Defining Your Spaces Makes Decluttering a Breeze
An undefined space is a catch-all for clutter
Photo by magicalstock.art
Do you have one of those rooms? The “guest-study-craft-storage” type room? You know, the “guest room” that you also use as a workspace and storage room when no one is visiting, and then shove everything to the side so that guests can fit on the bed when they come?
Or that drawer. The “electronics-office supplies-junk” drawer.
Maybe you even have a “Monica closet” - y’know… like the one in the T.V. show Friends? She’s a clean freak, except for that one closet, where she hides absolutely everything.
Many of us parents have a “living-T.V.-toy-linen storage-rec” room. You get the picture.
One of the hardest things to do when you’re decluttering is to identify where something belongs, when you don’t actually have a defined space for it yet. This is one of the biggest causes of random cluttered spaces - nobody knows where to put the stuff. If the space has no clear purpose, then can we really be upset when people (kids, partners) use it for pretty much anything and everything? Sure, but it might be a teensy bit unreasonable.
But when you define (and then respect) what each room/area/section of a room is for, it gets a whole lot clearer, and makes the process so much easier. Everyone knows the limitations of a space, and then everyone is able to respect it - even if it takes a while to put into practice.
“To Deal With Later”
Ok, now… who has (more than a few) boxes they’ve packed up, labelled “to deal with later” (or something similar), and then never come back around to? Maybe you’ve even moved them between homes… more than once?
The longer they stay boxed up, the more they build up to astronomical proportions in our minds, too. If something takes five years to deal with, it must be a huge task, right? Little secret for you here… if you’ve carted it around that long, you probably think 90% of the contents are garbage now. Just look, you’ll be surprised.
This obviously (said with so much sarcasm) means that we shouldn’t fill boxes with things to deal with later, but if our things have nowhere to go, it’s the fall back plan so that we aren’t wading through literal mountains of paper and broken things and… whatever other crap we don’t know what to do with.
What To Do Instead
When you’re decluttering an area, and you aren’t sure where something belongs, instead of setting it aside to “deal with later” - prevent a future box of crap by making a choice.
Either give it a home by defining a space for it to live in your home… or admit it doesn’t belong anymore (and maybe it never did). If it’s staying, take it to it’s new home! If it’s not, get rid of it immediately. Sure, it takes a little longer per item, but not really when you think about carting around a dozen boxes of “deal with it later” miscellany for the next ten years!
How to Define Your Rooms
I can’t really detail one exact way of doing this that would work for every family, everywhere. However, I can share some good advice to base your decisions on!
Stop giving a flying… hoot… about what anybody else thinks your home should look like, function like, or include. Yes, including all of society and what’s deemed ‘normal’. Yes, including your mother-in-law. No, not including your partner.
Think outside the box. What does your family use the room for? Not what should they use it for, but what it actually gets used for all the time. Consider changing it’s defined ‘purpose’ from conventional to how it gets used. (Example - if the kids sleep in the family room all the time, maybe it can be their bedroom, and their bedrooms can be repurposed for other things like an office or craft room, a quiet reading/watching T.V. den, etc.)
Lots of people have small spaces. The size of your space dictates how much stuff you can have, so no matter how small your home is, you still have to define the different areas. (Example - if you’re in a three bedroom house, with five kids and a partner, and want to have a designated “guest room”, you may have to let that plan go at this stage of your life.)
Yes, rooms can have more than one purpose, if you define separate areas of the room. Set up mini walls using furniture to make the definition clearer. (Example - guest bedroom and office. Set up the furniture so the desk partitions off the room and you know “guest room” items belong on the side with the bed, and “office” items belong on the side with the rolling chair.)
Making decisions doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind. Don’t be afraid to make a decision, set it up, hate it, and immediately change it. You’ll never find what works for you if you don’t try.
Don’t have rooms you don’t use. Don’t have a “guest room” if you never have guests. Don’t have a “craft room” if you never do crafts. Etc.
Prioritize what matters to your family. If you’re all super athletic, and you have workout equipment all over the house, do designate a “gym” room. Consolidating is one of the most effective ways to determine what rooms you need defined.
Make sure you tell your family. The immediate family, not the extended! If you expect them to start keeping things organized according to your new system, you need to inform them of that.
If everything you want to be in one space doesn’t fit, you have two options:
Define a new space for it
Declutter.
I recommend the second one.
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Bri