MASSIVE HOME DECLUTTERING COURSE BEST DECLUTTERING TIPS FOR EVERY ROOM decluttering worksheet

Hey guys, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I have a step-by-step, room-by-room, whole home decluttering for you. We are going to be all over the house. This video is going to go very in-depth, a big deep dive, and you're going to learn how to declutter everything. Even if you already know how to declutter, I find it's always good to have a reminder because sometimes you learn these things over your life and you forget them, and other times you don't even internalize them, so it's always good to hear them again, and maybe sometimes there's a new spin on it, so I think you're going to learn something new today. The tips I'm sharing today will work for any size home, so whether you're in a room, in an apartment, if you've got a small home, a medium home, even if you have a large home, I think that decluttering is useful for everybody, no matter what size. Even if you have a huge home, I find that people in the larger homes, they also have trouble with clutter. I just think it's a universal issue, and it's not necessarily about having too much stuff. I mean, it is true that as humans, we collect things, and we want to own things, and we want to buy things, and then maybe over time, we decide, okay, well, we've got too much stuff, now we need to get rid of these things, but as we go through today, I really want you to try to think about this as, like, we're not just trying to get rid of stuff. We're really trying to prioritize what's important to us, and we're kind of thinking about our things as, like, what is the value of our things? What's the purpose of our items? And most importantly, how can we make our living space functional with those items? Because I think that that is the key. I don't think it's about, like, let's get rid of stuff, let's do this, let's have only two things of that, don't have duplicates of that. I think it's more about, like, you and your personal beliefs, and what you want, and what you feel like you need in your space to make it functional. Okay, so here is the agenda today. This is going to be room by room, so I'm going to go step by step. I've got key points and lots of tips and tricks for each room, and I've got everything time stamped so that you can kind of rewatch different parts that maybe you want to see over again, or maybe there's some rooms that you've got that you struggle with in particular, and you want to go right to them, or maybe you don't have certain rooms, so you want to skip over certain sections. So I used to live in a really tiny apartment. I live in Washington, D.C., and we had a really tiny apartment, and it was me, my husband, and our baby. And we lived in our apartment until our baby was probably, like, three years old. And it was really cozy and nice when it was just the two of us, but then my mother-in-law came to stay with us for about a year, and things were really cramped. So we decided we needed to move, and we needed more space, and we were also planning to have more children. So we ended up buying this house that we're in right now, that was about 12 years ago when we got this house, and we ended up having two more kids in this house. And let me tell you, when we moved into this house, it was empty. Like, going from a tiny, like, I think it was, like, less than 900-square-foot apartment, going to, like, a 2,200-square-foot house felt crazy. Like, we could not fill the rooms. Everything was empty. We didn't even have a couch to sit on, like, not enough furniture. Apparently, though, I was up to the challenge because I completely filled this house up. I packed it, and I'm talking all four floors. The basement, the first floor, the second floor where the bedrooms are, and the attic. Packed it up, lots of furniture, lots of stuff, and I'm not talking about just, like, stuff for me. Obviously, it's, like, furniture, the kids' things, my husband's things, my things, clothing. I've also got things from when I was a kid. I've got memorabilia. I've got lots of things that have been passed down to me. Family members have given me things. I even have friends who have given me things. I mean, you name it. And so then this is kind of, like, where the struggles come in because then you've got all this stuff. I've got three kids working full-time out of the house, my husband the same. My mother-in-law was coming and staying with us for, like, months, you know, every few years. She would stay for, like, a year. She's coming from Bulgaria, so she would come, and she would help us with the kids. So it was a lot, and I really struggled to keep this house clean, and I didn't know why. I would go to my friend's houses, and one of my friends, she has three kids in an even bigger house than I do, and her house is immaculate, and I always just didn't understand why. I was like, she must be cleaning all the time. It didn't really occur to me that the reason why her house was so clean and tidy is because she had way less stuff than I did, and it's so much easier to keep your house clean and tidy when you have less stuff. I remember at one point being so busy with cleaning, and you know, when I'm talking busy, like, we've got the kids, and they've got activities. We're going to work every day. We each have, like, an hour commute each day. You know, lots of people in the house, and I told my husband, like, we need to get a cleaning person. Like, I cannot do this, and this is kind of, like, where our disagreement was. Like, he did not want a cleaning person. I wanted one. So we never ended up agreeing, and I just ended up cleaning. In my spare time, all I was doing was cleaning. Cleaning my kitchen counter, just like as an example, was like a one-hour event for me. I had so much stuff on that counter, and it would get piled with dust. When you have more stuff, that actually does attract dust and dirt and grime. So between, like, moving all of my stuff from one place to the other, wiping off the surface, putting it back, it was truly an hour's worth of work. It was a nightmare. I'm not sure when the epiphany came, but one day, I just said to myself, and it started in the kitchen, and I said, I just, I cannot take this counter anymore. I cannot spend an hour of my weekend moving things, cleaning things, and putting them back. It's ridiculous. So I went through, and I got rid of every single thing on the counter. I literally, it looked like it did the day we moved in. I took every single thing and put it somewhere else and got it out of the kitchen, and then I said to myself, what am I going to put back here so that it's a clear, nice-looking, neat counter? Because before, I had, like, papers. I had mail. I had small appliances. I had utensils. I had decor. I had, like, purses. I mean, you name it. I wish I had pictures to show you, because you'd probably be shocked if you look at, like, the before and afters. If I find a photo, I will put it up. Cleaning that counter, as, like, small as it sounds, was, like, the jumpstart that I needed in the beginning of getting a hold of the clutter in my home. I'm not saying that my house is clutter-free, but I have learned a ton about decluttering. I have done a ton of decluttering, and I want to pass what I've learned on to you. That is the value that I hope you get out of this video, because I'm going to go through each room. I'm going to give you a checklist at the end of this video. I'm also going to give you some planning tools, because I want you to have the benefits of a clutter-free home as well. Okay, so now we're moving on to some things to remember. So just a couple guidelines as we go through this. These are just guidelines that can be applied for any kind of decluttering that you're going to be doing. The first one is that we're going to think in small chunks. So we did not get our homes cluttered overnight, and so we are not going to fix it overnight. It's going to take time, and we're going to have to realize that. We're going to do it in small chunks, though, because we don't want to get overwhelmed. I also find it more appealing to do it little by little. And before you think, I can't possibly do this little by little, I have so much stuff, you can do it little by little. I have had a packed attic, and I have made a significant dent in a huge portion of my attic in only 15-minute increments on weekends. So I have been Swedish death cleaning my attic. If you've watched my videos, you know what I've been doing and how I've been doing it. And I just like to do these 15-minute regular bursts where I get rid of things. And it is actually quite shocking to me how much I can get done in 15 minutes. So you can too. The key is you do it in small, manageable chunks, and that way you don't get overwhelmed and you feel like a good sense of accomplishment and a quick win when you do these small chunks. So while we're going to be going room by room, we're not going to be doing the whole room all at once. It's going to be more like one cabinet, one shelf, one drawer, and that's how we're going to get through this. The next guideline is that we're going to go into this with no guilt. It doesn't matter how you acquired the item, whether it was passed on to you, maybe it was a gift, maybe you bought it and it was really expensive and you feel bad getting rid of it. Nope, we have no guilt. We are getting rid of it if we don't use it, if we don't need it, and if we don't love it. And don't fall into the trap of trying to sell your stuff. I know so many people that are like, I'm going to have a garage sale one day, or I'm just going to put this online, I'm going to open up a Poshmark store. Don't do it. It's just getting in the way, you're creating a barrier for yourself. Just know that selling your stuff and kind of like putting together a garage sale, going back and forth with people online, it really isn't worth it in the long run in my opinion. I do have a thought though, if you've got something that's $50 or more, that's kind of like my personal threshold. If I do have something that I think, okay, I can get $50 for this or more, I will sell it or I will consider selling it. Otherwise, I'm donating it, getting rid of it. Okay, so the third guideline that we have here is we need to have a plan. After this workshop, don't worry, I'm going to email you, I'm going to send you a checklist, some tools to help you make a plan, but we're going to make a plan so that we know what rooms are we decluttering and what are we going to declutter from those rooms. You wouldn't like go to work and do something and not have a plan, whether it's on paper or in your head, you still need to have a plan to get things done. As part of this planning, I really want to encourage you to think about what is your why? Why are you decluttering? It could be a variety of reasons. Maybe you just have, you feel like you have too much stuff. Maybe you want to get your house cleaner and tidier and your stuff is getting in your way. Maybe you have some like stress or anxiety about your stuff. Maybe you're thinking about when you're not here anymore and you've got a house full of stuff, who's going to take care of it? I think about these things. Okay, so I've relocated up to my attic and you've been watching my videos. You know that my why is Swedish death cleaning. You know, I'm thinking about, I'm actually not really thinking like who's going to take care of my stuff when I'm gone per se. I am more so though using it as like a lens to make decisions about my stuff. So I think about it like, is anyone going to want this when I'm gone? Because if I have it in my attic, it means I haven't used it in a long time. It's just stored away here. Do I need it? If I don't need it and I don't think anyone's going to want it when I give it to them or after I'm gone, then I don't need to have it up here. But there are some things up here that I want to keep and I want to store and I want to pass on to my kids and that's fine. That's my why. So you need to have a why because I think that gives you a good motivation for getting things done. I think motivation is really important. But what I want to say about motivation is it needs to go hand in hand with discipline because motivation alone, you won't get anything done. Like sure, you can watch videos and you can know your why, but if you don't have that discipline to get it done, then it's not going to happen. The two of those together need to marry and that's the perfect combination. But the discipline here comes from the guideline I shared as number one, which is to declutter in small bursts. We're going to make that commitment to do it in small bursts. We're going to do it daily. We're going to declutter just a little bit often and that's going to be the plan. And so that's going to be the discipline. The why is the motivation. Okay. And then the final guideline is having a plan for how and when the clutter is going to leave your home. You can schedule a pickup. You can take it to the donation center. What I like to do is I like to keep things in my entryway. I just find that if I can make my entryway a little bit less appealing, then it will motivate me to get to the decluttering place or motivate me to get to the donation center. I like to go when I have a packed car. If you don't like to go when you have a packed car, maybe you just want to go more often. That's fine. I personally like to have my car full so that I don't have to keep on going back and forth and I like to get it done at once. The thing here is you can't declutter and then stick your stuff in your attic or stick it in your garage indefinitely. You want to get it out of your house. Otherwise it's not true decluttering. And you may think I made this mistake. You may think if you stash it away somewhere like your attic or your basement or whatever that you're not thinking about it and it's not bothering you. I was thinking the same thing until I decluttered and I realized how much my clutter was causing stress and weighing on me. I didn't think it was. I didn't see the clutter on a day-to-day basis. However, it somehow was always in the back of my mind bothering me that I knew that I had like this big cluttered attic or this big cluttered basement that just needed attention and I just kept thinking one day, one day I got to get to that, one day I got to get to that. I've made a huge dent and I feel so good about it and I know you will feel good about it when you get started. You want to reap the benefits of an uncluttered home and an uncluttered life and the way to do that is to just get it out of your house. Okay, so we're going to move on to the next part of the video. Let's jump into the kitchen. The kitchen is one of those rooms that we just spend a ton of time in. I like to kind of think of it as like the heart of the house but along with that comes that it gets really cluttered. However, a clutter-free kitchen, take it from me, is like 100 times easier to keep clean. So let me get into the kitchen and how I like to keep mine clutter-free. I'm kind of going to give you lots of tips for all of the different areas of your kitchen, especially storage. And kitchens are like one of those places that has a lot of closed storage and when you've got closed storage, it often gets cluttered because you're like, well, I'll just stuff it in this cabinet and shut the door and not worry about it. I like decluttering the kitchen, not only because it's like easier to keep clean when it's clutter-free, I also cook a lot in here and it's just way easier to cook when everything is like open and uncluttered and you've got space. Okay, so in here we are going to ask ourselves like what are the most cluttered areas and that's what we're going to need to find a solution for. I find a lot of reasons why people have clutter in their kitchen is because they use it as like a drop zone for things that don't typically belong in the kitchen. And I was like very guilty of this. I used to store paper in the kitchen. Like actually this like area right behind me used to be just full of paper. I don't even know why. I would bring in the mail, we'd bring homework papers, school papers. I had a basket and then it was just this like huge area that was just like piled with paper and clutter and I just didn't need that to be in the kitchen. Not only did I not need to have the clutter in the first place, it didn't need to be stored in the kitchen. A lot of times too people will come home and they'll put like backpacks in the kitchen or purses and again that is just making clutter and creating a problem in your kitchen for you. So you can kind of think about like what areas are not being used to their fullest potential? Can I move some things out of the kitchen and make some good functional areas? Just like don't underestimate the power of moving things out of your kitchen to make a more functional space for yourself. This was like an epiphany I had because I used to have like Thanksgiving like a roasting pan or like big serving dishes that was like a full set and I only used them once a year but I was like well these are kitchen items. I need to store them in the kitchen. But you don't have to store them in the kitchen. I finally one day realized that these huge items were taking up valuable real estate in this room and I moved them down to the basement and so I still use them but once a year I go down to the basement. I bring them up. I use them and then I put them back and then that way I can save the space in the kitchen for the things that I actually use on a regular or daily basis. Especially for me like I live in a fairly small house and I mean this is like this is my kitchen. You know it's not that big and this is kind of the room that we have to deal with and so that makes it a lot easier for me. I mentioned after this workshop I'm going to send you a checklist. I will also put it up on the screen because when you're thinking about the kitchen sometimes it's easier to go through like a checklist of things and decide like are these things I want to declutter? Are these things I want to keep? If you're having a hard time deciding what you want to keep there are some specific questions you can ask yourself not only in the kitchen but in every room and so I will also put those up and here are the questions. When was the last time I used this? Does this item make my life significantly easier in the kitchen? Do I have something else that can do the same thing? How many of these do I really need or do I use at one time? Am I holding on to this just in case or for sentimental reasons? Is this something I could borrow from a friend or a neighbor if needed? Is this something that I care to clean and maintain? Would I buy this again today? If something is broken will I fix it and when will I fix it? So let's talk about counters. I think that this is the best place to start in the kitchen. This is my opinion and the only reason is because it's like a big surface. It's almost like in your bedroom when your bed is unmade it's a big surface in your room and it makes your room look messy. The same idea I think with the counters. If you've got these huge counters and there's a lot of items on them it could make your whole kitchen look cluttered. There's three things I'm going to talk about. Number one paper clutter. We kind of already addressed that but again is there somewhere else you can move that paper and get it out of your kitchen? I don't think you actually really ever need paper in your kitchen. I do have paper on the side of my refrigerator. I don't keep things on the front of my refrigerator because again it's another big surface and if you've got a lot of papers on the front of your refrigerator it's visual clutter but I do keep papers on the side of the refrigerator and it's like magnetic. They can stick there and you don't actually see it when you're in the kitchen necessarily but you can walk around to the side and see it. Second thing is decor. I think that having decor in your kitchen just adds to clutter. So what I like to do is instead of just having a piece of decor for the sake of decor I like to have decor that is functional and actually does something. So if you see behind me I have like this spoon holder. So this could be considered decor right but then I also actually use it when I'm cooking to hold my spoons. So it's kind of like a functional piece of decor. I also have this olive oil behind me. You can see it right there. This I use this every day but it's like a pretty bottle and so it looks like decor but it's functional because I'm using the oil daily. And then the third thing I want to talk about with our counters is small appliances. These are like in my opinion could be death by a thousand cuts. You get like a toaster, a blender, a juicer, an instant pot, a coffee pot that could easily take up your whole counter. So what I like to do in this case is I put those small appliances away. Some people recommend not having anything on your counter. I don't go that far. I actually keep things on my counter that I use every day. So we do use our toaster every day. We do use our knives every day. I use my coffee pot every day. I use my bread box every day. So I do have those on the counter. But if there are things like an instant pot that maybe you're using once a week or a bread machine that you're using once a week, you don't need to keep those on the counter. I think that it would be it's really useful to put those away so that you can free up that valuable counter space. I could even probably cut it down further in my kitchen but this is kind of what's good for now. So the next thing I want to talk about is cabinets. Because again, these are areas where things are just hidden behind and you can just like stuff things in there. You don't have to look at it on a regular basis. So in this instance, I'm going to recommend the same thing I recommend in the other rooms. We're going to do it one at a time. We're going to pick a cabinet and we're just going to start there. You don't need to do this perfectly. You don't need to feel like you need to empty out every cabinet in your house and just go crazy. Just do one and you can do one today, then another one tomorrow, then a third one next week. You know, you don't have to be rigid about this. I think that is one of the things that really gets in the way of people decluttering. And I've said this before, but people delay their success because they feel like they need to go all in and do it all at once. And you do not need to do that. You simply need to do one thing at a time. Take your time. Don't stress about it. It's not going to make or break your life, right? We're just getting rid of stuff. So go through each cabinet one by one. And you can go by categories. You know, you want to start with pots and pans. Do that category. And as you're looking at your pots and pans, think about, do I have another one just like this? Do I need this or do I have something that does the same thing? And try to think about if you have duplicates you can get rid of. And then also think about, are these pots and pans, would I be using them? If I were to cook Thanksgiving dinner, would I be using all of these? If you have ones that you just don't actually use when you're cooking big meals, you may not need it. And think about single-use tools like avocado slicers, an omelet maker. You know, these are things that just accomplish or do one thing. And so maybe you don't need to have them. I've actually made a practice of not having single-use things in my house that only do one thing. So like I've got a peeler and it can peel all kinds of things, right? Or a grater. It can grate all kinds of things. I'm not going to buy something that's like specific for one type of thing. The only one that I make an exception for is a garlic press. I recently bought a garlic press and it is like made my life so much better when I'm cooking. I really hate having my hands smell like garlic for days on end after I've cooked. So this press is perfect. As we're doing this, be ruthless. Just think about it. How many potholders do you actually need? How many of XYZ do you actually need? And really think about it and get rid of the ones that you don't need and that you're not using. The fridge. Okay, so this is another area that we should talk about. The guidelines to the fridge are going to be similar to ones that we would use in the pantry. And I'm going to move on to the pantry in just a minute because for me, that's a hot spot. But in the fridge, we are going to look and toss anything that is expired or is spoiled or that we just are never going to eat. Maybe we've had an opened thing of olives and we haven't eaten them in like three years. We're going to get rid of that. Those are the obvious things that we can get rid of. I do have a little bit of an organization system in my fridge and it's pretty loose. I do find that if you're too rigid in your organization system in your fridge, it just gets really hard to maintain it. You've seen those videos where it's like really like these aesthetic fridges and pantries and they've got these bins and they've got all this space for like juice boxes and drinks. I mean, it looks nice. It is not functional for me. That is not real life for me. But I do keep some zones so that I kind of have these areas in my fridge where I know to go. Obviously, I have a fruit drawer. I have a vegetable drawer. I've got a deli drawer and I keep things in there like cheeses and breads. If on the off chance we buy deli meat, sometimes we would keep deli meat in there. I use the door for things like sauces and jellies and condiments. And then the freezer, I have like different, mine's like the kind you can see here, like the drawer. And so I'll have like parts of the drawer. I have one for like ice cream, one for frozen fruits and vegetables, one for meats, one for bread. And I just kind of keep it like loosely organized in categories so that I know where things are and I can easily find them. I know when I'm running out. Before I go to the store, I check it. But I like to just kind of keep that category idea going. And I definitely like to keep like lots of bread in the freezer. It'll last indefinitely. I mean, really like all food's going to last indefinitely in the freezer. So like when we're, we've got a bread loaf kind of going in our bread box at all times and then the rest of them just live in the freezer till we're ready to eat them. Okay, so let's move over to the pantry. Let's talk about the pantry. This is my pantry. I find that they get really cluttered because we end up going to the grocery store, we buy more things. Sometimes we don't check our pantry before we go. Maybe like we've bought things in bulk. I haven't actually even looked at my pantry. I'm going to open it. Yeah, okay. So we can see like this is just like a piece of it, but we can see how crowded it is and how much clutter is going on in there. And I guarantee I have things in there that I just haven't eaten in a long time and are not even planning to eat. Again, for the pantry, it's the same idea. We're going to do one shelf at a time. So I'm just going to like start with this one and I like to pull everything out, decide what I want to keep, put it back. We're looking at expiration dates. We're taking a real look to see like, are we going to eat this? Like, like I see this. I bought these for the kids. Thought they would like them. I bought two. They didn't like them and now they've just been sitting in my pantry. So this is like an example of something I can declutter. Or like empty containers. Again, why is this here? You know, so just kind of go through one by one. Do this one, be done. Keep going. I do want to just say a little word about the expiration date because I know a lot of videos will say to you like, well, if it's expired, just toss it. I don't subscribe to that. I think that the expiration date is like a loose guide on when you should think about eating it. But if I can just share something. My mom had cocoa powder in her pantry and it was 10 years old and we were cleaning out her pantry and she was like, oh my God, just throw that away. That's disgusting. And I was like, oh no, it's not even opened. It's fine. And can I just tell you, I ended up making like a really delicious chocolate cake. Everybody survived. It was great. The cocoa powder was fine. Really like certain things, especially like even like canned goods can last forever. They are fully sealed. There is no air. The reason that things get stale and spoiled is from the air. And so if you've got these things in your pantry, I'm not saying to be unsafe about it. I'm just saying if you see an expiration date, you don't have to immediately be like, well, this has to go now because it's like a week past or a year past. Even in some cases, you know, really just think about if you can actually use it and if you should toss it. Of course, if it's things like milk or things that like meat that could really spoil, you don't want to do that. But other things like packaged things, canned things, even things in your freezer, I mean, they will last longer than I will. So really think about it. I also want to talk about bins kind of similar to the fridge. I think that bins are great and they could be useful, but they could also be a little bit of a problem. I don't think you need to decant everything in your pantry to have a nice pantry. I think if there are things that you want to decant, you should. But don't go broke. You know, these things are expensive trying to buy all of these containers. I do like to use some containers. Let me show you. This is where I keep like my all of the baking items that I have. And then this is like all of the cooking items. And so some of the things I do like, I really like these anchor hocking jars. These are the ones here. I like to put my flour in them. I put my sugar in them. I think that these are really useful and I like to decant that kind of stuff. I also like to decant things like dried goods, like lentils, beans, rice, that kind of a thing. And this works for me. As we're decluttering, we're going to go through, we're going to figure out like, what am I using? What am I not using? And really free up that space. I do like to keep it organized in a way like, like I do like to have baking here and cooking up there. Spices are kind of all together. That way when I need something, I can think about like, okay, where do I store my baking items? Where should I look for it? I need cinnamon. Then I go in here and I know exactly where the cinnamon is. I'm not digging through like a massive mess of spices or cereal or whatever just to try to find the one thing. Once you've decluttered your kitchen and you have everything you like it the way that you want it, you're going to have to maintain it. Some of the things I like to do to maintain the tidiness is I do like a five minute tidy. I will just dedicate five minutes of my day to cleaning the counter and clearing the dishes. I don't buy kitchen gadgets unless something that I already own breaks and I need to replace it. I do regular mini decluttering sessions. So before I'm about to go to the grocery store, I will open the pantry and I will declutter a few things. I do this in the fridge as well because when you come home and you've bought new stuff and you want to put it away, you want to have space to do it and you don't want to just put the new stuff in and shove the old stuff to the back because then you're just going to end up with more clutter. So do the decluttering and do it at a specific time that works for you. I recommend right before you go shopping just so that you've got space to put the new stuff and you're not kind of creating more clutter and losing things and then food's going bad. And then lastly, just say no to things like extra condiment packages, paper plates, napkins if you're going for takeout. That kind of stuff also adds to the clutter. It adds to waste. A lot of times we get these things and then we store them and then one day we get sick of looking at them and then we just throw them away. So just make it an effort to not have them come in the house in the first place. Okay, so I'm in here in my living room and one of the things that I think really clutters up your living room hands down is decor. Think things like pillows, blankets, knickknacks, all of those things that we own and that we love. I'm not saying not to have any of them but I'm saying really like give a critical eye to all of the decor that you have and think about like should you keep it. Another thing I like to do with my decor in particular is I like to rotate it. So sometimes I will have knickknacks for example and then I will put some in the attic to store and I will keep half of them out. Then as the season changes, I will go out to the attic, I'll get the others and I'll kind of rotate my knickknacks. It works really well to keep your visual clutter under control in your living room number one but number two, it also feels like new, like brand new. So when the season changes and it gets to summer and I've got new decor, new to me kind of decor that I haven't seen in six months, it's like really refreshes your house and you feel like excited about it and no shopping involved. So just think about like what would happen if you got rid of 50% of your decor. Another hot spot in the living room is flat surfaces, coffee tables, ottomans. I've gone so far as to recommend people even get rid of their coffee table. We got rid of ours because it ended up just like a catch all for every piece of paper and everything. Instead, we put an ottoman there and it's a functional ottoman because it opens and you can store things in there. So we store like books and blankets in ours and it's just been a lot easier since we got rid of that ottoman. Also a hot spot in people's homes if they have like a TV console and they like store things in there. Again, another hot spot for clutter, another place where dust can gather. So really take like a critical look. Do you need this? Do you want this? I'm telling you, living rooms, I find that they're like not so difficult to keep clean but they get so dusty. And when you have so much stuff, the clutter just attracts dust and more dust and then before you know it, it's just like you've got an inch of dust in your living room. I mentioned soft decor. You could also rotate out your pillows. And one thing I like to do with my blankets is I actually keep a basket in my living room for all of the blankets. And then that way, there aren't just like blankets strewn all over the house. There's a basket where we store them in. And you don't even have to fold the blankets to put them in the basket. I mean, we do but seriously, you don't have to. You could just toss them in there and it still looks nice. So moving on to your closet, a lot of people have closets kind of off of their master bedroom. Mine is off of my bathroom. Closets are by far, most people have too much clothing. So I think if you're looking for a quick win or to have a big impact when you're decluttering, start with clothing. I just find that I can quickly find a lot of clothing that I'm not wearing and that I want to donate that I'm not using. So I recommend doing this and I'm going to give you some ideas and tips that I think will make this a lot easier because you could easily, I think you could easily get overwhelmed decluttering your closet if you just start pulling everything out and going crazy. I don't recommend doing that. So the first thing I'm going to say when decluttering your closet is don't go into it thinking you're going to do it all at once and you're going to pull everything out and then you're just going to pick what you want to put back. This is kind of like Marie Kondo recommends this. The reason she recommends it is because she wants you to have that shock value of seeing all the things you own. We don't need the shock value because we've already made the commitment to decluttering. You're watching this workshop. You want to get it done. So you don't need any shock value here. You just need to get started. So what I'm going to recommend is as you're going through, get into your closet and do category by category. That could be shoes as a category, sweaters as a category, tops as a category, pants as a category, and just go through each one. If you want to start with your jeans or your pants, just start there and kind of go through each item. The way that I make a decision when I go through these items, I do have clothing that I haven't worn in years, but I know that I'm going to wear it because I kind of go in cycles with my clothing. And so it's hard for me to say, oh, I haven't worn this in two years. I should get rid of it because sometimes I have jeans, like bell-bottomy kinds of jeans that are back in style now and they've been out of style for many years and I haven't worn them for years. But guess what? I'm wearing them again. So you've got to look at your clothing and decide, like, are you actually going to wear it again? Can you see it coming back in style? I like to have more classic clothing anyway, just so that I'm not falling into this trap of trying to stay in style. I feel like if you're always in classic clothing, you're always going to look put together and nice and you don't need to be worrying about trends. In fact, with trends, what I like to do is I'll just add like one or two trendy pieces each season, say, to my wardrobe rather than trying to go out and look like I've just like stepped out of the store and bought everything that's in style this year. I do think looking at your clothing, though, with a critical eye and saying, have I worn this in a year or two? You know, give yourself a timeline and be honest. Will I wear it? If the item has tags on it, you're never going to wear it. If you've still got things in your closet that you've bought more than a couple weeks ago and you still have the tags on it. Unless you're saving it for like a fancy dress event or something like that, you're not going to wear it. So just know that you can put this criteria and use that criteria as you're making that decision. I have recommended the hanger trick. If you don't want to know what that is, what you do is the way I do it is when I wear a piece of clothing, I will put it back on the hanger and I will flip the hanger backwards so that I can quickly scan and see which hangers are backwards in my closet. And that immediately will tell me in like several months what I'm actually wearing. I saw this stat. It's kind of funny. Like the average person only wears 20% of what's in their closet. Imagine if you could get rid of 80% of your closet. Oftentimes we like to hang our clothes in our closet. I would recommend taking advantage of not only the hanging space, but also the shelving and folded space. It's a really good idea to take advantage of like as much vertical space as you can. Use those shelves, you know, get things folded and put away properly so that you can see them. I even have like bins in here with like piles of t-shirts. I do have like a cool way of hanging my jeans and I will put up a video here so you can see how I do it. I actually just use shower hooks. They do sell specific S hooks. They're a little bit expensive. So I went the shower hook route. I just kind of had this idea because I had some leftover ones and I was like, what can I do with these? And I decided to hang my jeans and it's made a big difference because now I can see all my jeans and I can decide what I want to wear. Because sometimes if your clothes aren't in front of your eyes for certain people, like you just will forget you have it. You won't think about it. But now I can see my jeans and pick what I want to wear. And just a word about shoes as you're decluttering that category, just get rid of any shoes that you are hanging on to that are really worn or really uncomfortable. Maybe you're hanging on to them and it's like for like a life that you no longer live. I had so many of these before the pandemic, I was wearing heels to work and I was going into the office five days a week after the pandemic. Now I am not going to into the office as much as that and I'm not wearing heels. So I'm kind of was like hanging on to these heels thinking like, well, maybe one day I'll wear them. And I had this picture of myself in my head of like putting on a suit and going to the office in my heels. And I just I'm not doing it. So I got rid of all of that. I did keep one or two pairs, but the rest had to go when we are decluttering throughout this room, throughout this workshop and in your own house, we are not aiming to make this perfect. We simply want to get this to be a little bit better. And I promise you, if you start doing these small things and taking these steps in each room, you have nowhere to go but better. Okay, let's head into the bathroom. Okay, now we're in the bathroom. This is my master bathroom. So when we're decluttering the bathroom, I always recommend just starting with the sink and the vanity. I kind of think obviously the vanity is like a big surface and it's got a lot of visual clutter on it. Oftentimes I try to keep stuff off of my vanity, but I do have some things up here. So I recommend starting with the vanity, cleaning out the sink, putting things away, and that's going to give you like a quick win. When you're doing this, just decide like, is there anything on this counter that I can toss or is there anything I should donate? Oftentimes we hang on to products in the bathroom that we just have had for years and we're not actually using, but we think maybe we will use it and we won't. So just toss it. So now we've got to move on to what I think are like the worst areas of the bathroom to organize and that is any cabinets and under the sink. I did a video on organizing under the sink at one point. It is just not a fun place to go. Let me show you mine. Okay, so let's check this out. So look at that. What a mess, right? Okay, so I've got my cleaning products up front. I'm just going to take those out and then I've got some soap in here. I am going to use this to refill. I have some extra products, you know, things that I use, more cleaning products, and then more cleaning, cotton balls. Now we're kind of getting down to it. Oh, I didn't even know I had this. This is really good for cleaning the toilet, by the way, but I'm glad I have that. Okay, so here we are. Kind of this is what it used to look like when I first organized it. They do sell a variety of sink organizers, like under sink organizers. The problem is it's such an awkward space, but you want to store stuff under there because you've got a lot of room, but I recommend just get something like a bin or a box. If you don't want to buy something, think about like if you've got any boxes that you're not using or baskets, anything you've got around the house. I just think that it's a lot easier to keep things organized and corralled if you've got something to put everything in. So here's how I did this. I have this like plastic bin and in here I've got mouth washes. I guess I've got a lot of this is empty. I guess I got a lot of this. This is almost empty as well. Nail polish remover, more cleaning products, and I've got some shampoo. Okay, I didn't know that I had some of this stuff in here. I use this to clean my retainers. I mean all of this stuff I am still using, so I am going to save this and leave this here. I'm just going to organize it a little bit better and I'm going to take out anything that I'm not using, in which case, you know, gosh, I haven't used this in a long time. I'm going to probably get rid of that. This can go in here and I think, I think that's good and now I'm going to just put a couple things back that I do use. I'm going to put my cleaning products in here. Put that in front so I know that I have it and I use these in the bathroom. Put those up there. Toilet paper. I mean that's it. I've ended up, I need some cotton balls, I've realized. Just stick those in there and that's it. I've kind of got this organized now just to like show you what I've decluttered. I got rid of these two empty bottles. I'm getting rid of this sponge. I don't really use it and then I'm getting rid of this hairbrush that I don't use. Okay, so I filmed this section before but I'm just going to give you guys some tips as you're going through your drawers. So I stored a bunch of things in my drawers, lots of like hair care products, nail accessories and I went through and I took everything out. Again, you could do one drawer at a time. I just did all of them because I've got four here. I didn't touch my husband's side. He has four as well. So when I put everything back, what I did is I chose a category for each drawer. So I did one for skincare, one for hair care, one for nail care and then I did a drawer for items that I haven't yet opened but I plan to use, just kind of like extra makeup and things like that. Okay, so the things that I'm donating, I found these Clearasil, I don't even know what these are, Salicylic Acid Pads. These are super old. I'm going to get rid of them. Oh, this is new. This is hair care. So it's going to go in my hair. Actually, I'm going to put it in my new drawer because I have another one going in my bedroom. Getting rid of that. Getting rid of this old razor. Getting rid of this old face mask. Obviously don't need this charger in the bathroom. Okay, so that's for the garbage. This is new. Well, it's not that new, it's just never been used. So I'm going to get rid of that, do something with it. I have this makeup, this eye makeup remover, never use it. I have this body lotion, never use it even though it's really good. Oh my gosh, I have these eye drops. I think this is what this is. I'm going to get rid of that because I don't know if it's still any good. I have another tape measure. I'm just going to save that just in case. I'll put it with my nail stuff. Okay, and then I've got this. I don't know if you guys ever have used this. They say it's really good to get removed pet hair. Well, guess what? It's a piece of junk. I'm getting rid of that. It does not work. Found this old keychain to get rid of. I've got this deodorant. I'm going to use this deodorant. It's aluminum free, so I'm going to put it in with my new stuff. Even though it's not new, when I run out of deodorant, I will check this drawer looking for new things. So I guess my tip here, what I'm trying to say is when you're organizing your drawer, like these are things, my face masks and teeth stuff. So that's all in that top drawer. These are new products in the second drawer. Things that I just haven't yet opened but will need. These are kind of like replacement items. My third drawer here. This is hair stuff and then like tanning mitts and kind of like those softer things. But like I've got hair ties. This is like a hair wash that you can travel with if you've ever used the Lush products. This is really old, but it's good. It's really good for traveling. You know, hair serum, hair touch up, all of that. And then my nail stuff down here. I put that tape measure in there. Okay, so that's that. I'm also going to get rid of this hairbrush. It's like really old. I don't know why I'm hanging on to it. So I've kind of got my pile here of things to get rid of. That's my pile of things to get rid of. And as you're going through your like medicine cabinets and things like that, if you've got things that you like expired medication, just check the expiration date and toss things that are expired. Or if it's like prescription medicine, you know, kind of you can see how you can return that. A lot of times pharmacies will take that back. They have like a program for recycling pharmaceuticals. I mentioned products, and I do think that a lot of women will buy like a shampoo, and then they'll go to the store and they'll see another shampoo, and then they'll want to pick it up. And then before you know it, you have like five kinds of shampoo, all of them half used, five things of conditioner, again, half used. My recommendation is, is just starting today, tell yourself, I'm going to use up all of my shampoo and conditioner before I buy any more. This is what I did. I even used the shampoo and conditioner that I didn't like. I think I did this one day and I went about two years without having to buy new shampoo or conditioner. And then I felt so much freer because then I just had one bottle of shampoo and one bottle of conditioner going at all times. And I kind of stopped buying those duplicates and extras. It's a little harder now because my daughter's a teenager and she's like experimenting with different shampoos. So now we've got a lot of shampoos around the house. I'm going to have to have this conversation with her so that she kind of sees like, it's just ending up like products everywhere and creating clutter. Just like to keep it simple when it comes to hair care, skin care, and products and try to just understand what works best for you and just use that one and keep it on rotation. Okay, moving on to towels, washcloths, and that kind of a thing. What I've always done is I try to change these out every decade. I find that you get about 10 years of use out of towels, like good use before they start looking dingy and kind of like getting holes and looking really worn. What you can do is if you've got worn towels, actually it's almost time for me to replace mine, you can donate these not to like a donation center necessarily, but to like a shelter for animals. They're always looking for sheets and blankets and towels for the animals that come in. I've actually been looking for one in the DC area to donate my stuff to. I cannot find one that will accept them just yet, but I'm going to keep looking. We're in the bedroom. Let's do some decluttering in here. I think that the bedroom should be a place of calm and peacefulness. You may think that you're sleeping and your eyes are closed and you don't notice a cluttered bedroom, but that is not the case. They have shown that if you have a cluttered bedroom, you actually sleep more poorly, which is sleep is so important for your health, so we do not want any clutter in here. There's a couple things that I'm going to just like kind of kick it off with to tell you you do not want in your bedroom. One of those things, and I feel very strongly about this, is electronics. So first of all, no TVs. As few things in here that you can that you have to plug in. The other thing is do not leave your phones in here. Do not have them charging in here. Do not have computers in here. Just get rid of all of that stuff. You do not want to be exposed to EMF rays while you're trying to sleep. You do not want any light from your electronics to come and give you light exposure. Even when your eyelids are closed, the light can still penetrate through your eyelids, so you don't want any of that in your room because it's just going to get in the way of a peaceful sleep. And honestly, even alarm clocks, I don't have any of that in here as you'll see, so just think about these things as you're decluttering your room. Okay, so bedrooms. So one of the things that we're going to have to start with here is your flat surfaces. This is just what it is in your bedroom. People often have like dressers. They have chests of drawers. They have nightstands. So start with your flat surfaces. Clear those off. I like to keep my nightstands as clear as possible. I've got a lamp on them. I do have like actually two lamps. I've got a regular lamp and a salt lamp. I have a little fake flower thing that maybe you can see behind me here. I actually don't have any windows in here, so I can't have real flowers or real plants, which is what I would prefer to have. But this is just decorative, and it's to create like a serene, calm place in the bedroom. When you're thinking about your nightstand, you want to put things on there that's either decorative or just like the essentials. So I do have this basket here just for like all of my skin care and things like that, and then I also keep things in my drawer. Let me just say a couple of things about the basket that I have my skin care in. It's on top of my dresser, and using that basket has really improved the state of my bedroom in terms of how it looks. The way that it works is with your eye and with visual clutter is if you have like 20 little bottles of things that you use, makeup or whatever, and it's all just sitting out, your eye sees 20 little things, and your eye says that's cluttered. If you put those 20 things into a basket, all of a sudden those 20 things turn into one, and your eye sees the basket, and instead of seeing a basket filled with 20 items, your eye just sees one basket, and it kind of just tricks your eye, and it just feels less cluttered. If you don't believe me, just try it and test it and see, and you will see that that really makes a big impact. So I do like having something to corral all of my products in if I'm going to leave them out. Okay, now another thing in here is you do not want to have piles of papers. So if you've got papers on your dressers or on the floor, I've done a video recently where I talked about that people perceive things on the floor as a threat, and it really like causes that stress and anxiety people talk about when they're decluttering. So get stuff up off the floor in your bedroom. Don't have paper in your bedroom. Put your paper somewhere else, an office. Get rid of it. File it away. Make it digital. Whatever you can do to get that paper out of there. But then think about the floor. Not having things on the floor will really make your room not only easier to clean, it will also make your room feel larger, which I know most bedrooms aren't giant. I mean, mine, you can barely fit our bed in here, right? Like we've got a queen-size bed, and it takes up a huge portion of the room. So don't have things on the floor. It really just, it's that threat thing, and it'll just make your space look messier. So just like in the kitchen, in your bedrooms, to declutter, we're going to do one drawer at a time. This is all you can do. You open up that drawer, and you go through it. For my drawers, I will just tell you how I organize them. I like to have the drawers have specific purposes. So I have one drawer for makeup. I have one drawer for underwear. I have one drawer for socks. One drawer for pajamas. Then in another dresser that we've got, my husband and I kind of share all of these drawers. We each have our own, you know, drawer. I've got one for leggings. I've got one for t-shirts, and I've got one for workout clothing. And that's it. Those are my drawers. Each drawer has a category, and then I can go through each and cull them down. As you go through your drawers, all you need to do is make sure that you can close your drawer. So you can keep everything in your drawer as long as you can close it, and it's not a struggle to get it closed. I will say, if you aren't sure where to start in your drawer, just start at the back or the bottom. Because what happens is, we put all of our stuff away, and we wear it, we put it away. We wear it, we put it away. And so usually, the top of the drawer is everything that you're wearing, and then underneath is everything you're not wearing. Next, I'm going to talk about the underbed in your room. I do not like storing things under my bed. I did do a whole video on bedroom decluttering, and I said I was going to strive to have nothing under my bed. I did do that for a little while. Now, some stuff has kind of creeped back in, and we don't have a ton of storage, so I do need to store some things. But I would say, try to store as little as possible under your bed, because it gets really dusty under there. And it's just like the nature of your bedroom. It gets dusty in here, because we spend so much time in this room. But if you've got more things under your bed, that's attracting more dust. And when you pull out everything from underneath, you'll see what I mean. Another thing that people have a lot of in their bedrooms are throw blankets or pillows. You will notice, I don't really have any decorative things on my bed anymore. Sometimes I have a blanket in here. I think it's in the wash right now. I used to have decorative pillows. The thing about the bed is, I just donated them. I don't use them anymore. I like to have my bed. I want to be able to make my bed in 60 seconds or less. That's important to me, because I make it every day. I feel like it's a good routine to have. Right when I wake up, we make our bed. It makes the whole room look nicer, because obviously, the bed takes up so much space in here. But I just like to do it. I just think it's a part of my morning routine that I do. If your bed takes longer than 60 seconds to make, think about what you have on your bed that you could get rid of that could just reduce that time. Then you'll be more prone to making your bed, and it will look nice and neat. Okay, guys. Well, that is the end of the workshop. Now you have all of the tools you need to declutter your whole home, room by room, step by step. If you found this workshop helpful, let your family know. Let your friends know. I really appreciate and love your support. We are in this together. Together, we are going to declutter our homes and create a home and a life that we love. Thank you so much for attending today, and I will see you guys in my next video or my next workshop. Bye-bye.