Detox Your Space: How to Clear Clutter for Mental Wellness

Before you get swept up in all the stress and excess of the holiday season, take a few hours—or a few days or weeks, depending on your clutter quotient—to deal with the extra stuff that’s accumulated in your home. End result? An organized home, perfect for cozy cocooning during the coldest months of the year.

Know Your Decluttering Categories

Each of your possessions falls into one of six categories:

1. Keep
2. Repair
3. Sell
4. Donate
5. Recycle
6. Toss

If you do not have the time, energy, ability, or interest to repair anything, then you can eliminate category #2. Similarly, if you do not wish to brave the wilds of Craigslist, Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace, consignment stores, or garage sales, then you can eliminate category #3.

Assemble Your Decluttering Materials

Decide which types of containers to use to keep the categories separate during the decluttering process: plastic bins, cardboard boxes, reusable shopping bags, garbage bags. Have Sharpies and masking tape on hand, to label every bin, box, and bag. Ziploc bags can be used to organize small items destined for repair or donation. Rags, masks, and latex or rubber gloves are essential when cleaning out dusty, dirty areas such as garages and attics. When sorting through files, a paper shredder may be useful.

Envision Your Home as a Series of Containers

Your home can be viewed as a container that can hold a certain amount of stuff before becoming cluttered. Each part of your home is also a container, whether it’s as small as a drawer or as large as a garage. The goal for each container is to be organized, which means it can’t be filled with too much stuff. Once a specific container is full, your options are to get rid of some items from that container, or to start a second container for that category of stuff, which likely means emptying another container holding a different category of stuff. 

Progress From Easiest to Most Difficult

Start with the smallest, easiest, least emotional container you can think of, such as your underwear drawer—get rid of underwear you consider ugly, uncomfortable, impractical, or beyond repair. A kitchen drawer overflowing with cutlery and awkwardly shaped flippers and potato mashers is another good starting point. 

After decluttering a few small and easy containers, you should feel motivated enough to tackle a larger container, such as a closet. Leave the most emotionally charged clutter—photos, letters, travel souvenirs, high school yearbooks, jewellery—until last. Fortunately, the items that carry the most emotional baggage often take up relatively little physical space in a home.

Keep Useful Items and Items That Make You Happy

If you’ve ever heard of Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, then you probably are familiar with her advice to touch each object in your home, ask if the item sparks joy, and keep only the items where the answer is yes. You should also keep items that are useful to you, even if they don’t exactly spark joy, such as a good potato peeler, shoehorn, nail file, or cordless drill.

Examine Seasonal Items

Before putting away summer items such as patio furniture, pool toys, sun hats, flip-flops, and bathing suits, examine each one. Ask yourself how much it was actually used this past summer and if it’s worth keeping until next summer. Ask similar questions about the autumn and winter items you pull out of storage, such as Halloween costumes, warm clothing, winter boots, and holiday decorations.

Be Brutally Honest With Yourself

Will you ever take up that hobby, sport, or musical instrument again? Will you ever make the time to learn to paint, sew, or bake sourdough from scratch? Will you ever lose all that extra weight you keep complaining about? Getting rid of half-finished projects and clothes that no longer fit feels liberating. Schools and daycare centres often welcome crafts materials, even ones that are partially used.

Eliminate Duplicates

It’s far too easy to accumulate multiples of items such as soup ladles, wine cranks, colanders, travel mugs, vases, and measuring tapes. Keep the one you reach for the most and get rid of the rest. If you accidentally get rid of one too many, don’t worry—these items can be easily replaced.

Pare Down Collections

If you become known as the person who collects sheep figurines or mystery novels or antique tins, then every birthday or holiday celebration likely brings a flood of new sheep figurines and mystery novels and antique tins—including some of dubious appeal. Consider keeping just the best ones from your burgeoning collection and donating the rest. Feeling sentimental? Photograph the items before donating.

Let Go of Unused Gifts

Many people struggle to get rid of gifts, even if the item is the wrong in every way. Remember that the gift completed its job the moment it was given to you: it demonstrated that the giver was thinking fondly about you. The gift’s job is not to become clutter in your home, and there’s no obligation to keep a gift forever.

Use Up What You Already Have

Make a concerted effort to use up the items you already own before purchasing more, such as candles, napkins, shampoos, lipsticks, and cleaning supplies. It’s helpful to make an inventory of your fridge, freezer, and pantry, with the goal of eating as much of the existing food as possible before your next trip to the grocery store. Challenge yourself to get creative and try new recipes.

Donate to a Little Free Library

It can be difficult to part with books, but if you’re unlikely ever to read them again, then consider donating your beloved tomes to a Little Free Library. If your neighbourhood doesn’t have a Little Free Library, start one. 

Join Your Local Buy Nothing Group

If you find it difficult to throw away partially used items, even though you won’t use them again, then give these items away in your local Buy Nothing group. You may find a grateful recipient for everything from the last lightbulb in a package or half a bottle of laundry detergent to a notebook with a few pages torn out or a half-finished knitting project. It’s not unusual to see items such as used birthday decorations, almost-full perfume, and partial packages of printer paper happily claimed. 

Try the Backwards Coat Hanger Hack

After decluttering your bedroom closet, when you’re putting away the clothing to be kept, turn each coat hanger around so that it faces the opposite direction. Then, after wearing a garment, turn its coat hanger back around to face the usual direction. Next autumn, you’ll be able see at a glance what hasn’t been worn over the course of four full seasons.

Hold a Clothing Swap

Gather with a group of friends to exchange good but no longer wanted clothing, footwear, and accessories. Pieces that don’t find a new home can be donated afterward.

Get Help From an Objective Third Party

Often a friend or family member can be more objective than you about which of your possessions should be kept, repaired, sold, donated, recycled, or tossed. If no one in your inner circle is willing to help—or you’re too embarrassed to ask for their assistance—then enlist the services of a professional organizer or decluttering specialist. They can take much of the stress out of the many decisions inherent in the decluttering process.