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Declutter Your Life Fast
Okay, maybe it won’t be instant, but you can, indeed, conquer clutter. Maybe you have been planning to get organized for some time, or maybe you try but you find that you just never quite get there. While motivation is half the battle, having a plan is the other half. Here are some basic how-to’s to get you on your way.
First of all, assess your current situation, and outline what you want to accomplish. Do you just want to be organized with the things that you currently own? Are you looking to get rid of things to have more room? Do you need help with time management and organizing your personal papers? Pick one project or area that you want to work on first. Now stop. Before you go out and buy a lot of fancy organizational tools, you will need to sort what you have, and decide what you want to use that area for.
First things first, when you have picked an area to begin with, get to de-cluttering! Dump everything from that small area into a pile, and make a quick initial assessment. You will need three empty laundry baskets or boxes to throw items into. Everything will go in one of three piles: Keep, go, or trash. Be as ruthless as possible. Don’t worry about ‘where am I going to put all this stuff?’ Simply, look at each item, consider for a second whether you will honestly use it, and put it in one of the piles. If anything is broken, get rid of it! If you haven’t fixed it yet, odds are that you aren’t going to. I’ve been shocked to find things like used-up batteries in drawers in my kitchen when I sort. When you find something like that, it should require no thought at all. Just throw it in the trash.
After you have made the first sort, hopefully you are feeling some sense of accomplishment. This is a good time to pat your self on the back, and take a break. It can be hard to stay motivated to move on to the next step, so keep your ultimate goal in mind. You may want to plan a reward for yourself after you have finished this first big task. Once you have done your first sort, move on to a second sort of your ‘keep’ pile. Again, look for things that should have gone in other boxes to begin with. Keep in mind that putting it in the ‘go’ box doesn’t mean that it is going to be thrown away or wasted. You can either sell the items at a garage sale or give them away to a worthy charity. Either way, you can feel good about allowing someone else to enjoy that item. Once you get through this first step and start seeing results you can begin to put things back in an organized fashion. |
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