Decluttering your home can be overwhelming. Below is a 10 day plan where you should be able to complete each day’s activities within 30 minutes.

Some people will likely want to implement this plan on weekend days for 5 weeks. Or else, you could do it weekdays for 2 weeks. The choice is your’s.

Preparation

Get a big plastic storage container and put it by your front door. This is going to be you “maybe pile” = your area for placing stuff you’re not sure if you want to throw out. You can put anything in there and then purge the contents of this container on Day 10 of this program. This will help stop you keeping hold of things “just in case.”

Day 1: Your Purse.

Clean out your purse. Something nice and simple to kickstart this project.

Day 2: Clean Out 1 Junk Draw.

Pick one SMALL cluttered draw and clean it out. Take care not to just move stuff to other locations. You want to actually purge as much as possible so the draw is uncluttered.

Day 3: Under the Bed.

Declutter anything that’s under your bed. If there’s nothing under there, you’re going to have an easy day – you can just give under the bed a good vacuum.

Day 4: Your Linen Closet.

Today, go through your linen closet. Identify any old or excess towels and sheets. If you have extras that are still usable, put them in your car and drop them off somewhere for donation. Throw away the rest. You might think you’ll use them for rags but will you really?

Day 5: Old Electronics.

Collect you any old electronics, including power packs and chargers and take them to your local electronics disposal.

Day 6: The Paper Monster.:

Find at least 10 pieces of paper that can be thrown out. Find 5 additional items where you can just snap a photo of the document with your camera phone, rather than keeping the original. Upload the photos to Dropxbox for safe keeping.

Day 7: Underwear and socks.

Just like you did with the linen closet, go through your underwear and socks and throw out anything that’s paste it’s wear by date or anything that was a mistake purchase.

Day 8: Duplicates.

Do you have duplicates, triplicates, or more of some items where you only need one? Dispose of 5 categories of these. You can put them out on your stoop and put a sign that says “free.”

Sample items are things like an extra umbrella or extra pens.

Day 9: Broken items.

Do you have any items that are broken – things you contemplated getting fixed but never got around to. Discard these items today.

Day 10: Purge Your “Maybe” Pile.

Today’s the day to go through all of the rubbish you have designated as “maybe I’ll throw that away or maybe I won’t.” Most likely you will be ready by now to throw away most, if not all, of the items in your big plastic container. If you haven’t used them since you started this project it’s time to toss them!

If there is anything you want to keep, today is the day to re-home it. Remember to put things away where there is space. Don’t stuff books into overcrowded book shelves etc. The only way to keep things tidy is for everything to have a place and for that place to be uncluttered.

photo credit: Jellaluna via photopin CC.