs. in-school), I’ll either take a block of time over the weekend or a little bit each day.
I start with items that need laundering. When our family has more clothes, towels, and sheets, it’s far easier to get behind on laundry. I have noticed that when I am on top of laundry, I am much more likely to be motivated to keep our bedrooms and bathrooms tidy. So I first edit all of the above mentioned items, keeping only what our favorites and essentials are. This makes it much easier to keep up with the laundry schedule. Even though loads of laundry are more frequent, they are smaller, making it much easier and faster to fold and put away!
Clothing: I go through all our closets and dressers. Literally take every item out and chuck them all on a bed to go through. I do this without my younger kids present for this process, and with my teens (my teens have much more of an opinion about what they want to keep or let go).
Welcome to the chaos of the boys’ closet/dresser dump, the initial step of any closet cleanout (they share a room, ages 10, 12).
Next step, folding and organizing every item into categories of clothing. This way I know all that I’m working with.
For all four of my kids, I give them a max number for each category of clothing (I underestimate the number, because I believe they are much more likely to wear something twice before it’s actually considered “dirty”). They tend to repeat their favorite “uniform” outfit anyway, so this eliminates laundry and decision overwhelm! I realized that I also found less of their clothing around the house when I have them pare down their closets. When they have only 1 jacket, they are much more responsible about putting it away or noticing when they have left it somewhere and need to find its whereabouts.
For my own closet, I follow the same protocol of a closet/dresser dump onto my bed and then I try on each of my items. This helps me to decide what I love or just “meh”. Sometimes what I used to love, doesn’t suit me anymore. I always assign a number goal for items to keep in my closet. For myself, I do well with 5 of each category of clothing (excluding shoes, undergarments, and pajamas).
It’s winter right now, so I typically would create the following category parameters:
5 pairs of jeans/pants
5 sweaters
1 nice outfit (dressy pants + blouse) for events
1 black sweater dress
5 pairs of workout leggings
5 workout tank tops
5 sports bras
5 athletic sweatshirts
5 jackets (2 puffers, 1 dressy wool, 2 fleece)
I pretty much stick to these category limits for my kids as well. The exception is if they are involved in a sport in a particular season, but I still suggest for them to only have 5 practice “outfits” per season.
For their accessories (socks, undergarments, etc.), I limit it to what I think they will wear in a week. I’ve realized more than 7 pairs of socks creates clutter in their drawers and chaos for laundry, and wind up scattered all around the house more. I would much rather do (or have them do) a small, quick load of laundry once a week and have LESS in their closet/drawers!
I keep ONE storage tub for each of us for out-of-season clothes stored in my master sitting room cabinets.
This way, if an item is needed for unexpected weather, it is within reach. However, it is not in their own room to rummage through and bring in extra unnecessary items at leisure.
I keep our out-of-season jackets in our main hallway closet, and switch out usually twice a year.
Out-of-season shoes go in their mudroom locker drawer, and all our boots stay on a shoe rack year-long in our mudroom. #farmlife #somuchdirt
I realize not everyone has the luxury of a mudroom (we’ve always modified our garage to create a faux-mudroom, prior to this house), but creatively coming up with some type of system for shoes/jackets/sports gear has always been a priority for me. This puts the responsibility on my kids to keep their stuff put away and organized, when there is a designated “home”.
Towels: Per Ryan’s suggestion, I recently implemented a new towel system. He threw out (after hearing me complain about towels always being on the ground) that there is no reason for each of us to have more than 1 towel to use. That idea had never crossed my mind. So I gave it a whirl and assigned 1 towel to each person. We each have our own color towel, to distinguish who has not hung their towel up, as well as if one kid was borrowing another’s.
I went over the top for a couple weeks, telling my kids that I would confiscate their towel if I found it on the ground, and they would need to pay me $2 to get their towel back. And if they chose to steal their sibling’s towel to use, they would owe that sibling a $2 rental fee. It really didn’t take long for that to create a good habit of hanging up their own towel each day. (Disclosure: one of my children was so frustrated with me initially, that they told me they didn’t want me to put them to bed that night).
I pared down hand towels and washcloths to 2 each for every bathroom (not per person). For our guest bathroom, I have a separate set of towels which includes 4 bath, 2 hand, and 2 washcloths.
I have been amazed at how tidy the kids bathrooms have stayed consistently, as well as how manageable laundry is now. I now keep all of the extra bath towels and beach towels in a storage tub in our master sitting room for when we have guests at our pool or staying with us. After use of those, I wash, fold, and put away in the storage tub immediately.
Sheets:
Similar to our towel system, I keep 2 sets of sheets per bed. Each room has their own distinct color/design of sheets, so I can quickly know what room they go in. (I used to have all white sheets for every room and spent too much time looking at tags for what size bed they went to). I buy 2 sets for each bed, that way I can put clean sheets on while I wash the dirty sheets. I keep all of our sheets in our laundry room cabinets.
For seasonal sheets (we switch out flannel in fall/winter, and cotton for spring/summer), I store them in a dresser in our master bedroom.
These decluttering and organzing systems have really changed my life!
With four kids, and a husband that doesn’t necessarily keep organizing our home a priority himself, I realize that less is more for our family! I am not one that enjoys cleaning, nor do I stress-clean (I honestly wish I did). So to keep anxiety levels low, being proactive to declutter and invest in organizing systems is really important. I would much rather keep the maintenance process of tidying spaces to less than 15 minutes a day, or max 1 hour if I let it all pile up in a week. And because I make my kids responsible for tidying their rooms (my kids are ages 10-16) and doing their own laundry (starting in middle school), they have begun to appreciate the less is more approach too! Now, my girls will even initiate a declutter and organize session on their own.
I should note what we do with our purged items. I always bring kitchen trash bags to the space I’m decluttering, and everything we don’t love, goes into those bags. Hand-me-downs go to younger cousins, anything left over I immediately dropoff for donations (we have self-serve donation areas near us), and trash goes to trash. I make it a priority to get these bags out of my house as soon as possible. Otherwise it becomes more clutter that subconsciously stresses me out!
Hope you enjoyed getting a peek into my world of keeping our home clutter-free and organized! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! I would love to hear!
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