Hello, Emma’s Diary
Our home environment should be a place where we can kick up our feet and relax. But when was the last time you cleaned out your pantry? You should also try and find a space for those new towels you just bought; but the linen closet is getting kind of crowded… Oh! And what about that one thing, you can’t forget that…
If you’re the type of person who can’t relax in a cluttered environment, then I hear you! Our homes are where we should be at ease, but when we have to-do lists a mile long how are we expected to focus?
Let’s lay it out for you.
Here are the areas in your life that might need to be decluttered and how to best declutter them as well as keep up on their general tidiness. Whether that’s your digital space or physical space, these are the areas that are the easiest to get cluttered and can get in the way of our own productivity or relaxing time.
Home
We’ll start with the home, since this is the most apparent of spaces to get cluttered.
The home is our landing pad, of sorts, so it makes sense that this is where we store all the random or out-of-date items we accumulate.
This area is also the most likely area you’ll have to keep up on.
A few key areas that tend to get cluttered are our closets and our storage spaces. These are the two main areas in your home you’ll want to be most attentive to. Then there’s also your general living spaces.
Closets:
With closets, anytime you do laundry, or go to pick out an outfit, and see an item you haven’t worn in awhile or wouldn’t wear on a typical day, then throw it aside. This tends to work easiest because you aren’t going out of your way to declutter, you’re already in the mindset of wearing and living with these clothes.
As the seasons change, and you buy more clothes, try to keep up with this practice.
You could also set aside a chunk of time to declutter your closet in its entirety, some people might find this more satisfying than doing it little by little.
Storage Space:
When it comes to the storage spaces, it gets a little trickier.
Typically, these are inconvenient to maneuver and always a pain, so we like to avoid them as much as possible.
The straightforward annual or biannual declutter in your storage spaces will suffice. Especially when you need to rotate the new in and the old out.
Living Spaces:
There are many sections of a house I could lay out for you, but besides those two previous areas, your living spaces make up most of the rest of your home. Bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen, simply speaking, would be these areas.
Similar to your closet space, it’s in your best interest to declutter these areas as you go.
When you’re cleaning up, and there’s random items scattered about that don’t have homes of their own, don’t just throw it in a junk drawer or in a corner tucked behind your couch. These will become the hot spots of your space, and they tend to stress out the mind. Either find it a home or think about if it’s really necessary to keep.
A bonus area would include your office space.
I don’t have to tell you what needs to be decluttered in this area, if you happen to have one, you probably know exactly what skeletons are in your closets, or phantoms are in your desk drawers.
Maybe you need to go through your writing utensils, or your files, either way, this is also a hot spot in a home that could use a little attention.
A general tip: If you ever make a move and have to pack up your home, now’s your chance!
Don’t bring anything to your new place you don’t have a need or desire for. That includes larger items like furniture or appliances.
Set aside a box or pile for donations, and when you pack everything, throw the items you find that you haven’t seen in years in there.
Continually, when you actually unpack and find that you don’t have a need for certain accessories or there’s something you missed, start the second batch of decluttering.
Everything you bring into your new home should feel clean and purposeful. Declutter any trash from bins as you sort them into their cubbies, etc.
That refreshed feeling is well worth the effort.
Car
The car is what takes us from our home lives to the rest of the world awaiting us.
Because it is only a bridge between worlds, we very often neglect this space. Fast food bags pile up, mail, dirt, etc.
Who has time to clean their car? Well, hopefully, I can convince you to do it.
When you’re out running errands or have time to kill, stop off somewhere to throw out the trash and vacuum the floors. It might be easier than you think.
Digital Space
Now, for the farthest reaching and most tedious genre when it comes to decluttering: your digital space.
I have found that my digital space has become a storage closet of its own. It holds every file, funny video, note, image, reminder, etc. Anything you can think of, it’s there.
I’ve compiled a list of the areas that tend to stress me out the most when I wade through them to find that one specific thing I’m looking for is lost at sea.
A tad dramatic?
For starters, our home screens are the first to greet us, they should be responsible for navigating us to what we need, but with decluttered desktops and home screens that’s not always the case.
There’s a simple fix for this. There was a trend going around recently with Iphones and widgets and making your home screens look cohesive and aesthetic.
What better to get you in the proper mindset than having that be what greet you every time you turn on your phone or open your laptop?
If you don’t have an Iphone, totally fine! I just use little folders and a nice background, organized by categories like games, social media, adulting things, etc.
Gallery:
Gallery space gets plagued with so many different things. Pictures of an assignment or notes, memes, screenshots of a nice recipe off Facebook, etc.
I know my gallery gets cluttered. Scrolling through each image and deleting what you don’t need or organizing things so they’re out of the way gets tedious, but sometimes that’s what’s necessary.
If you find that Instagram or Tiktok just aren’t cutting it, start scrolling through your gallery and deleting images you don’t need or want anymore. Breaking it into chunks often helps.
If you ever have the time to just sit down and go through the images in your digital spaces, I’d recommend getting it all organized and saved into one spot so you’re not spread too thin and lose images you may have wanted later on.
Email:
Email is relentless.
When I went through my email, I had years’ worth of colleges, jobs, random stores, and apartment hunting sites sending me emails.
I can’t promise you much ease in this area, I’d just recommend deleting in bulk and keeping up with it over time so it doesn’t get bad.
Even unsubscribing from places or creating a separate email for stores and websites to send you their “Exclusive offers,” would help.
I do have to say, when I cleared over 11,000 emails out of my inbox, there wasn’t a single person I didn’t gush to.
Media:
We spend a good chunk of our lives scrolling on sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok. Some would say it’s their life within those apps. Which would make this almost as important as decluttering your home.
To some, at least.
Some key areas that get jumbled in social media are saved/liked posts and friends lists. Every now and then, go through these areas and give them a little bit of attention.
If you have videos on tiktok that you saved for a specific reason, like to remember the name of a business; write that business name down or organize it if possible into a folder specified to those sorts of things.
Notes apps:
If you’re like me, you prioritize a clear mind over a tidy notes app.
Every thought, idea, or, well, note, I have goes straight into my notes app so that I don’t forget and don’t have to remember.
However, there are notes in there from when I was still in school, or from situations where I had to remember a random sequence of colors for some unknown reason.
Just like you would organize your files at home, organize this space, and update it. If you’re saving important information in there, it’s best to be sure you’re updating it.
Final thoughts
As you can see, there are a lot of areas we might not have realized are cluttered in our lives.
Now that you have this as a resource, go and clean up these areas one-by-one so that you can relax with a refreshed mind.
Be sure to take your time. Decluttering tends to be a frustrating and time-consuming task.
If you accomplish your decluttering mission one step at a time, that’s okay! Each feat will leave you feeling refreshed.
