The biggest benefit off an organized home that will quickly become apparent as you proceed with your de-clutter project is being able to go straight to what you want. It’s a great feeling. It saves you from the stress of trying to find stuff, which in turn saves you so much extra time. But how do you get into this blissful mental state? Group stuff together into their own storage areas or pre-defined spaces. It’s really as simple as that. All your cutlery goes into one drawer and cupboard, all your socks and underwear have their own space in your cupboard, all your paperwork goes into a filing cabinet, incoming letters go into your in-tray, your toolbox goes onto the first shelf in your garage. Remember that de-cluttering is a slow process with your home evolving every time you work on it. You won’t get all your stuff neatly packaged into respective sections in one go because your space will be unorganized and maybe even overflowing with junk. The first few times you work through all your clutter it will no doubt remain spread out between a number of locations, but as you create more space around the home you can really start to bring it all together. Think of it like a jigsaw. To start with you have a collection of disparate pieces but as you keep working on it, everything starts to come together to form a clear picture.

De-cluttering isn’t just about getting rid of stuff, it crucially involves optimising storage and I will be giving suggestions for smart storage in the next chapter. We always fill up the space we have which is why once we start letting stuff fill our home it becomes a vicious cycle. We go and buy more storage to put everything in and totally fill it up in the process. Then we have to go out and buy yet more or keep stuffing up the storage we already have. By organizing our possessions and being smart about how and where it gets stored this cycle can be broken and reversed.