A Practical Walk

I don’t consider myself a naturally organized person (just ask my mom about my junk drawers as a kid). But over the years I’ve seen being more organized and tidy as not only making my life easier, but more enjoyable as well. In fact, I’ve gotten to the point that I get a thrill out of decluttering and organizing an area!

My house still gets messy (right now my bedroom could use some attention) but I can usually get it put back together pretty quickly. I’ve implemented different strategies and habits over the years that have helped, but there’s one that makes the biggest impact…

Constant decluttering!

I gather things up to toss, donate, or sell on a regular basis. You’d think I’d be running out of stuff to toss, but I can almost always find something else to get rid of. For a while I snapped pictures of anything I let go of. Then I’d go back and look at them and think, “Wow! All that was in my house!”

There have been very few times where I regretted getting rid of something. Usually decluttering has been nothing but a benefit to me and my family.

Just this weekend I gathered up all these things to get rid of:

• Miscellaneous receipts, mail, and other papers I no longer needed.
• A broken French press carafe
• Some soap I’m no longer using, as a doctor recommended a different soap to me.
• 2 nail files
• An empty tape thing.
• A vase I haven’t used in a while and some marbles in it.
• An old wire I found when I moved a shelf to get a key that had fallen. Then 2 more cord pieces I found in the yard…yes the yard.

While this might not look like much, remember it’s from just one weekend. Over the course of time, it adds up. The reason I declutter is so that it’s quicker to get my house back looking like this in a jiffy:

How do you handle clutter? Do you prefer to do it all in one big whack or do you do it little by little?