How to Start Decluttering When Overwhelmed—Plus a Free Decluttering Checklist!

How to Choose Which Space to Declutter First

Make a list of the areas in your home that you want to declutter and organize. Then choose where you want to start. You can begin with a high-impact space that will make a massive impact in your home. Or maybe start with your biggest source of stress first.

Maybe give yourself an easy win by choosing a space to tackle that you can finish entirely in a short period of time. Like one pile of stuff, one shelf in your pantry, one section of your closet, one drawer, or one countertop

It’s your choice! Just choose the option that will give you the most confidence to keep going. Also feel free to skip areas if they feel too hard. Come back to them later when you’re feeling less overwhelmed. 

How To Declutter & Organize Every Room in Your Home

The steps for decluttering and organizing are the same no matter which space you’re working on. Remember that decluttering and organizing is a step-by-step process. Once you know the steps, it becomes so much easier! 

Empty Out the Space

Remove everything from the space you’re trying to organize. Dump it all out. Create a huge pile if necessary. 

If this is too overwhelming for you, work in sections or zones. Empty one drawer or cupboard at a time. Or work in one corner of the room at a time. 

Sort Like With Like

Next, start sorting. Place like with like. Don’t try to be tidy with this. The mess actually has to get worse before it can get better. Just create piles of similar things.

If you’re cleaning a playroom, for example, make little heaps of toy cars, dinosaurs, dolls, etc. If it’s the kitchen pantry, put all the crackers, cereal, soup, etc. in their own ‘piles’.

Edit and Eliminate What You Aren’t Keeping

After your things are sorted, decide what you want to keep and what you don’t.

Get rid of anything that’s broken. You don’t need it! Next, set aside a pile of donations—any items that are in good shape but that you haven’t used in a while. Then sort what’s left by season, color, or name, and decide on a ‘home’ for each set of items.

Shop For Organization: Bins, Baskets, and Other Containers

This step is my personal favorite. After your ‘keep items’ have a home, you can shop for pretty containers, baskets, labels, or whatever you need to get and stay organized. Be sure to do this after the first three steps have been completed. You don’t truly know what you need until you have sorted, eliminated, and assigned homes for your things. It’s also a bit of a puzzle to figure out what fits where. 

Make sure you measure the height, width, and depth of shelves and cupboards before buying baskets and bins. It’s no fun to choose them all only to realize they don’t fit the way you thought they would. 

Don’t forget to shop your own house too for containers to corral the mess! You can also check places like the dollar store and craft store for some great storage solutions.

Label it and Put Everything Away

Use a Cricut to make pretty labels or use a label maker for simple labels. Heck, you can even use a piece of masking tape and a marker if money is tight (try cutting the tape straight to make it look tidy). Just be sure to label everything so that you—and everyone else in your house—know where to put things away.

Want to know more about the specifics of decluttering each room? Check out this blog post about decluttering room-by-room. 

More Decluttering Tips

• Take care of time-sensitive issues first. Anything urgent should be handled first. This just makes sense. 
• Just focus on one thing at a time. Don’t think about decluttering the whole house at once. Simply focus on where you’re decluttering right now. 
• Take before and after photos. These can be really motivating to help you see how far you’ve come!

3 Questions to Help You Purge the Clutter

As you go about decluttering and organizing your home, there are three things you need to ask of all of your items in order to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. 

1. Is it beautiful?

Of course, we don’t just want a clutter-free home. We want one that is lovely too. If you love something because of its beauty—meaning you’d actually go out and purchase it in the store today—and you have the space for it, it can stay. 

2. Is it useful?

Along with this question is the additional question: “Is this the only thing that can be useful in this way?” If you have somehow collected three can openers over the years, they’re technically all useful…but you don’t need three can openers! Get rid of two and keep the best one. 

3. Is it sentimental?

This one can be a tricky question to answer. We’ve likely all been given things from family or friends that we didn’t choose to have. But for one reason or another, they hold sentimental value. However, donating or getting rid of an item doesn’t mean that the sentiment is gone!

What to Do With the Things You Are Purging

After determining what you need to get rid of, there are only three options for what to do with your things. You can:

1. Keep them
2. Donate them
3. Trash them

That’s it. 

If something is beautiful, useful, or extraordinarily sentimental in value, you keep it. If they’re not, you can either donate them or trash them. 

How do you know whether to donate or trash something?

If something is showing major signs of wear and tear, you should trash it. If it’s still in good shape, donate it. Try to remove the trash and donation items from your sight and your house as soon as you can. That way you won’t create more clutter or be tempted to change your mind.

What About Selling Items?

Technically you could sell items you no longer want, and this might be worth doing if you really need the money. BUT this too tends to slow down the decluttering process because you have to take the time to price, list, and deliver the items you’re selling. Sometimes the simplest route of donating is the best option. 

Create Clutter-Free Habits

Moving forward, once you’re finished with things, you need to put them in their place. If you can’t put things back right away, make sure you do it at the end of every day. It shouldn’t take more than five to ten minutes in each room to get everything back in its place every day. 

Adjust your organization methods as needed. There’s no need to stick with systems that aren’t working for you or your family. 

Set yourself up for maintenance success by:

• Creating daily routines. Make a simple morning, afternoon, and evening routine. Build the time into your schedule to tidy the house and put things away when you’re finished with them. 
• Giving everything a home. This is where organizing comes into play. If everything has a home, it becomes so much easier to pick up and tidy up each day. 
• Consider following the ‘one in one out’ rule. This will help keep you from accumulating more clutter. In essence, you toss, give away, or donate one old item for every new item you bring into your home. 

When you’re overwhelmed with decluttering, remember “Progress over Perfection!” Any progress you make—no matter how small it may seem—is a step in the right direction and should be celebrated. You’ve got this! 

The Clutter Fix

P.S. In the fall of 2022, I have a new book coming out called The Clutter Fix. In it, you will find out your Clutter and Organizing Personalities (so fun and helpful for finding out why you have clutter and which organizing system will work best for you!), how to declutter every single space in your house, and how to create rhythms and routines that will help you keep the clutter out for good. Sign up here for free goodies and more as the release date gets closer!