Decluttering tips

This week I have been on a mission...to DECLUTTER my house. I don't know if it's the fact that I am expecting my fifth baby in May and I am already feeling cramped about that or what.

Whatever the reason, I have been able to get a lot done. While I've been going through things, I thought of a few tips that can help when decluttering any area in your home.

There are a few categories in which to "put" the ideas you are organizing. Whether you have a box for each idea or a pile, these can help to lessen the stress of decluttering.

1. File
2. Give away
3. Trash
4. Put away


The FILE items might be important documents of things that your kids did at school. If you are in a hurry to declutter an area, this is a good place to put things. When you are ready to spend some real time on it, you can go through your filing cabinet or whatever you use to store things on that nature and you can decide if you really need to keep those things. Along these lines, one of my goals for February is to get a banker's box (the white fill boxes they sell at office supply stores) for each of my children and file their keepsake papers in individual boxes. I think this will be a good way to keep track of HOW MUCH stuff I have for each kid so that I can decide what to keep and what to trash. I also think that this will be fun because my kids can look through their own things, which is not really a possibility right now with their papers in a filing cabinet.

The GIVE AWAY items are just that...to give away. Sometimes you might have a certain person to give things to and sometimes you might just get a box or bag together to donate to the thrift store. (NOTE: You may have to do this while you kids are sleeping or at school, just in case they decide to become attached to something they haven't played with for months.

Deciding what to TRASH can be tricky. It is good to use the 6-month rule on some ideas can be a good indicator of whether or not to throw something away (or to give it away). Today, I threw away a pile of stained clothes that I had been working on for a long time and then forgot able for a few months. I didn't miss any of them and they weren't worth giving away. I also trashed two clothing items that I was holding onto for silly reasons. First was a cream hoody that I LOVE but it gets dirty SO fast and is looking old. I finally decided that it wasn't worth sitting around and I probably looked a little silly wearing a dirt hoody. Haha. The other was an old college shirt that was thread-bare. It was the first shirt I got when I went to school and it fits me really well, so I just kept it in my closet. I wore it to bed a few times but finally decided today that it was time to say good bye. Sounds silly, but I am sure everyone has been through similar things...right?

The PUT AWAY pile should be the easiest, but for me it isn't. With little kids and short periods of time to organize, I often don't get this done well, but the idea is that when you are organizing one room and you find something that belongs in another room, you put it away. Simple idea, right? It can be as longs as you don't get distracted. On the other hand, if you give yourself a box to put these things in and you run out of time, you can just stick the box somewhere out of the way and get to it when you can.

Any other decluttering ideas?