Working full time and also caring for the baby/family in the evening can be too tiring and straining for you. Clutter and unnecessary things can just pile up in the home, which can get overwhelming with time. Clutter, refer to anything you’re keeping in the house that doesn’t add value to your life.
At this point you need to de-clutter. De-cluttering is the process of removing unnecessary items from the house/room/area. It is simply clearing the clutter from your home(or any other place like your office). The items can be anything including furniture, clothes, and other different items.
Decluttering can be time wasting and may take you forever to complete. You need a plan that helps you de-clutter your home in the shortest time possible. It should help you ensure you never pile up stuff to a point it becomes over-whelming.
Some of the things you can do declutter includes clothes, decor, kitchen ware, toys, books, bathroom, garden ware, electronics and make up among others. After decluttering these items you can throw away, donate, resell , swap and give out to friends and family.
Importance of Home Decluttering for Working Moms
- To make room in your home for things/items that truly matter
- It improves productivity and help the brain focus and avoid distraction since clutter competes for attention.
- It is a way of practicing self-care
- Improves mental & emotional health and well being. The stress levels are usually high from dealing with work but you find that having the house clean and organized lowers the stress level.
- It feels nice, to come home and have the house clean
Read: How to Create a Cleaning Routine for Working Moms
Things/Items a Working Mom Should Declutter
- Clothes-Shoes, Jackets, dresses, pants, bags, towels, curtains, bed ware, undergarments. These are some of things you can declutter.
- Makeup -Brushes, expired makeup items, empty containers, nail polish. Makeup can really pile up and you will do to declutter this category.
- Declutter Jewelry/Accessories-Earrings, headbands, watches, hair accessories are some of the things that needs decluttering from time to time.
- Kitchen- Kitchen items, appliances, cookware, containers, bags, foodstuffs, water bottles. Consider your kitchen items as among your top categories for decluttering.
- Gardenware- Broken, unused, and duplicate garden equipment. You will create more space by decluttering this.
- Home Décor- Photos, flower vases,charts. As such they are for adding beauty, you need to let go of some old decor items .
- Books/Documents- Newspapers,magazines, papers, calendars, photos, mails, pens, notebooks. Books and documents are some of the things you can declutter as they pile up fast.
- Furniture- Couches, chairs, tables. After a while consider sorting and getting rid of some of your furniture.
- Electronics- Cameras, radios, desktops, laptops. Electronics are also some of the things you should mark for decluttering
- Toys- Outgrown toys, broken toys. Some of your home clutter can include toys and you should consider decluttering them too.
- Bathroom- Towels, cleaning supplies, cleaning equipment. Your bathroom will also benefiting from letting go of old and unused things.
What to do with Decluttered Items
1. You can Throwaway Some of your Decluttered Items
This is for items that have not to value whatsoever. This includes broken and empty items that cannot be used otherwise.
2. Donate Decluttered Items
This is for items that are still valuable to other people. You may have duplicates of these or simply have no value for them at that moment. E.g. outgrown clothes/toys, duplicate appliances/electronics, etc. They may be new or used but still in good condition.
3. Resell some of your Decluttered Items
You may have new or slightly used items that you would wish to get some money back from them. This is especially so if the items were pricey when you bought them and would wish to recoup some of that investment. They may be computers, big appliances, furniture, etc.
4. Swap Decluttered Items
If you are unable to sell an item you can swap it with something else. You may find something you need in return as you swap with what you do not need. You can do this with your neighbors/family or find an offline/online service that offers this.
5. Give out Items to Family/Friends
There are those items that you already know who needs them most. It is the same as a donation only this is going to your friends or family. You may find that you feel better giving some items to your family/friends than donating them out.
Read: How to Make and Keep Mom Friends
Simple Tips for Fast and Quick Decluttering
1. Handle Decluttering Bit by Bit but Fast
Working moms don’t have the luxury of having a lot of time or several days in a row to dedicate to decluttering and organizing the house. As such the effective approach is handling your staff bit by bit or by category.
If your categories are big, you can further subdivide them into subcategories to enable you to handle them one at a time. For instance, if you are decluttering clothes, you can divide them into your clothes, your partner’s clothes, your baby clothes, etc.
When you’re tackling a space say a cupboard, take everything out instead of trying to rearrange it to look nice. You will find you are keeping way too much. Resist the urge to organize until you have decluttered.
This approach may be slower but is steady as you can dedicate an hour or so one bit at a time and finish with it to move on to the next. The bit should be manageable and practical to sort and declutter in a short period say an hour.
2. Create a Quick Decluttering Checklist
Start decluttering your home using a checklist. A checklist helps you list all the items/rooms/categories of stuff that you need to tackle. As such you can have them all on the list to avoid missing any.
In addition, the checklists will help you mark and track your progress. Once you are done with items/rooms/categories, you mark them off the list. You can hence see the progress that you are making in your decluttering journey and therefore can be a motivation factor to keep you pushing on further the list.
Lastly, it helps in your sequencing of the process. You always know what to start with, what to move to next and so son and so on. You can create a checklist in your notebook or online as there are a variety of apps available for that.
3. Create Decluttering Hampers
Create a big hamper for things that you wish to get out of your house. Hampers are a great way to help clear the clutter in your home. You can choose to instead have different hampers to make the process easier and fast.
Every time you come across an item that you would wish to throw away or donate or sell or whatever, throw it in the hamper. You can have hampers for stuff to sell, to donate, and to throw away.
Once in a while, go through the hamper(s) to further sort the items to throw away, items to donate and so on and regularly work on getting the items out of the house. Put the empty hamper back into the house and resume the process.
This way you will find that you don’t a pile of stuff that you no longer need in-between stuff you want to keep. It helps make the decluttering process easier and less time-consuming.
4. Have a Destination for all Decluttered Items
For all items, you need to decide where each will end up after you declutter. There are four options you can use as a working mom. You can keep, throw away, resell, swap, or donate items. As you are sorting out the pile, have separate boxes for these categories.
You may get caught up in how to dispose of items while you’re trying to decide whether to discard them. If you have your items in sorted hampers, start from one pile. Throw away what you don’t need and have no value to someone else whatsoever.
Donate what you don’t want to sell. Sell what you don’t want to donate. Swap what you can get a buyer for. For every item choose what to keep and not what to keep. Once you are through with the pile, go to the pile you are not keeping.
Throw away everything you can’t/don’t want to either sell/swap/donate. Then for the remaining items simply decide to sell/swap/donate depending on value and your personal reasons.However only swap for an item you need not another clutter item.
5. Have a Deadline for Decluttered Items
As you start decluttering, set a time limit by which to accomplish a certain decluttering process. This is mainly for sorting out the hampers, donating, reselling, etc. The longer the decluttered items are still in the house, the longer the home will look messier. A deadline ensures that stuff doesn’t lie around after you have decluttered and sorted them.
Have the throwaway pile sorted by a certain day to get the trash picked-up. If you are reselling, have a deadline and if you don’t get a deal by then, mark it for donation or throw away. For your donation pile, make plans to ship or deliver the items to their destination by a certain date.
6. Live a Minimalist Lifestyle
The less coming in, the less needs to go out. As a habit, you need to adopt a minimalist lifestyle. Some minimalist habits you can adopt include.
- Minimize what is coming into your home. The less the better. The less clutter there is. This is one of the greatest ideas for organizing/getting rid of clutter.
- Do not bring in or buy duplicates items. Some end as clutter as they have no use
- Don’t buy an item that you don’t need/have no value for. Buy quality not quantity
- Create a minimalist budget and stick with it. Avoid compulsive shopping
- Opt for items with multiple/diverse usage/multitasking. A great organizing clutter tip
- Change your mindset/ learn to get rid of items you don’t need to keep. This is one of the best decluttering advice for working moms.
7. Do Constant Decluttering
There is nothing like decluttering for good. Items are always coming in. You are always buying new items. Kids are always bringing in new toys. To ensure that you stay on top of things, sort/declutter clear out things frequently and constantly. If you wait too long to declutter, there will be too big of a pile.
It can be every one or two months or so depending on how frequently items get into your home. A cue to follow is checking when the hampers are filling up and start planning a decluttering process around then.
Also going through the process often helps you to get used to letting things go. There will be items you know you don’t need but are unable to let go of. You may hence keep them but when you go through the decluttering process a couple of months later, you find it easier to let them go the second time around. Every follow-up will be easier and quicker.
