Decluttering and organising is both a skill set and a mindset for the organised person.

“The good news is everyone can learn how to declutter and organise as it is a logical process that doesn’t change much from room to room.”

— Sabine

The decluttering and organising skillset

When you are starting with decluttering and organising the process work in a relatively set order as you can see in the image below:

Declutter
Clean
Organise

3 step Sequence, Declutter, Clean and Organise

Decluttering and Organising– Step 1. Declutter

Clearly one of the most well-known tasks of decluttering and organising helping you to become a more organised person and transforming your spaces from chaos and clutter into calm clutter free. However, there is a misconception that decluttering is all that is needed to have a better organised home.

In reality decluttering is only a small part of organising. To be an organised person, you declutter and dispose of items initially at a larger scale after this initial effort, you continue to the next stages, clean, organise and maintain.

Decluttering and Organising– Step 2. Clean

There are many resources on how to clean, I won’t go into depth on it after you have removed items from your home. There is a pause between the period you have removed the items you no longer want and need. This pause is there before you place the items you want to keep in the place you are working on. In this pause make sure you clean, wipe away the cobwebs, remove the little pieces of sand or the big clumps of dust etc. I find both decluttering and cleaning allow a space to breathe fresh air. And even at this early stage, before you have started organising, walking into the room feels like the space has lifted.

When cleaning following this one golden rule: cleaning is the removal of any dirt, not the movement of dirt. Meaning your cleaning tools (vacuum, mop, cloths) themselves are clean. When you clean the dust and grime goes in the bin, the sink and down the drain before you move on.

Decluttering and Organising– Step 4. Organise

Now we get to the meaty bit of the decluttering and organising sequence “how to organise”. At this stage no matter which space you work in, you will have placed your stuff in groupings of “like items” and find homes for all items you own (with the use of pretty boxes if you like).

“An organised person knows, that when you organise. You have to find a physical home for each item you own.”

— Sabine

The decluttering and organising mindset

Decluttering and Organising– Step 5. Maintain

Maintenance doesn’t need to be done when you organise. It needs to be done after you have put in all this effort of decluttering and organising your space. At this stage, you keep an eye on your newly organised space and start to develop habits and routines to keep your space neat and tidy.

An organised person will always keep on eye on:

What is working?
What is not?
How often do you need to put things away to keep the space maintained?

Check in questions:

I regularly check in with myself and ask questions that help my decluttering and organising efforts in the long run like:

What needs to be done daily and what can be done weekly?

Daily

At the time of writing, with my children being older teenagers, for me to keep the house nice and clean, I work once a day on:

the bathrooms
floors
laundry
misplaced items (daily declutter)

The kitchen needs some attention several times a day (which is code for teenagers eat all the time!).

Weekly

Lower maintenance places that essentially only gather dust can be done weekly, like:

Bedrooms
The office
The living room

These lists are not set in stone, it needs to work for you with your family situation, the size of your house, your energy levels and preferred level of cleanliness.

If you are a person who understands the decluttering and organising mindset, you will know the answers to these questions that are right for them at this point in time.

Someone with a decluttering and organising mindset will not stop the practice, they will adjust the practice

This is both a good and bad thing, but your life is constantly in flux; what works for you, your lifestyle, and your family today might be completely different in five years. Your house might be bigger or smaller, and the number of people in your household might have gone up or down. Initially, when learning about decluttering and organising, I hoped to find the magic bullet and be organised for life. Over time I have come to appreciate that this will not happen, case in point I have been writing about this topic for over a decade. I have changed, as have my circumstances.

The organised person checks in with themselves. How clutter-free, clean and organised do I want to be? Can I be? And is it realistic in this time of my life?

“See decluttering and organising as a lifelong practice you will grow and develop with it as your life changes.”

— Sabine

Decluttering and organising in big or small ways?

Is it better to do decluttering and organising in one hit or break it up?

Depending on how big your project is, how much time, energy and in some cases funds you have will determine if you decide to declutter and organise in one hit or separate sessions over weeks or months.

Smaller decluttering and organiser projects

If you are doing smaller projects, you can use the declutter, clean and organise sequence in one hit for small spaces for example when you organise a drawer or declutter the bookshelf.

“For smaller scale decluttering and organising we want to do is show ourselves continuous improvement, if it is cleaner, neater and less cluttered then when we started we are making progress”

— Sabine

Bigger decluttering and organising projects

For big projects you would break these steps up in different sessions for example when you declutter a garage or a wardrobe. With these big projects, it is best to keep the stages separate either with breaks in between or declutter one day, clean and organise on other days.

“Keep in mind with big overhauls to stay clear of organising burnout by doing way too much or taking on too big a declutter / organising project at one time.”

— Sabine