Home decluttering truths no one is talking about
I’m very excited to announce that I have started a brand new podcast!
That's actually not strictly true. I have always provided a private podcast for my e-courses and I've always loved recording them. And as a consumer, I really love audio content generally. I love listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and when it comes to course content or anything that's a bit more cerebral, I just find that I listen better. So I've always wanted to do a podcast and I'm excited that it's happening finally. Episodes will be released monthly-ish- more frequently if I have the chance. Bascially keeping it easy for myself.
14 Home decluttering ideas no-one is talking about
Podcast: Key notes
I teach decluttering. I live decluttering. I love decluttering. I also read a lot about decluttering and there are a few areas that are just not talked about enough, in my opinion. So I wanted to lift the lid a little bit on the decluttering industry and on some messages that quite frankly wind me right up.
So let's get to it, shall we?
1. Decluttering can be gentle.
You would be forgiven for believing that it is anything but gentle. But my approach to decluttering and home styling generally is gentle because you deserve to live in a home that feels safe and calm and you deserve to get there without totally exhausting yourself. And you can do that if you start small. Keep going, make sure there's a place for everything, and be ruthless about the things that you collect and keep.
However, mainstream advice (Hello, Netflix ) about decluttering and home styling can be a little bit overwhelming for those of us who don't have days to spare to go through everything. I'm here to tell you that it does not have to be this way. One of my main tips and advice about decluttering generally is slow and steady wins the race. Just start. You don't have to clear three weeks of work and three weeks of childcare in order to make an incredible dent on your home.
Just start with what you have, where you are. Start small and keep going.
2. Decluttering isn’t something you do once.
Decluttering isn't something that you can just do once and forget about. It isn't just a single set of actions. It is also not, in my opinion, the Marie Kondo style of doing it all in one go and then never doing it again. As much as I wish that I could say, you just do this thing once and then your life has changed forever. I cannot.
If you truly want your home to feel different, then you need to shift your mindset. It's about daily micro decisions, not a huge decluttering sweep. I'll be talking more about this in future tips as well.
3. Clutter is very deeply connected to our mental health.
Our homes are super powerful and they have a really big impact on our mental health and happiness. Much bigger than I think they are given credit for, generally. Because of the impact of our homes on our happiness, if our homes are cluttered and messy and unloved, often that is reflected in other areas of your life. if it's often connected to feelings of overwhelm or unworthiness, or feelings of not being nurtured or loved enough.
I just think that people don't talk about the mental health stuff enough, when we're talking about clutter. It can be linked quite deeply to trauma as well, which often needs a bit of extra support, love and help to get through it.
4. Address your Hoarding
Do you keep multiples just in case? When you look around your home, can you see objectively that there is a lot of stuff that you're holding onto? Hoarding works on a scale, so you can be a mega-hoarder or mild hoarder, but it's always connected to something deeper.
If you have found that your attempts to declutter in the past have been really difficult, if it feels unsafe at any point or it causes a panic response, it's probably because there is a deeper trauma there that needs addressing. I am not qualified to talk further on this, but I do want to share that many of my clients and students have realised that there is a deeper level to their clutter and get therapy. I love my therapist and I really do believe that everyone would benefit from having it. If you're in the UK, the NHS does offer some free talking therapy, which is a really good place to start.
5. Own your Privilege
I just don't see people addressing or owning their privilege enough when it comes to talking about decluttering. It is an immensely privileged position to even have items that we feel like we've got too much of in the first place. For people who have grown up with very little, the idea of hoarding is actually quite logical, and the idea of throwing things away or donating them feels strange and maybe even unsafe. So decluttering is not always as black and white as it's made out to be. And that is precisely why it's so hard for so many people, because clutter and decluttering is complex and emotional and it's linked to our histories and our culture.
Whether you're someone who's interested in decluttering or you read a lot of decluttering material, refrain from judgement of others and yourself. Remember that we all have different histories, experiences and cultural experience that will impact how we approach clutter. I'm always trying to be mindful of that in my work, but I know that I could get this wrong at any point, but I will try my best to incorporate that generally in my work.
6. Get used to living with less
Think fewer clothes, fewer hairbrushes, fewer food items in your cupboards. Minimalism isn't the goal here. However, you do need to get used to the idea of having less STUFF around you. And again, that is a bit of a mindset shift. I'm not talking about minimalist levels of stuff, but just…. less.
7. Clean up
There is a difference between mess and clutter. They are definitely connected and interlinked. I don't see people talking about this enough. There is a step that needs to happen in your home before you get to the clutter. And that is the Tidying and the cleaning. It’s doing the washing up, drying it and putting it away; putting the laundry away, putting the toys away. Learning to be a little bit more on top of your mess is going to be a really key part of your ongoing decluttering journey. If you want to achieve a nice calm space, you're going to need to get better at dealing with the daily mess.
And again, I just don't see people talking about that very much, and it can be absolutely herculean. So before you even start to think about your clutter, you just need to try and get a little bit more of a handle on your daily mess. Of course they are interlinked, so if you can, I want you to also be decluttering so that you have less mess to declutter. But just as a starting point, you might just need to do that little bit of mess management.
8. Clean your windows
Similar to the previous point, my next tip is to clean and clear your windows. It sounds really simple, but making sure that your windows aren't filthy or blocked is going to have a really big impact on the light levels in your room. Clean them as regularly as you're able to so that you get that lovely view out to the garden and so you've got lots of light coming into your home. Connected to that, if your curtains are currently blocking a lot of the light because of the way the curtain pole is hung, then consider getting a new curtain pole and maybe even curtains.
Ideally, your curtain pole should be hung high to the ceiling, as high as it can go. And it should extend on either side of your window by about three to 4ft. And that means that when you open your curtains, they aren't blocking any of the light. If your curtain rail is broken, if your blind is broken, these are all things that are going to really affect the light in the room. So clean your windows and clear your curtains.
9. Clear your flat surfaces
Okay, next on my ranty list is the importance of flat surfaces. And okay I do hear people talking about this, but I just wanted to include it in this podcast because of how important it is in the pursuit of a decluttered clear space. Clear flat surfaces are absolutely critical to that feeling of a clear, calm, uncluttered space. A flat surface is literally any flat surface. So obviously it's kitchen worktops, but it's also coffee tables, tables, kitchen Islands, bedside tables, shelves. If you are struggling to reach those levels of calmness in your home, then shift focus to clearing your flat surfaces.
And in order to clear your flat surfaces, you need to clear out your hidden storage. Make space inside the kitchen cabinets to store what's currently being stored on your flat surfaces inside your cupboards. A really good example of this is small appliances. Often people have a lot of appliances on their kitchen counters that simply do not need to be there. What I instead encourage you to do is to empty out your kitchen cupboards. Take a Saturday, empty the cupboards out, sort through the stuff, get rid of anything that's not been touched or eaten in a long time. You'll then have space in your cupboards to store things like the blender, even the toaster. Anything that's not used on multiple times a day really ideally should be stored inside your kitchen cabinets.
10. Think Multi purpose everything
Connected to the previous point is the importance of a multipurpose item. Again, don't really hear people talking about this. If it's kitchen appliances, think about a food processor rather than having a mandolin and a mixer. Try to get an appliance or a gadget that does a lot of things rather than lots of individual things with an individual use.
If this is even true for toiletries. Could you get away with a two in one shampoo and conditioner rather than the two? Or a face oil that also acts as a cleanser, for example? I am currently using fractured coconut oil for face cleanser, face and body moisturiser, as well as an ointment for rashes (I LOVE it). Generally, you want to choose a multi-tool or a multi-use product to save precious space.
11. Stop buying things…!
Okay, we're getting a bit deep now. My next tip is to please stop buying things. I know, I know, it's hard, but think about it. If your spaces feel overwhelming and full of stuff, you need to stop new stuff coming in or operate a one in one out policy. Sometimes this is the first thing that you need to do in your decluttering journey. Before you even pick up a box or open a cupboard, you need to make a commitment to yourself to stop buying things or at least be much more discerning about what you allow to come in. This also applies to items offered to you from well-meaning friends and family members. This is often a huge cause of clutter in homes. You do not need to take it even if it is free or cheap. Be truly discerning about whether you really, really need it.
When you have children, you will often have a lot more stuff, and they’re always growing out of things. I have a constant charity shop bag hung in the wardrobe and the coat cupboard. As I'm doing the laundry, I put pyjamas and clothes and things that they've grown out of in there. Same with toys and craft stuff that they're not playing with. Kids do come with a lot of stuff, but it doesn’t have to overwhelm you.
12. Address your consumerism
This is probably the thing that I hear least from people in the decluttering industry and that is because decluttering is itself a very profitable consumerist industry. When you think about all of the storage solutions that are sold, for example, and the cleaning products. However, I think that so much of our problem with stuff is because we live in a very capitalist consumerist society. I believe that in order to make a real difference to the amount of clutter in your home, you’re going to have to go to this deep level of looking at your own consumerism and where you allow things to tempt you and where you are sucked in to promotions. Actions you can take to help yourself:
Unfollow people on social media who make you feel like you need all the new things
Unsubscribe or unfollow your favourite brands
Stay away from shops that tempt you
This can be temporary, but it's all about removing yourself from those sort of spheres where you are heavily influenced to buy stuff all the time, giving yourself a break from it, or at least being much more discerning about which brands you follow and really making yourself question whether you truly need it. Ask yourself: Where will this item go? Do I actually have a gap for it in my wardrobe? Do I truly need this?
13. There is deep decluttering AND maintenance decluttering
Okay, this one is for you if you have ever decluttered, only to find yourself surrounded by clutter again. And that is because there is a big difference between deep decluttering and maintenance decluttering. Deep decluttering is more common. The KonMari style of decluttering. It might have been that you were moving house or you were moving your bedroom around and it ended up with a huge big declutter. Or you end up doing your kitchen cabinets all in one go. That's a deep declutter.
A maintenance declutter is something I don't hear people talking about enough, and that is what is required to maintain declutteredness. This is about managing what's coming into the house by operating a one in one out policy for example. But it's also understanding that you will need to maintain it, that things will clutter up again and that's okay. It’s really normal. It's about forming new habits and routines, it’s about putting things where they belong and tidying things away at the end of the night.
You have not failed if you have done some decluttering and then things have got cluttered again. What has probably happened is you just need to spend a little bit more time on the maintenance side of things and setting up some systems and routines that are going to support your newly decluttered living.
14. Do not tackle your clutter alone
My last one is about the people you live with. So if you live alone, this does not apply to you, but if you don't live alone, then you will need the support of your household.
You cannot and should not be doing this alone. I lose it a little bit when clients come to me trying to declutter their whole homes by themselves. Even if the people you share your home with have busy jobs that mean that they can't be there as much as you're there, I believe that everyone should be involved in this and that this work shouldn't fall solely on your shoulders. I've worked exclusively with women so far.
If that is you, if you're drowning under the overwhelm of your clutter, please just stop and get your family together. Get your household or housemates together and TALK. You need to communicate why this is important. This isn't just frivolous stuff. This is connected to the whole households happiness and mental health. This is really really important and you do expect their support. This might be supporting the new routines and systems to maintain a nice decluttered space or household members decluttering their own stuff or helping you to declutter the communal stuff. It's really important that you ask for their support.
Something that comes up so much on my e-courses is:
‘what happens when you've got a reluctant partner/ children?’
It’s always about the 2 C’s. Communication and Compromise.
Ultimately you need to explain WHY it's important; why this is about far more than just faffing. That it's about mental health and happiness and the smooth running of the home. But if they still aren't convinced that it's important then your last course of action is to explain why this matters to you, that this is something that's really important for you. If they love you then hopefully they will want to support you even if they don't understand it. Even young children will enjoy sorting things out or at least making a potion with the old cans and spices and dried stuff that you're getting rid of. So yeah don't do it alone.
And that's it. They are all the things that make me irate about the decluttering world. I would love to hear from you. Where have you got stuck and where have you felt really annoyed by some of the decluttering advice out there?
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