Living in a cluttered home can make you feel overwhelmed and exhausted. However, reorganising your home also means going through all your belongings and deciding what stays and what goes. Why don’t you get rid of clutter while doing a spring clean?
Why You Should Declutter Your Home
Spring gives us the urge to purge. The hard part is choosing what to throw out in your spring clean.
The thing is, decluttering helps keep your space clean, stops you from repurchasing stuff you don’t need, and helps you make a little extra cash if you choose to sell them!
What You Should Throw Out During Your Spring Clean
If you need a little help figuring out which items you can get rid of, we’ve got you covered!
1. Unused Clothing
When there’s a huge sale going on, or even just for a little retail therapy, we tend to purchase loads of clothing items.
What’s more, we shy away from getting rid of ones that are too small for us to fit into because we hope that someday we’ll lose those extra kilos.
- Go through your closet and take stock of what you have.
- Separate by season.
- Store away the ones you will wear later in the year.
- Donate or throw out ones that you won’t use again.
Sort through your linens too. Keep things you use regularly, and donate the rest.
2. Paper Clutter
You do need to keep important paperwork for a while. However, this doesn’t mean that you store every last bit forever.
Hold on to:
- Tax-related documents
- Lease/ home ownership-related documents
- Important bills
- Cards and mail that have sentimental value
Discard:
- Junk mail (ads, pamphlets, etc.)
- Old newspapers you have no use for
- Old notes and to-do lists
- Old flight tickets, movie stubs, etc.
A great tip is to scan and store all of your papers digitally; that way, should you ever need them, they’re just one click away!
3. Stationery
Before going out on a stationery buying binge, get rid of dried-out pens, ink, paperclips, and post-it notes that aren’t even sticky anymore.
Go through old notebooks, and recycle them if you don’t need them anymore.
4. Electronics
Be it an old cassette player, a laptop that doesn’t quite work anymore, or that pile of chargers and cables with no owner or leaky batteries – you probably need to get rid of them.
Dispose of these items the right way, and take them to an electronics recycling centre. That way, you know you’re consciously getting rid of them, so they don’t end up leaching toxic chemicals into the environment.
5. Two Peas – Not In A Pod
Do you have a bunch of socks that no longer have their matching pair? Or even pots and storage boxes without their lids (or vice versa!)? Oh, or dinner plates and cutlery that don’t go together or that you haven’t used in ages?
Here’s what you can do. Keep these items in a specific space in your house and if their pair show up in a couple of weeks, keep them (kind of like a reverse lost and found) – and if not, junk them!
6. Pantry Items
Say goodbye to expired sauce bottles, unhealthy foods, ancient spices, etc.
Go through your pantry, check the expiration dates on everything, and dispose of the expired ones.
You should also go through your fridge to ensure that all the food you and your family consume remains safe and healthy to eat.
7. Kids Stuff
Donate old toys and clothes which are in usable condition, and junk the ones that aren’t.
Make a fun scrapbook out of old photos and cards, and designate a specific shelf or cupboard to store items of sentimental value.
You can even get your kids involved in this! Have them help out so they can choose what they would like to throw out while they spring clean their things!
8. Cosmetics
We get it. People can be sentimental about everything, including makeup. (That lipstick was the one you bought for your 18th birthday, remember?!)
Plus, makeup is expensive – making deciding which to throw out as you spring clean much harder.
Keeping makeup for too long doesn’t just lead to a cluttered vanity; it can also damage your skin once it expires.
Typically (according to some dermatologists), cream-based cosmetic products expire six months to a year after opening. Mascara has just a 3-month shelf life once opened, beyond which it can break down and cause severe skin and eye irritation.
Tip: Write the date you opened each item and keep the list handy – so you know when something needs to be tossed out. This also applies to your skincare items, like body lotions, etc.
9. Books
Usually, the advice is to get rid of books and move everything onto an e-reading device.
However, that’s not what we want to say. Some people love the feeling of having a library or reading a book – rather than reading one on an e-reader.
If it’s hard to decide what books to throw away as you spring clean, here’s a way to make it easier.
- Sort through your books and organise them into three piles:
- Must keep – These include your collections, favourite books and sentimental keepsakes that you simply must keep.
- Unsure – These are the books that you aren’t sure about – hold on to them and see if you have room for them or not.
- Donate – Just because you might not reread these books or don’t like them doesn’t mean that someone else would not. Donate these books and magazines to a second-hand bookstore, charity, or library!
10. General Clutter
You might find old knick-knacks around your home, things friends and family forgot over at your house months ago – these items we do not know what to do with now.
Carefully make a list of all these items that you find and (if they’re yours) decide if you would like to store them or get rid of them.
Likewise, ask your friends and family if any of these items belong to them – after all, you wouldn’t want to throw away their things as you clean your home!
