Piles and piles of stuff in the house can get overwhelming with time. Clutter is just part of what happens to every home. But it often happens to working moms as they have less time to exclusively to devote to keeping the house organised.
Working full time and also caring for the baby/family in the evening can be too tiring and straining for you. When this happens clutter and unnecessary things just pile up in the home .
At this point the clutter must go and you as working mom have to come up with a home decluttering plan. Some decluttering plans are too time wasting and may take you forever to completer. As a working mom you need a plan that helps you declutter your home in the shortest time possible.
A good and fast decluttering habit can ensure you never pile up stuff to this point. This guide will help you clean up stuff quickly in spite of having work and family commitments.
In this post…
Why is Home Decluttering Important for Working Moms?
Categories of Items a Working Mom Should Declutter
Options/What to do with Decluttered Items for Working Moms
How to Effective Declutter your Home as a Working Mom
Effective Organization/Decluttering Habits to Establish as a Working Mom
What is Decluttering?
Decluttering 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. These items are clutter, referring to anything you’re keeping in the house that doesn’t add value to your life.
Why is Home Decluttering Important for Working Moms?
Decluttering or clearing stuff from your home is very important, especially to a working mom. The aim of decluttering is to make room in your home for things/items that truly matter. It is one of the things you will gain from decluttering.
Further it helps the brain focus since clutter competes for attention. As a working mom you need all the focus you can get to avoid distraction and hence decluttering helps in this. Therefore productivity for moms can really benefit from decluttering.
Decluttering is also important as it is a way of practicing self-care . As such working moms can really benefit mentally from this process. Decluttering lets you take control of your home, your personal & work life, and your items that lead to a better you overall.
Also as a working mom, you will benefit emotionally from decluttering your home. 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, and it takes a few minutes each day to keep it that way. It is one the most important benefit of decluttering to a working mom.
Read: How to Create a Cleaning Routine for Working Moms
Things/Items a Working Mom Should Declutter
1. Clothes are Main Items to Declutter
Shoes, Jackets, dresses, pants, bags, towels, curtains, bed ware, undergarments. These are some of things you can declutter.
2. Makeup (Common Clutter for Working Moms)
Brushes, expired makeup items, empty containers, nail polish. Makeup can really pile up and you will do to declutter this category.
3. Declutter Jewelry/Accessories
Earrings, headbands, watches, hair accessories are some of the things that needs decluttering from time to time.
4. Kitchen- A Common Area to Declutter
Kitchen items, appliances, cookware, containers, bags, foodstuffs, water bottles. Consider your kitchen items as among your top categories for decluttering.
5. Gardenware
Broken, unused, and duplicate garden equipment. You will create more space by decluttering this.
6. Declutter your Home Décor
Photos, flower vases,charts. As such they are for adding beauty, you need to let go of some old decor items .
7. 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.
8. Furniture
Couches, chairs, tables. After a while consider sorting and getting rid of some of your furniture.
9. Electronics
Cameras, radios, desktops, laptops. Electronics are also some of the things you should mark for decluttering.
10. Toys- Common Things to Declutter
Outgrown toys, broken toys. Some of your home clutter can include toys and you should consider decluttering them too.
Bathroom
Towels, cleaning supplies, cleaning equipments. Your bathroom will also benefiting from letting go of old and unused things.
Read: How to Look Stunning at Work
What to do with Decluttered Items for Working Moms
After decluttering, another challenge for working moms becomes dealin with decluttering. It can be another source of stress to know what to do with decluttering items.
Some of the things you can do with the items that you have decluttered includes throwing away, donating, reselling , swapping and giving out to friends and family.
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. Throwing away some of these things is one way you can deal with decluttered items.
2. Donating is a Good Way of Dealing with Decluttered Items
This is for items that are still valuable to other people. Donating is one of the many ways you can handle the items that you have decluttered. 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. You can 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. Swapping Decluttering 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.
Read: How to Make and Keep Mom Friends
5. You can Give out Decluttered 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.
Simple Tips for Fast and Quick Decluttering
1. Handle Decluttering Bit by Bit but Fast
Unlike other people and moms who stay at home, 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 on how to start decluttering is handling your staff bit by bit. You can choose to tackle this 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 since you are running on a time limit as a working mom.
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. The whole process may take longer and when you see the progress it helps you make more time to do the rest.
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. Have a Destination for all Items to Make Decluttering Quick
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.
4. Have a Deadline for Decluttered Items to make Decluttering Fast
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, may the trash pick-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.
Habits to Establish a Quick Decluttering Routine
1. Create Decluttering Hampers for Quick Decluttering
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.
2. Live a Minimalist Lifestyle to Make Decluttering Fast
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.
3. Plan for 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. Hence you need a decluttering plan. If you wait too long to declutter, there will be too big of a pile.
To ensure that you stay on top of things, sort/declutter clear out things frequently and constantly. 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.
