Decluttering and organizing is not an easy process for most of us. Pressures on our time, attention, and energy make it tough to get stuff done, and after a while, we lose interest in “getting organized.”
A lot of the organizing advice available to us is geared towards people who love to declutter and organize. If you love to declutter and organize, that’s great. But, if you’re not a big fan of spending a bunch of your free time decluttering, it’s kind of annoying. And frustrating.
If you’re at the point of frustration and you feel like nothing is working for you, it might be time to change your approach. Maybe you’ve been trying to work a system that doesn’t match up with your mindset!
Here are some different approaches to decluttering and organizing that might just work better for you:
How to Declutter and Organize Based on Your Personality
If you don’t like decluttering and organizing, feel like your house is a disaster, are easily distracted and have no idea how to get things back on track:
Check out 28 Days to Hope For Your Home. Dana White has an amazing podcast called A Slob Comes Clean where she tells about her own decluttering journey. She gets what it feels like to not be naturally organized, and she’s got a plan to help you make little changes over time.
If you just want to get the junk out of your house right now, you don’t mind spending a lot of time on it, and you want to do it once and never have to do it again:
Read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and follow the directions. Don’t worry about some of the weird stuff in the book – just do it and feel free to keep folding your socks the way you want to. {This will make more sense when you read the book!}
If you really want a good system for cleaning and organizing your home, don’t mind something a little more complicated, and want to feel like someone kind is leading you through the process:
Check out FlyLady. I started doing FlyLady years ago, and her system works. Whenever I feel like we’re really getting off-track again, I usually go back to the FlyLady website and start in with her daily tasks and missions. It helps.
If you just want someone to tell you what to do each day so you can get all of the clutter out of your house:
Check out Get Rid of It: A Step-By-Step Decluttering Guide for Beginners. This is the same process I used to declutter my own home. Each day, you’re given a different 10 minute decluttering task to complete.
The best part? It focuses on the things that are EASY to declutter first. That way you can build your decluttering skills, and you won’t spend a lot of time stressing over decluttering decisions. Find out more here.
If you want to learn how to clean, set up a cleaning routine, and make your home a little more sanitary:
Check out Clean Mama. She also makes monthly calendars that tell you what to clean each day. Stick to her calendar and things won’t get too gross.
What’s your decluttering and organizing personality? Have you found a system that works for you? Please share it with us in the comments!
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I can’t find the 28 days to hope for your home podcast but that is soooo my personality type.
Here it is: http://www.aslobcomesclean.com/category/podcasts/ Happy listening! 🙂
I look forward to reading some of these books. I could definitely use the help learning how to declutter my house and keeping it that way. It is mostly keeping my house clear of clutter that I struggle with. Taking stuff out to the dumpster isn’t hard, it is keeping the stuff out of my house that is hard.
I understand! Here’s some ideas that might help: http://organizingmoms.com/keep-the-clutter-out/
I am trying to declutter my apartment since August of last year and is a never to finish project…been leaving in the same apartment for 21 years…and along the way i lost track of a lot of things in my life…i have seeing some kind of process, but not as much as i want….something i just feel like just getting rid of everything and star fresh like i am moving into my apartmet again…is so difficult when you want things a certain way and you dont find the way. Sorry but had to let it out of my system.
That would be frustrating, but it’s great that you’re sticking with it. If you’ve been there for 21 years, it makes sense that it’s going to take a while to get things the way you want them. It might help to focus on smaller areas of your apartment, so you can have some areas the way you want them. Maybe you could start with your silverware? Get it pared down and organized just the way you want it. Once you have that done, you could move on to another smaller area. Keep up the good work! You’ve been seeing progress, and it’s going to continue.