How to Declutter Your Home By Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide
You can’t build a house without a plan. When you are learning how to declutter your home by yourself, the first question you must ask is: “What does my ideal life look like?”
It might sound like a strange place to start, but it frames everything you do in the organizing and decluttering process. You have to think before you start to move your body.
Creating a Blueprint for an Organized Life
When you set a strong foundation for a home, you don’t just start by pounding nails into a wall. You need a good, solid blueprint and a plan to move forward. The same is true of setting about to declutter your home. How will you know what you want to keep or discard if you don’t envision the life that feels authentic and right to you? Think about your ideal life. From there, everything else will flow.
At Marie Kondo seminars, we have discussed making a mood board. Personally, I don’t keep extra magazines at home—most people don't buy them anymore! Instead, I journal. I write down my thoughts and create diagrams to stay focused. I know I like a home that feels peaceful and Zen, with little visual clutter and neutral colors.
You, on the other hand, may love antique furniture and have a wonderful collection of quilts. No judgment. The idea is to have your home reflect the way you feel. Keep only the items that reinforce that vision. The rest, as they say, is just clutter.
The Secret to Knowing What to Keep
Knowing what you love will point you in the right direction. When discovering how to declutter your home by yourself, focusing on what to keep rather than what to throw away is the main point.
Keeping only things that have meaning to you—those that “spark joy” as Marie Kondo says—is the best way to get started. There is a system to the KonMari Method® that we will discuss in a later blog. The method takes you from clothing to sentimental items, and most everything in between.
What the KonMari Method® is actually doing is asking you to look at the enormity of what you own (the "bed pile") and sort through things so that when you see an object in your home, you smile. Feeling happy is much better than feeling overwhelmed and weighed down. Your home should bring you joy.
Overcoming the Struggle of Solo Decluttering
If you can make decisions around this concept, then you can successfully do your own decluttering and organizing. For many people, though, it is hard. I’ll be honest, I’ve seen people struggle.
People struggle because they often need their hand held while sorting through things. They feel sad, happy, or even anxious. While having a professional take you through the system makes it faster, you can still validate yourself during the process. You are choosing what surrounds you. You are saying: "I want to feel good in my environment." No “what ifs”—just purge until all you feel is happiness.
Tools to Help You Declutter Alone
Declutter Decks® help those who want to learn how to declutter your home by yourself but don't know where to start.
We have created a simple way to declutter your home in the event you are unable or choose not to have outside, professional help. This item, Declutter Deck®, is a set of 52 organizing prompts, broken down into easy declutter tasks. It is one of the easiest ways to declutter your home in bite-sized pieces.
Check out our Declutter Deck® and get ready to tackle your space. It’s like a game—and it really works! Our Declutter Deck® is available on this site and, as well, our sister site, Hack Decks®.