Make Decluttering Less Overwhelming With The 'One Bag A Day' Method

People often incorrectly believe they need excessive free time to declutter their homes effectively. Perhaps, you need an entire day, weekend, or sometimes even the whole spring season to get rid of the things you no longer want or need. However, the average person's schedule is too busy for this. Or, even in someone does have the time, they probably don't want to dedicate it to such a tiresome task. Because of this, decluttering often gets put off, leading to a home that looks like it belongs on A&E's reality show "Hoarders." 

Instead of setting aside an entire day or more for decluttering, what if you could break up this large chore into smaller parts? This would make the job easier to complete and maintain, as you only need to spend a minuscule amount of time each day. Fortunately, there is a way to do this, and it's called the "one bag a day" method.

As implied, this method involves filling one bag daily with items you want to declutter. If you don't have many bags on hand, you could use cardboard boxes or another bin instead. However, you'll need to use something at least bigger than a grocery bag, as using a too-small container won't make this method as effective as possible.

Fill your container with items you want to get rid of without considering if they will be sold, donated, trashed, or given away. Simply place all the items inside the bag and dedicate another time to sort through it. This will save you time and motivate you to get rid of things faster without considering anything else. Further, if you discover that you can't fill the whole bag within half an hour, don't worry — if you've decluttered as much as you can, you've followed the method perfectly.

The only guideline for following this method is to fill one bag daily. As you can probably imagine, there are plenty of ways to do this. For instance, there are countless timeframes you could choose. Maybe you only want to follow it for one week or month, or perhaps your home needs a deeper declutter that will take a few months. 

Another variable you can adjust according to your needs is how you go about decluttering. You could either walk around your whole house daily and try to find random items or isolate the task to a particular room or section of the home. For instance, one day, you could tackle your kids' toys, while the next, you could go through their clothes. If you're unsure where to start, Guardian Storage has a list of 30 places that probably need decluttering. You can jump around this list as you desire, but it will at least help you consider where clutter may be piled up in your home.