Decluttering Layer by Layer

If you’ve resolved to declutter your home this year, this post is for you. I’m going to share how I decluttered my home and reduced the stress that “stuff” was adding to my life. About five years ago, I began a journey into minimalism. I walked the path slowly, reducing the clutter in my home and my life gradually. I read several books about how to declutter, but none of their methods met my need to minimize in a slow, cyclical manner that would produce new habits and lasting results. To borrow some weight-loss terminology: Fad diets didn’t work for me. I needed a lifestyle change. I began removing hundreds of items from my home, using a process that made sense for me. Over time, I developed this method of minimizing, and I’m sharing it today with the hope that it will prove useful to you as well.

My decluttering method helps you work through four layers of your home: surfaces, cabinets & drawers, closets, and storage spaces. It doesn’t force you to make sudden, drastic changes, but will encourage you to make incremental changes over time. As you become comfortable living with less, you can repeat the process to remove more layers of clutter from each layer of your home. I call it the “Layer by Layer Method.”

Step 1: Surfaces

Start with the most obvious clutter – the clutter you see every day on the surfaces in your home. Look at the coffee table and end tables in the family room, the dresser and nightstands in the bedroom, the desk in your home office, dining table(s), and hall table(s). For a truly minimalist look, you can remove everything except the lamps you need for light. Or you may want to keep a few decorative items on display or books within reach. That’s fine! Everyone has a different definition of “clutter.” Use this exercise to help you determine the amount of “stuff” that suits you.

As you remove items, you will have a lot of decisions to make. If an item is worth keeping, you might want to move it to another location in the house. If you are ready to part with it, you can donate it, sell it, or give it to someone who would appreciate having it. If you’re on the fence about an item, put it out of sight for a while and see if you miss it. You can keep it in a cabinet, closet, or storage area (like the attic or basement) temporarily, and revisit it later in this process.

When it comes to cluttered surfaces, kitchen counters are the biggest offenders. They tend to collect mail, school papers, library books, groceries, small appliances, cooking implements, and various decorative items. Again, each person must determine her own comfort level. Personally, I like to have things that I use every day on the counter. For me, that’s the coffee maker, toaster, crock of utensils, knife block, fruit bowl, paper towels, soap, and dish drainer. Some people prefer to put those items away when not in use. You may want to experiment by storing more items inside your cabinets. Over time you can decide if you prefer to have those items ready to use on the counter or out of sight in the cabinets.    

Don’t forget the biggest surface in your home – the floor! Remove shoes, clothes, books, papers, and any other clutter from the floor. If your goal is to make the house easier to clean, you may want to remove everything from the floor other than rugs and furniture. Decorative items such as plants, baskets, and ceramics can move up or move out. 

Once you have clear surfaces in your home, you’ll need to have systems in place to help keep them that way. Here are a few examples:

• Create a drop zone for keys, mail, school papers, backpacks, etc., and ask everyone in the family to use it.
• Establish a routine for dealing with mail. Either sort it daily by recycling the junk mail and paying bills right away, or keep it all in a bin and set aside time to deal with it weekly.
• Make a quick sweep through the house a couple of times a day to pick up items that are out of place and put them back where they belong. (Alyssa of @houseonelm does a great job of this and promotes it with her hashtag, #resetmyspace.) You could do a sweep before you leave the house for work in the morning, then do another one in the evening. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, you might want to do a reset during the kids’ nap time and again at bedtime.

Decluttering the surfaces in your home is a great way to make noticeable progress and motivate you to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Cabinets & Drawers

In this step, we’ll start to tackle the clutter that hides in cabinets and drawers. I also include bookshelves in this category. Even though shelves are horizontal surfaces, they’re usually stacked vertically like a cabinet. Any open shelving can be treated like a cabinet for our decluttering purposes. One by one, look inside the following:

• the hutch in your dining room
• the entertainment center in your family room
• the file cabinet in your home office
• the dresser in your bedroom
• the bookcases in your home
• the cabinets and drawers in your bathrooms
• the cabinets and drawers in your kitchen
• any other cabinets, shelves, and drawers in your home

Work through the house, one room at a time, emptying the contents of each cabinet or drawer, removing unused and unnecessary items. Just as in the last step, if you’re not sure whether or not to keep an item, put it out of sight temporarily. You can put it in a box and store it in a closet or storage area (like the attic or garage). Of course, you’ll also be coming across those items from step one that you put away to deal with later. If you haven’t missed them, let them go! If you decide to keep them, they should fit nicely in the space you’ve created by clearing the clutter from your cabinets and drawers. For example, I haven’t removed any sentimental items (such as photos and letters) from my home because minimizing has created enough space to keep them. For this reason, I recommend holding on to sentimental items and dealing with them at the end of the decluttering process.

There is no time limit for completing this step (or any of the steps). Take as much time as you need. If it seems to be taking longer than you’d like, designate a time to work on it each week. Setting realistic weekly or monthly goals can help motivate you to continue.

Step 3: Closets

Now it’s time to dig deep into the corners where clutter can go unnoticed for years – the closets. Emptying a closet always makes me say, “How did all this stuff fit in there?” When decluttering a closet, I recommend taking everything out of it. As you decide what to keep, put those items back in the closet. This puts a positive spin on the task because you’re choosing what to keep rather than what to remove.

Again, work through the closets in your home one by one:

• the coat closet
• the broom closet
• the linen closet
• the clothes closets
• the storage closets
• any other closets in your home

By now you know the drill. If you aren’t sure about an item, move it to the attic, basement, or garage to deal with in the next step. Living without it in the meantime should help you decide if it’s something you can eliminate.

Step 4: Storage Spaces

At this point, your home will look and feel very different. Physically, it will be easier to clean. Visually, it will look tidy and spacious. Mentally, you will probably feel as though a weight has been lifted and you’re experiencing a new sort of freedom. But wait – something is still holding you back from having the clutter-free home of your dreams.

The items stored in your attic, basement, and garage might be out of sight, but that doesn’t mean they’re out of mind. Even if you aren’t consciously thinking about all that stuff every day, it could be distracting you. It causes mental clutter, and it’s time to deal with it in step four.

You may discover things in storage that you forgot you owned. My husband and I have moved many times, and I have found moving boxes in the attic – still taped shut after months! If you haven’t opened a box in six months, you’ve already demonstrated you can live without its contents. Let it go!

It’s also time to make the final decision on any items you stored during steps 1-3. You may be tempted to keep some things “just in case.” When that happens, I find it helpful to ask myself the following questions:

• When was the last time I used it?
• When do I anticipate using it again (if at all)?
• If I rarely use this item, could I remove it, then rent or borrow one when I need it?
• If I remove this item, would it be easy and inexpensive to replace it if I need it again?

If an item isn’t needed on a regular basis, let it go. You might make an exception if a particular item would be very expensive and/or difficult to replace. But generally speaking, those “just in case” items are just clutter.

Repeating the Process

If these four steps lead you to declutter your home to your satisfaction, you can stop there. For me, minimizing my possessions is an on-going process that is about making incremental changes rather than a single dramatic change. (My tolerance for change is low, but yours may be high – everyone is different!) I like to repeat these four steps, letting go of another layer of stuff each time I revisit a layer of my home. This also gives me opportunities to address any new clutter that snuck into my home when I wasn’t looking.

Since I love to use January as an excuse for a fresh start, I’m beginning the process again this month. If you’d like to join me and could use some encouragement, please let me know! I’d be delighted to cheer you on! You can comment here, use my contact form, or find me on Instagram and Facebook.

Happy New Year, friends!