Whether you have decided to declutter your whole house or an entire room, it can feel pretty overwhelming as you try to decide where to start!

Since I am a planner, I have the most success if I start with a plan – especially for such a potentially large scale project!

It starts with breaking down your jobs.

If you’re doing a whole room, write down areas of the room on a piece of paper. If you were working on a bedroom, for example, your headings may be:
– Under the bed
– The closet
– The shelf
– The desk

Under these headings, try to think about breaking down the job even further.

So, if you’re thinking about the space under the bed, you might want to split the space in half to make the job more manageable. You could label the two areas as the head of the bed and the foot of the bed. Or, if you have storage bins under the bed, each bin could be listed as separate spaces.

If you’re thinking about the space in the closet, you may consider splitting the job into the various spaces of the closet. The floor, the shelf, the rod, or any other organizing spaces you have in the closet. Alternatively, it may be easier to break it down by category of stuff in the closet, like shoes, hats, sheets, dresses, pants, etc. Either way, break the closet down into smaller jobs.

Once you have broken down the room in this way, you will end up with a list of smaller tasks. A good rule of thumb is to estimate the work to take an hour or less to complete. You could even add a time estimate to your list so that you can judge which task to do depending on how much time you have to work on the space.

This strategy of breaking jobs down empowers you so that you can conquer any sized decluttering project, even your whole house! Sure, the list will seem very large and perhaps overwhelming! But, if you work on it bit by bit, you can slowly cross areas off your list until you’ve actually been through the whole house.

Continue breaking down any job or area that seems overwhelming, even if it’s to the point of only decluttering one bin worth of stuff! The easier it seems to complete, and, the more manageable the block of time to complete it seems, the more likely you will actually stick to your plan!

Telling yourself that you are going to declutter the whole house makes it very overwhelming and means that you will likely find any excuse NOT to do it!

But, pulling out your handy master decluttering guide can give you inspiration as you read through the areas you need to work on. Sometimes, the area you keep telling yourself you should start with because everyone sees it all the time is the hardest spot to start! Look through the list. Something will grab you, seem easy, and soon enough, that space will have less in it!

Create your guide! Look at it and work on it every day.

Like I suggested above, think of breaking down the spaces so that they take 30 minutes to one hour to complete.

Break the space in as much detail as you need to make it doable – and even, ALMOST (??), exciting!!

The next time you’re about to sit down with your phone and relax, grab the list instead and work on one area! And then, sit, chill, and relax!!

Thanks for coming home!