Many of us know the benefit of de-cluttering our house. The benefits include:

• Shorter time to find things
• Easier to clean
• More space that is likely to trick our brain to think we’re living in a bigger house
• More pleasant to the eyes and mind, therefore, feeling more peaceful
• Less embarrassment when you have unexpected guests coming over

While some people find it easy to de-clutter their entire house within a week or even just a few days, some of us may struggle and often feel the process is rather impossible. It even feels more impossible when half or most of the items have sentimental value. 

Here are 8 tips:

Tip 1 – Get Seven Boxes and Label Them

The easiest way to de-clutter is to have 7 boxes and label them as follows:

• useful now
• useful later
• donate
• sell
• sentimental – to keep
• sentimental – to scan
• to the bin

Tip 2 – Scan the Sentimental Items When Possible

If you can trash all your sentimental items, good, no problem. But if you can’t, then you’ll need to pay closer attention which ones you want to keep, which ones can be scanned and kept electronically, and which ones to throw away. Love letters? Cards? Photos? Scan them all. Then throw the papers away. 

Tip 3 – Pick an area

It’s better to start small, so pick a small area like your TV shelf or coffee table. The best way to declutter an area is by emptying the area and putting the items according to their labels (as described on Tip 1 above). 

Tip 4 – Pick Ten Items Every Day

If picking an area doesn’t motivate you, you can just randomly select 10 items every day, from Monday to Friday. That means 50 items a week. By the end of the month, you’ll probably have a clutter-free house. 

Tip 5 – Spend Ten Minutes a Day

If you prefer to choose a block of time instead of counting how many items you can tidy up or get rid of, then do so. Set aside 10 minutes every day and witness the progress. Anything is better than nothing. 

Tip 6 – Take a Picture of ‘Before’ and ‘After’ 

Not only does it keep you motivated by seeing how much progress you’ve made, but it’s also satisfying to see the pictures again in a few months or years, to remind yourself that you are indeed capable of achieving things, no matter how trivial people think they are. 

Tip 7 – Store Relevant Items Together

If you think having a screwdriver in your kitchen drawer is relevant, then be it. But make sure that particular drawer has everything relevant to the screwdriver, like nails, hammer, and all things that relate to fixing and repairing. 

Likewise, put all things that are relevant to hair in one box, skin in another box, nails in another. Basically, everything must have a home and let them live together with their ‘relatives’. 

Tip 8 – Have a Written Record

When you live in a small space and don’t have much luxury to store things you may have to store irrelevant things in irrelevant rooms. 

For example, shampoo and soaps. Ideally, they’re kept in the bathroom, but when the bathroom is so small, and so is your room, you might want to store the toiletries in a kitchen’s cabinet, or somewhere in the living room. 

If you’re a spreadsheet freak like me, this is very easy to do. In fact, it’s not just easy but it’s also fun. 

But if you are not familiar with using spreadsheets, you can either start learning how to use it (there are heaps in youtube, this is one of them) or just handwrite it using a pen and paper (or a notebook). 

Google spreadsheet is free, you don’t have to spend a dime. You need an internet connection and a Google account to use it.

The record basically shows where things are so when you need them, you can just go through the record and find one item by clicking “Control” and “F” instead of trying to find them manually in, say, all 24 drawers.

The record looks more or less like this, feel free to modify it: