It’s the new year and there is no better time to start a 30 day declutter and organize challenge!
Today we are tackling the BIGGEST hurdle we come across while decluttering and organizing.
That hurdle is creating the small habits you need to develop in order to actually stay organized. This is a step that is crucial to keeping ourselves organized in life, but it’s often missed in the decluttering process.
In order to create a habit that sticks, you need to add them into your routine and work on them daily.
With that said, let’s start right away by adding five new habits to our daily routine. These are five things that organized people do every single day to declutter and organize their homes.
1. Declutter and Organize All Surfaces
Surface areas are prone to collecting all. the. clutter.
We’re talking kitchen counters, dining tables, and sideboards. These are the spots that begin to look cluttered quickly.
These are the places random items that are brought into the home are just dropped off (instead of being put where they belong).
In my home, surfaces have to be decluttered multiple times a day.
If I have a small pocket of time (you know, a spare couple of minutes but not enough time to sit down and relax), I’ll do a quick sweep of a surface.
Quick Tip: I always try to do something productive in these pockets of time. It’s amazing how much I can truly accomplish in just two minutes.
Decluttering surface areas is always my first go-to.
2. Mail and Paper Clutter
One of the best things you can do for your sanity is to create the habit of dealing with incoming paper right away.
Recycle junk mail, sign the paperwork, file away the important documents.
Create a system to manage your incoming papers and stick with it. It takes just a few minutes each day to manage income paper, but it can takes hours to declutter paper that has been piling for weeks.
3. Quick Toy Pickup
If your home is like mine, toys are sprawled across the floor every day.
I have big toy baskets on each floor to combat this. Every night, all the toys on our floor get a quick sweep and are thrown into the baskets.
Ideally, toys would be put away after they’re done being played with. However, I have two little ones under 4 years old and a dog with his own toys, so this has yet to be mastered in our home.
So while we’re working on teaching the kids how to develop their own habit of putting toys away after playing, this is what works for us right now.
Related: 7 Smart Ways to Organize Toys in the Living Room
4. Daily Laundry Routine
This is a big one.
The larger your family becomes, the harder laundry is to control.
I’ve found developing these three habits have calmed the laundry overwhelm in my house:
1. One load of laundry every day
2. Put clothes away every single day
3. Put dirty clothes away in baskets right away and additionally do a nightly clean sweep of any straggling pieces of clothes
Related: 12 Genius Laundry Room Organization Hacks
5. Refridgerator
Friends, the fridge can get scary quick.
To combat this, I’ve developed the habit of doing a clean sweep of my fridge every single day.
This includes wiping any spills, putting food in the freezer that’s about to expire if I can’t cook it, and discarding any food before it goes bad.
It takes about 5 minutes of my time, if that, and it has saved me a ton of stress while doing a monthly deep clean of my refrigerator.
Focusing on these five tasks every day will help you on our declutter and organize challenge. Work on adding these 5 routines into your daily life. Each task takes only minutes throughout the day, but will literally save you hours of time if you don’t allow these tasks to go into overwhelm.
Related:
11 Clever Small Bathroom Storage Ideas
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