13 Life-Changing Decluttering Hacks to make 2021 Your MOST ORGANIZED YEAR EVER

Hello, friends, and welcome back. If you're new here, welcome. My name is Kallie Branciforte, and a couple of months ago, I shared with you guys a video called 53 things to declutter that you won't miss at all. And you guys absolutely loved this video, but I also know there's a big difference between wanting to declutter and actually doing it. So in today's video, what I wanna do is share with you some of my best actionable and attainable steps to take the motivation from wanting to declutter and actually make it happen so that you can make 2021 your most organized year ever. Regular decluttering is something I have found to just be super beneficial to my life. There are studies that prove that living in a more cluttered space actually negatively impacts somebody's mental health. People who live in places that they describe as cluttered tend to have increased cortisol levels throughout the day. That's the stress hormone. And people who do not describe their space as cluttered have decreased cortisol levels throughout the day. And I think this totally makes sense because we all have spaces in our house that sort of just get cluttered and we kind of ignore it. And the more we ignore it, the more cluttered it gets. And then it kind of weighs on us and we're always thinking about it. We no need to declutter it. What I tend to find is the clutter tends to cause stress and that stress then tends to cause a mental roadblock which prevents us from getting the motivation we need to then declutter. And so decluttering then becomes this like huge mountain and we feel like we're never going to be able to climb it. And so that's why my first tip when it comes to decluttering is to realize that it actually is not that big of a mountain and it's actually not going to take as long as you think that it's going to. I think a lot of us, when we think about decluttering, we tend to think of like that show hoarders and it needs to be this like huge process when in reality, instead you can break decluttering down into much smaller tasks. By breaking your decluttering into just small little tasks that you do every single day, it makes it way more attainable than trying to do like a full house or a full room declutter at a time. So my suggestion is to keep a running list of places that need to get decluttered. And I want you to think really small and really specific. So instead of saying, I need to declutter the kitchen, you want to say, I need to declutter the kitchen utensil drawer or the kitchen island or the Tupperware cabinet or underneath the kitchen sink. The point is you want to make a list of small, specific things that need to be decluttered and then work on just tackling one a day or even two or three a week. By doing this, we're just making decluttering feel so much more attainable. I think we all agree that we can spare five to eight minutes somewhere in our day. So it's taking this sort of like mountain and making it something that we absolutely can tackle, something that we can climb. And that's what it brings me into my next point, which is the goal with decluttering is for you to sort of start to be in the constant state of decluttering instead of looking at decluttering as a project you do every three months or every six months or once a year. So again, like I said, it's shifting away from that thought process of, I need to declutter the kitchen and breaking it down into, okay, I need to declutter underneath the kitchen sink or I really want to declutter the utensil drawer and then just knocking out one of those a day or a couple of them every single week. You're breaking it down into little bite-sized pieces and it sort of just becomes part of like your daily cleaning or your daily routine in general. So I'll give you an example. The other day I was putting away my dishes. It's like a daily thing that I do every single day. And I knew I needed to organize the utensil drawer. And so I just took an extra, not even five minutes to remove everything from the utensil drawer, wipe it clean and organize it as I was putting those dishes away. So I just sort of like grouped it right into my regular cleaning, literally added less than five minutes to putting away the dishes and the utensil drawer got nice and organized. Another example is I was putting away clean towels underneath the kitchen sink and I noticed it was getting a little cluttered there. So I took eight minutes to just quickly organize while I was in there, get rid of bottles of old cleaning stuff that I wasn't using anymore. When you work on tackling small little tasks constantly throughout the day and week, they don't build up into this big mountain of a task that causes you that stress. Let's move on and get a little more specific and talk about decluttering specific areas in our house. And let's start with the closet. I think a closet is a place that pretty much all of us at some point feel like it's too cluttered. We feel like it's bursting at the seams. I know in my life, I spent a lot of time with a closet that was just like a total hot mess. And even though it was chock full of clothes, I always seemed to open it and never have anything to wear. And that's why now I'm a big believer in streamlining your closet to be full of things that you actually need and not clothing that you just think you need or that you want. And I actually have an entire video all about this, how I declutter my closet and how I have a more minimal closet. And I will link that video down below. But the main point of the video is that you want a closet that when you open it, it is full of at least 80 to 90% of clothes that you can wear on that specific day. Say for example, you spend 80% of your days working from home and like running errands and doing stuff around the house. You want 80% of your closet to be comfy, casual clothes that you can use working from home and running errands. So it wouldn't make sense for 50% of your closet to be fancy blouses and cocktail dresses. So the challenge is to think about how do you spend your days and what kind of clothes do you need for those days? So that at the end of the day, the ultimate goal is that you open up your closet and 80 to 90% of it is clothes that you can literally grab and go and wear on any given day. Again, I have an entire video that really goes over this in a lot more detail with some tips on decluttering and going through your closet. So if closet decluttering is a big thing on your list, definitely check that video down below. All right, another thing, let's talk about decluttering is paper. I feel like in this day and age, we think that we're paperless, but we're definitely not. I know that there's always paper scraps still like looming around in our house and I'm constantly having to find innovative and smart ways to declutter them to get it out of my life. So let's talk a little bit about paper. First, let's talk about receipts. First things first, if it is a receipt that you need to keep, you wanna have a dedicated space where those receipts go. I have a clip that's right in my kitchen because my kitchen is literally like the room that I walk into when I come home from, like when I get out of my car. And so it's just a really easy place for me to make sure that the receipt is getting right where it goes. If it is a receipt you do not need, just get in the habit of immediately getting it into the trash can. But if it's a grocery receipt, of course, don't forget that you need to scan it into your Fetch Rewards app first. This is an app that I have told you guys about in the past that you're probably used to me talking about it. But in case you missed it, Fetch Rewards is an app that partners with a bunch of brands and gives you points for purchasing from these brands. So it only takes about 10 seconds. You scan your receipt, it redeems points for you, and then you can spend your points on gift cards to anywhere that you like to shop, places like Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy, et cetera. So personally, I've gotten into the habit of just immediately scanning my receipts when I get home. And then once the receipt is scanned, I throw it out so that it's not bogging down my life. And I've actually been working with Fetch Rewards all throughout 2020. And so I was really excited that they wanted to sponsor this video because when they do that, it means that I have free points to give away to you guys. So all you have to do is download the app. It is totally free to download and then use my code, BFCOFFEE, and you'll get your first 4,000 points for free when you scan your first receipt. Another thing I love about Fetch is it also works on e-receipts because personally I've been doing way more online shopping in 2020 and probably will continue into 2021. Because while I did mention it's for grocery receipts, you actually can scan all sorts of receipts with Fetch because it's not just brands that are grocery only items. So you can actually connect your Amazon account and your email and Fetch will scan for e-receipts from places that you shop online like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Instacart, Chewy, and so many more. So you can maximize your points and make sure you're getting the most points possible. All right, a few more tips for managing all the paper in your life. Go through your mail the minute it arrives. Junk gets recycled. Mail that needs to be dealt with should have a special spot that it goes. And if you don't have a spot like this, you need to identify one. We have a bucket in our file organizer that's dedicated just to paperwork and mail that needs to be attended to. And then pretty much every time I add anything to that, I check to make sure there's not anything that needs to come out. Another tip for reducing paper in your life is to consider getting a Rocketbook. This is something I got a couple months ago and I literally cannot look back because this is like the best notebook ever. I personally am a big list maker. I make lists for grocery shopping, for meal planning, for time blocking, daily to-do list, weekly to-do list, monthly to-do list. I like to make a lot of lists. And that used to just lead to like a ton of scrap paper, a ton of notebooks, lots of paper in my life that I didn't need until I switched over to the Rocketbook. And the Rocketbook is essentially just a reusable notebook. It has 30 pages that I can use for all of my lists and all of my schedules. But once I no longer need that list, the page actually wipes clean with a damp paper towel. There's also an app attached to it. So if there's a list or page that you need to reference like down the road for some reason, you can actually upload the images of the pages right into the app and store it for later. But overall, this product has been so helpful for me because now all of my little notes and my lists are all together in one place in this very small notebook that takes up very little space in my house and has decreased the amount of just like notepads and scrap pieces of paper in my life by so, so much. Let's move on to just talk about a couple of basic decluttering tips for any of those things that you seem to just sort of be hanging onto in your life that you can't seem to get rid of. And we tend to hang onto things for a couple of reasons. The first reason I find we tend to hang onto things is guilt. Maybe it's something that you bought and then you never used and now you feel guilty that you never used it and you feel guilty letting go of it. So what I want you to do is accept that it is okay to feel guilty letting go of something, but it's not okay to just hang onto stuff randomly simply because you feel guilty letting go of it. Another reason that we might keep something is we've sort of just developed like an attachment to it. And often these attachments are just sort of random. Obviously, you know, we may be attached to something because it's extremely sentimental or belong to a grandparent and that sense make a little more sense, but sometimes we will create over attachment to things that don't even really make sense. And we sort of just create these like silly rules on why we have to keep something in our life. And a really great tip that I learned is to actually have a friend help you with decluttering. It has been proven that as you are decluttering, if you don't touch an item, you actually are more likely to be able to let it go. So have a friend help you. And as you're going through stuff, have them pick up an item and say, is this something that you need? Because if you touch it, you're more likely to want to keep it. And lastly, one of the best ways to declutter is to actually start right at the source, which typically is shopping. You want to start by making a conscious effort to acquire less stuff. And so when you think about decluttering, one of the best ways to declutter is to not even bring the clutter into your house in the first place. So when you're shopping, you want to ask yourself, is this something that you truly need? Because once something is in your house, it is a lot harder to get rid of it. So you really want to challenge yourself to think about this with every purchase. Is this something I truly need? Or is this just going to add to clutter and stress in my house? All right, my next secret to decluttering is to let your space work for you and not against you. You want to let any organizational challenges in your house sort of inspire you to come up with smart and practical solutions. Because very often we will let spaces in our house get overwhelmed and get cluttered. We come up with excuses on why it is that we can't create organizational solutions there. We might look at our house and just say, I don't have enough space. My house is too small. I don't have any closets. There's not enough room here. But I truly believe that there's an organizational solution to every problem. If you're just sort of willing to look outside of the box and find that solution. And yes, sometimes this does just come down to looking at everything you own and saying, do I really need all of this stuff? I personally don't live in a super huge house. It's not tiny by any means. I'm aware that it's larger than many other houses, but at just about 1200 square feet for a family of soon to be four with two adults that work from home full time, that is considered sort of smaller for a lot of people. We don't have an office. We don't have a guest bedroom. We don't have a mudroom. We don't have a pantry. We don't have any bathroom closets. So I definitely know the hard truth about feeling like you don't have enough space for things, but also the real truth is we purposely bought a smaller house and prefer smaller houses because I find that if I have a bigger house, I'm just going to fill it with stuff. By having a smaller house, it really forces me to constantly look at everything that I own and ask, do I need each of these items? Because space is just so, so much more precious. So what I wanna challenge you to do is let your space inspire your organization instead of creating a roadblock where you say, I don't have the space for this. Let me give you a couple examples of what I mean. We don't have a mudroom or a coat closet in this house. So I utilize the back of the basement door to hang jackets. We don't have any bathroom closets or real bathroom storage at all in this house. So I added a shelf along the ceiling for storing items. We only have one very small closet in our master bedroom. There's no walk-in closets here to be seen. So it forces us to just have a much more minimal wardrobe and to store any unused clothes, like summer clothes in the winter or formal wear that we're not wearing and tupple wears in our basement. Kitchen storage is limited. So we make use of all unused space, like space above the fridge or above an extra cabinet. The point I'm trying to make is if you're sort of willing to think outside of the box a little bit, you actually can find very smart and very practical solutions to any spaces in your life that are causing clutter. So one of my favorite ways to do this is just identify one place that seems to constantly get cluttered and then identify what is it that's cluttering this space and then challenge yourself to come up with a solution to solve that problem. And remember that the solution could be one of two things. It could be adding something. Maybe you need to add a basket for storage or some type of shelf or hook for storage, or it may involve changing the way that you do something in your house. For example, going through mail the minute that it comes home so the paper doesn't always accumulate on your kitchen counter or only bringing laundry up to your bedroom when you are ready to put it away so that clean laundry isn't taking over your bedroom. All right, my next trick is one of my favorite ones to use. I use it every single day and it is called the 15-minute trick or hack, 15-minute solution. I don't know. It doesn't actually have a name. I'm just naming it right now on the fly. But I find that very often when it comes to decluttering something, the number one problem isn't actually decluttering it, but it's finding the motivation or want or time to do it. And so what I use is this 15-minute trick where I just set a 15-minute alarm on my phone. I also highly suggest that you put on some happy upbeat music because it totally helps. And then you just tackle everything you can in that 15 minutes. And the reason this works is most of us agree that we can give up 15 minutes somewhere in our day. It doesn't feel like we're giving up too much time. We know that when the 15 minutes is over, we can go do whatever it is we wanna do, sit on the sofa, scroll through TikTok, watch TV, take a nap, whatever. But at the same time, you will be so surprised how much you can get done in 15 minutes. I often find that I can complete an entire task that I wanted to do and then maybe have time to even start another one in those 15 minutes. Okay, my last and final hack is called the flat surface rule. Flat surfaces are things in our houses that tend to get become the most cluttered. And when we have clean flat surfaces, it's one of the things that make our house feel so much cleaner and so much more spacious. So this trick is to focus on keeping any flat surfaces in your house clear of clutter and mess. You wanna get into the habit of just constantly decluttering surfaces and removing things that shouldn't be there with the ultimate goal of removing anything from flat surfaces that shouldn't be there. And I know the idea of this sounds sort of daunting. Nobody has constantly clean flat surfaces all the time. But the idea is that if you sort of just get into this constant act of thinking about decluttering your flat surfaces, so like every time you get up to go pee, you're taking something off a flat surface and putting it back where it needs to go. Or every time you go upstairs, you're taking something with you. Or when you're going from one room to the other room, you're just constantly thinking about taking things off of flat surfaces that aren't supposed to be there and putting them away where they go. You actually find that this becomes way more attainable because you're just sort of like always in the constant state of doing it. All right, my friends, that does it. That was some of my best tips for keeping a more decluttered home. Obviously, most of us at the end of the day, there's gonna be clutter hanging around in our house somewhere here or there. But these are the things that I have found to help me so, so much. Like I said, at the beginning of the video, the main goal is just like not let clutter build up. It's a big, huge mountain that's causing stress. And then you feel like you can never do it. And it becomes like a hoarder's TV show situation. And these are honestly just truly tips and hacks that I use in my daily life that have really helped me so much. I hope that they will help you as well. But as always, thank you so, so much for stopping by and watching. I hope you guys are having a fantastic day and I will see you all in my next video.