10 Tips For Decluttering Your Home
Japanese ‘organising consultant’ Marie Kondo’s best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying, has sold more than two million copies worldwide. Her systematic method of decluttering, dubbed the KonMari method, is said to be foolproof, attacking one section at a time, pulling out everything you own in that category and blitzing it.
The idea is to work quickly through the categories in a process that, she says, should take only six months. The book instructs you to start with clothes and work your way up to more sentimental items. Here are the top 10 tips:
1. Think about why you want to have a tidy home. This will help you visualise what you want your space to look like and help to achieve your goal.
2. Stack items in drawers vertically. This way you’ll see everything easily, rather than having to sift through piles.
3. Fold don’t ball your socks. Folding socks makes them last longer.
4. Empty your handbag once a day and take out unnecessary items.
5. Avoid using stacking storage boxes – they encourage hoarding. Drawers and cardboard drawer dividers for socks etc are the answer.
6. Don’t have lots of bottles around your shower and bath. Only get out what you need and put it away again after you’ve used it.
7. Build up to decluttering your sentimental items. This is the hardest category to blitz, so tackle lessimportant items (clothes, books, etc.) first.
8. Don’t tell all your loved ones about your decluttering plans. It might make them worry and they might even try to put you off – especially if they have hoarding tendencies themselves.
9. Keeping things ‘just in case’ is a false economy. In the meantime, they’re causing clutter and stress. Just let them go.
10. Purge items that you have no need for, but you keep because you’re attached to them, e.g. souvenirs. KonMari advocates celebrating the present.
h/t DailyMail | Lead image: Oprah.com
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