Give me 14 minutes, I'll make your clutter disappear

Over 52% of people clear out their clothes less than once a year. And almost half of people admit that they've arrived late to work, school or other commitments because they were searching for a misplaced item. And according to the neuroscientist T.J. Power in the Dose Effect book, we spend about 93% of our days indoors, with a big chunk of that being inside of our homes. I'm a mom of two and it was a few years ago that I realized how much the clutter in my home was starting to affect me. And not just my budget, but it was also really affecting my mental health. So today I want to share with you the 11 things I learned about stuff that finally gave me the push to clear out my clutter. Is it a storage problem or a clutter problem? This is something I've come to ask myself a lot when I'm looking at a certain area in my home. There's this statistic that women in the UK own between 24 and 35 pairs of shoes and men on average own about 19 pairs. And it doesn't sound like much but actually having all of those shoes combined, so like let's say 35 plus 19, that's 54 pairs of shoes and that's not even counting kids shoes if you're a family like us. So that amount of shoes can really add up in a home. And I often used to think that I just needed a different storage system. Maybe I just needed to buy more shoe units or, you know, just a different system that would work better for us. And then I realized actually what I needed was just less shoes, just less items in general. And keeping on top of, you know, a huge amount of items can be so so much harder, especially when you're in a busy season of life like we are right now with a family with small children. And so I don't want to have to manage a whole bunch of shoes. I just want to have the shoes that we wear on repeat on a regular basis and those are the shoes that we keep out. And it's not massive amounts and it just makes things so so much easier. So sometimes it's not that you need a different storage system. It's not that you need a new storage unit. It might be just that we need to declutter a bit. The bags hanging on door handles on the backs of chairs, you don't need them. And it took me a while to realize that just stuffing a whole bunch of things and usually very random things in these bags and putting them on the backs of chairs or putting them on random door handles around my house was very much useless. And it was such a recipe for chaos because then, you know, you place all of these random items in a bag and that makes it so hard to find those things when you're looking for them, especially if those bags start piling up. So for us, we've made a rule, no more bags hanging on any of those areas. So they go in a specific spot. So we might have a little tray for sunglasses or shoes go in a different spot or hats go in a different spot. So all of these items need to have a spot. They cannot be just hanging in a random plastic bag on a door handle in my house because I just know that's not going to work for us. It's just going to make things a lot harder. So I try to think of future me, right? So tomorrow me is going to be really grateful that I put those things back in their spot because then she can find them really easily in the morning when I'm like rushing with the kids to get out the door. So if that's something you currently have in your home, you know, no judgment. I hope you know this is such a guilt-free channel that I just want you to come here and maybe feel a bit inspired to tackle something small in your home today. Not feeling like you're behind or not doing enough because you are probably doing way more than you give yourself credit for. But I think if you just go around your home today and get rid of those bags and just take the items inside and you know, if it's rubbish, then just throw it away. If it's things that belong somewhere in your home, maybe put them back in their spot. For me, I know I used to think that like taking that bag and putting the items back where they belong would take so long. It's not like such a massive task. But when I did it, it was like a five-minute thing. Like it's never such a huge task and it makes such a big difference for the next morning. The relationship test. If the stuff in your home is starting to become a very frequent argument, maybe amongst you and your partner or just you and your family around you or the people you live with, then decluttering might just change your life. Studies show that couples in a relationship sometimes argue on a weekly basis over the clutter in their homes. And so I think there's no way of forcing someone to declutter if they're not ready to. And I know I wasn't ready to declutter for years. So I hang on to a lot of items that we didn't really need and it took me a while to get there. But truly, once you start getting rid of the items that don't really bring value to you, don't really, you know, matter that much or you don't really use on a regular basis, it makes such a big difference. And sometimes when I talk to someone about decluttering and they haven't really done decluttering a lot, maybe just here and there, but nothing major, the first thing a lot of them say is I could never get rid of my sentimental items or I could never get rid of this one collection I have or I could never get rid of this one particular category that, you know, means a lot to me. People think they need to declutter all of those things, but that's not the case at all. Those are the items that you probably want to keep. If it means a lot to you, if it's really precious, then of course keep that. But when we talk about decluttering, there are so many other categories in our homes that we can declutter and just go through, get rid of the excess that you probably wouldn't miss, like, you know, kitchen spatulas that you never use or shoes that you haven't worn in three years or tons of random cardboard boxes from five years ago that have been stored maybe in your shed. All of these items, you can get rid of them, create some space, clear out that clutter and make a difference while still keeping the items that mean a lot to you. The guest panic test. If someone messages you right now and they say I'm going to pop over in 15 minutes for something, would it create this sort of panic in you of like, oh my gosh, my house is a disaster? Or would you be like, you know, it's not perfectly tidy, but it's fine. And for me, now that we have decluttered, it's usually the second. My house might not be like perfectly clear and tidy. There might be toys on the floor, but you know, it's a house that lived in it. It's not meant to look 100% of the time, you know, perfectly clear and tidy. That's not the point. But I think when it's maybe just like a quick freshen up before someone comes over or just tidying a little bit versus having mountains of clutter that make you stressed out when someone says they're going to pop over, that kind of stress really adds up. And it's just that we don't necessarily have to have if we start decluttering. So for me, it's not really about having a home that's perfectly tidy all the time, but it's just about having it very manageable, just keeping the things that we love using and getting rid of the rest. But if you feel that guest panic a lot, then this might be a good time for you to start decluttering. Also the go home test. When you walk into your front door just before, do you feel good? Do you feel happy to be home? Or do you feel dread going into it? Do you feel like when you go in and you're just met with a whole bunch of clutter and things that just stress you out, like walking in and saying, oh, I need to take out that rubbish. Oh, I forgot to put that uniform back in the closet. Oh, I need to take the shoes back. Oh, I forgot to clean those dirty shoes there. And all of these tasks, you know, there's this concept of the silent to do list in the book Goodbye Things by Fumio Sasaki that has really stuck with me for years now. And it's all about this. Like you look around and even though you might not have made a physical to do list of the things you need to do, you have this silent to do list in your head of all of these things around you that send you those messages. And the more that those things are, the more they accumulate, the more stress we feel. And so getting rid of those can have such a big impact on your life. And, you know, I think we all deserve going home to a place that feels good and calm. And that was the goal for me. The repurchase task. This is something I realized a few years ago when we had a lot of clutter stuffed in all of the cupboards, all the drawers, and like our under stairs everywhere. We had so much stuff that sometimes we misplaced things. And so I would just go out and buy that item again. I vividly remember my kids' watercolors. I knew we had watercolors somewhere. I couldn't find them for the life of me. So I went out and bought more. And then when I started massively decluttering our home, I found those watercolors behind the shoe rack under our stairs. I think I even have a video clip of it when I started doing my messy to minimally series. Yeah, I found that and I realized, well, how many of these things have I repurchased over the years? Lost them only to buy them again and again. And how much money I have wasted by doing that. And, you know, these things happen sometimes. But I think when we have a cluttered home, it's much more likely for this to happen very often. The easy sweep is something I have started doing a lot more. And this is where you just go around your house and pick up the rubbish. And there can be leaves my kids have brought in from the garden and stones. We have had a lot of those. It can be random bits of paper that we no longer need. It can be packets of things like empty wrappers. All of these items, if we just go around our home and collect all of those items and take them to the bin or take them to our recycling bin, it can just instantly change the space because they can gather up on our coffee tables, dining tables, kitchen sides, all of these areas, our floors. And so that's something I do regularly like throughout the day. I'll just go and have a quick look around and pick any rubbish that has been left behind. And obviously encourage my kids to do that as well. But yeah, that's such an easy win we can have just by going a quick run through our home and also look on your surfaces. Let's say we've done the easy sweep, right? We've removed all of the rubbish and we're left with just piles of things. So what I tend to do and what especially what I did in the beginning of my kind of decluttering and organizing our home is I would try to take a kind of mental note of the things that are lying around, let's say on my dining table. And I tried to put them into categories. So I just looked on my dining table and I thought, OK, what are the kind of main things that are on here? So let's say it was hats that needed like caps that needed to go somewhere. And then there was this paperwork. And then there were the random mugs that just needed to go back to the kitchen. So just kind of corral all of the items into their different categories on your dining table and then see, OK, do all of these items have a spot where they go? You know, mugs might go back to the kitchen, but the hats, do they have a space where they go? Do they have like a little bin under your stairs or in a little cupboard in your hallway somewhere? Do they have a spot where they all can go? And if not, then this is a good time to create a spot for them. And it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be all matching storage baskets. Just give them a spot where they can go so that they're not on your dining table. And this is how we create a little home for all of these items that end up misplaced, because usually I find that when things are randomly thrown on surfaces, it's most likely that they don't have a home or that they haven't been returned to their home yet. But giving them a spot first can be super helpful. Also, go small. I used to try so hard to do it all in one go, like tackle my entire living room, tackle my whole wardrobe or tackle all of the kids' toys in one go or tackle my entire garage or tackle the entire loft or things like that can actually feel so overwhelming. And if you do have the time, then that's great to do that. But you can just start small and just by doing tiny little declutters throughout a few weeks, you will notice such a massive difference in your home without it feeling like you have to dedicate now this big slot in your calendar for just the decluttering, because most of us are busy and we don't have time to do that. So if you feel like that's been holding you back, just like waiting for that perfect time to declutter and to tackle everything, then I really encourage you to start small today, put a 10 minute timer or 15 minute timer and just do a little bit in your home. And then tomorrow, do the same. Just do a 10 minute in one of the areas in your home and pick a small category and declutter in there. Just one drawer. Just look in your jeans one day or look at your T-shirts one day. And just doing this regularly, you will notice such a big difference in time. The storage check is something that I really had to be honest with myself in the beginning, because I just had to look at our garage, which was our main storage area a few years ago. And I just had to ask myself, OK, is my storage functional? Can I find things when I need them? Or is it just a graveyard of junk, basically? And at some point, it was just kind of that graveyard where we would just put things in there, like anything that we weren't ready to make a decision about, like random cardboard boxes or random items or, you know, kids, like baby gear, all of these items that we just didn't feel like making a decision on in that moment. We just shoved them in the garage. And obviously in time, that just piles on and it becomes stressful and it becomes this huge task that now we have to tackle. And so for me, all of our storage areas right now, which is mainly like we have a bit of storage in the loft and we have a bit of storage in a shed outdoors where we mostly keep some of the tools that we use, like around the house and kids' bikes and things like that and some gardening bits. But we try to keep things organized. We don't really shove things in there just to kind of put them out of sight, out of mind, because that's how things pile on is what we've learned the hard way. And for us, we just need to make sure that we know where things are, you know, so that when we are looking for something, we can find it. And so those storage areas that we have in our homes are kind of like part of our homes and part of what makes it functional. It's kind of like the behind the scenes of your home, where you can keep things that maybe you don't use on a regular basis, but you do want to have because they are useful, like a hammer or, you know, screwdriver, I don't know, things like that. So it can become this really functional part of your home rather than it just being a space where we just throw things in that we want to forget about, because if we are doing that, we probably don't need that and it's just clutter that we can get rid of. And the doom pile task can also be very revealing. So when I used to have a lot of piles lying around, especially piles of clothes, then I just had to be honest with myself that that wasn't really working and I started decluttering. And the thing that I found, especially with clothes, is that if I have a lot of piles lying around is for one, maybe I don't have enough space in my wardrobe. And so what this means is not that I need extra wardrobes, it just means that I need to declutter some clothes. So maybe I have a clean pile of laundry, but I don't have enough space to put it in the wardrobe. And that's why it was just sitting on a side chair. I think if we look around and we see doom piles, like piles of paperwork or piles of recycling or, you know, piles of random things lying around, it's usually a sign that we probably have too much or that we haven't given the items a spot yet. If you found this helpful and you want some more ideas, I have a free decluttering checklist for you that's always linked in the description box. I can't believe over 50,000 people have downloaded it and they found it helpful, so I hope it's the same for you. Let me know where you are at in your decluttering journey right now and I will see you in the next one.