Avoid These Common Home Decluttering Mistakes For Maximum Efficiency

Decluttering is a difficult process for many people. It's hard to take a long look at your belongings and decide what to toss or donate. However, certain mistakes can make the process even more burdensome, and avoiding them can make it go a lot less painlessly. Trying to clean as you go and attempting to declutter multiple spots at once can really slow down your goals, even though it might seem like a good idea at the time. 

And to be honest, the urge to do these things makes sense. Your brain might want to make the space sparkling clean while you're decluttering it, leaving it perfect once done. And if you're cleaning out your closet, why wouldn't you clean out your dresser at the same time? But this only prolongs the task, increasing the chance you'll burn out before the chore is finished. Instead, it's best to just focus on pruning and leaving the deep cleaning for another day. Here is a closer look into how avoiding these mistakes will increase your efficiency. 

Here's the thing — decluttering is much different from cleaning. While some people might use the words interchangeably as synonyms, they mean two very different things. With decluttering, you're simply trying to remove unnecessary or unwanted stuff from your cabinets, drawers, and closets. You're merely subtracting. With cleaning, you're removing dust, buildup, and dirt from a space, often using tools like dusters, vacuums, and sprays. With decluttering, you're not trying to organize, tidy, or dust as you go, though the temptation might be great. After all, if you're decluttering your bathroom cabinet and notice how grimy the space under the sink is, it might make sense to grab a multipurpose spray and a microfiber cloth. But avoid that urge. 

By sidetracking yourself into cleaning and organizing, you're making the large task even more mammoth. You're no longer just decluttering, but performing a deep clean. And if your goal was to declutter multiple areas, the task now seems massive because you not only have to cut back on clutter, but remove all dust and dirt as well. And when something becomes too hard, many of us simply abandon it. So, it's not a good strategy to declutter your home. It's the same reason why decluttering a single drawer is much easier than decluttering a large walk-in closet: The smaller the task, the higher the completion rate. So leave the cleaning to a separate day entirely. 

Similar to the logic behind avoiding cleaning while decluttering, you also want to avoid decluttering multiple areas in the room at once. If you do, the task will also become overwhelming, and you'll quickly lose the ambition to finish it. Think of it this way: It's much easier to take out and slim down the contents of a single kitchen cabinet than it is to dump every single cabinet's and drawer's contents into the middle of the room and begin pruning. One seems likely to be completed in an hour or two; the other would likely take several days. 

Because of this, force yourself to only declutter one section at a time. If you can, try quick and easy decluttering in 10 minutes or less. Focus on paring down that single cabinet or drawer, put your throwaways into a donation box, and then either give yourself a break or make the decision to tackle one more cabinet. By keeping the task bite-sized, you make it more manageable and thus, you'll be more motivated to finish.