Decluttering Your Home For Mental Clarity

If you've read my post "It's OK to not be OK" you'll know that, recently, things got a little bit on top of me. I am so much better now and at the beginning of January I found myself accidentally watching a house decluttering video on youtube.

This then led to me watching a few minimalist videos and I suddenly had the urge to declutter my home. In one of the videos, there was a comment made on how much easier and quicker it is to clean and tidy with less stuff and it really resonated with me. I was hating my house and felt like I could never get it tidy no matter how hard I tried.

Although I haven't watched the Netflix series with Marie Kondo, I did watch a couple of videos on youtube with her and picked up a couple of tips to help me make the most of my sudden motivation. I started that afternoon as I was so excited to get going.

I kind of cheated as I decided that I would go through the living room first. This houses 90% of the kids toys and since they aren't really anything to do with me, it should be the easiest to go through and get started on filling up some bags. I was right! I ended up with 2 bin liners just from emptying out all of the toys from the boxes and then either putting them back in the relevant box or putting them in a bin liner to be donated.

Of course this spurred me on and I gave myself a week to go through the whole house so that I could take it all to my local church who do collections for a local charity that help the homeless and are always in need of donations. I checked what type of items they accept and they pretty much accepted everything that I was going to be getting rid of.

Knowing that I wasn't just throwing things away and that they were going to people who really needed them helped me to be more ruthless with my decisions. My husband also got in on the action and in the end we had around 8 or 9 bin bags! I stopped earlier than I had planned as I realised I was going to struggle getting it all in the car!

The house has been so much easier to keep on top of since then and I immediately noticed an improvement in my mood, motivation ad stress levels. Normally, I would sit in the living room with the kids, sulking that the house was a mess and that whatever few minutes I would manage to grab just wouldn't make a difference. So I wouldn't bother.

But now, those few minutes I get actually make a difference. I can easily tidy up after the kids because the toy shelf isn't heaving so there's space to put things away rather than just thinking "sod it" because you can't put it anywhere. I'm not sitting there thinking about all the mess that I can't clear and getting myself in a mood, I'm sitting playing with the kids knowing that everything that is currently strewn all over the floor can be chucked in a box in less than 2 minutes. It's also help me focus better and stay productive and on task, rather than flitting between 10 different tasks!

To help keep me on the right track, as soon as I donated all the bags to the church, I got a new bag out and put it in the bottom of the wardrobe for me to fill. As I go around tidying and cleaning, if I notice something that no longer gets used, I'll put it in the bin bag. As soon as it's full, it will get taken to the church. I've already filled one and have almost filled my second. I'm hoping that I can fill one every month!

If you've been sat at home, annoyed by the amount of items you have cluttering everywhere, grab a bag! If you only start with one bin bag, it's one bag of stuff that can no longer make a mess! I probably could have made some money selling the items I was getting rid of but I knew that realistically, I would never list them and they would stay in my house taking up space.

So be honest with yourself and if it means you actually accomplish what you want to, donate it instead of pretending you'll sell it.

Do you have any top tips for decluttering or organising your home? I'd love to hear them below!

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