Declutter – 6 Easy Ways

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With the New Year rapidly approaching, and many people begin thinking of ways they can improve their lives in the upcoming year.

Some people set lofty New Year’s resolutions that often go by the wayside after just a few short weeks.

Others forgo the resolution and vow to do better. Either way, it’s very easy to return to the old ways of doing things.

And with the return of the clutter, your stress level will rise because clutter can distract you and bring down your motivation.

But it’s never too late to adopt new, better ways of doing things.

From living a healthier lifestyle to saving more money, you can attain your goals quite easily when you have a plan in place.

There are a lot of different steps you can take to declutter your life, try to take one step at a time it will help you declutter your life easier and faster. Also, keep in mind you don’t build up a routine in a few days, to declutter your life, you will need discipline and a clear motivation.

Use the following five ways to declutter your life this year and watch how easy it is to achieve your goals this upcoming year.

1. Spend time each day decluttering

If your home has physical clutter, it can be a source of stress and distraction in your life.

Many people own items they don’t use or that aren’t important to them, but for whatever reason, they hold onto them.

If you own things you never use or that aren’t important to you, spend 15 – 20 minutes each day going through them and clearing them out.

If you have items you don’t often use, but just can’t part with, consider renting storage units to keep them in.

Taking just a few minutes each day to organize your belongings and get rid of the stuff you don’t need any more helps you create a space you want to spend time in.

If you need some extra motivation during the day, ask yourself is the storage space I lose because of an item, that I don’t use regularly, really worth it?

2. Automate your bill payments

Paying bills is often frustrating and time-consuming. Make the whole process easier by setting up automatic bill payments through your bank. You can to that directly at your bank or in some cases directly with your banking app. Make sure you time your payments in a way, where you can be sure your bank account can cover the payments. Otherwise, you’re getting yourself in a lot of other troubles.

So not only is it less stressful to pay your bills this way, you always know the funds are available when they need to be.

3. Change the way you receive online information

If you spend any time at all browsing online for news and other interests, you could benefit from using an RSS feed to get the information.

It’s very easy to spend way more time than you have online looking for the things you find interesting, but with an RSS feed like Feedly, you can pick and choose what you want to see, for example, you could subscribe to daily quotes from the movie “The life-changing magic of tidying up” from Marie Kondo, for your daily motivation. To set up your RSS feed just download a tool from a tool provider you like the most. Now take your time and make yourself aware of the interface and browse through their section. Choose which post and subject you find the most compiling.

Now you don’t have to wade through endless posts, to find what you want to read and you can get back to more important things in your day.

4. Clean out your phone

Smartphones are a wonderful invention, but they can get just as cluttered as other areas of your life.

If you are constantly having to delete old files to make room for new ones, you might want to take this suggestion to heart.

Take one afternoon a month to back up your photos and other important files to your computer or cloud storage, and then delete them from your phone to free up space.

Uninstall apps you no longer use, and organize the ones you do.

You’ll save yourself a ton of time and frustration, and not having a million pictures to scroll through when you want to post something is definitely nice.

After doing that what is also great advice is to start sorting things out on your smartphone. You can create different folders for your games, google application or for any other section you can think of. It is also a great idea to organize your photos by place or date so you don’t have to scroll every time through all your photos, not finding the one you are searching for.

5. Unsubscribe from junk mail to declutter

The majority of email users deal with dozens of pieces of junk mail each day. Most of us hate them, but simply deal with them anyway.

However, just like actual clutter, these seemingly harmless pieces of junk mail can cause undue stress, aggravation and not just that it also uses storage that could be used by something meaningful.

To reduce this stress, take time to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive by unsubscribing from newsletters and unfollowing pages you no longer find interesting. Sometimes you won’t find the option to unsubscribe from Junk-mail, but most E-mail provide a “Block function”, where you can block certain emails. Also, be aware that a lot of junk emails can be harmful, so don’t click on any links or files from an email you don’t know.

Make this year the year to get organized. By following the five easy ways to declutter your life, you can reduce stress and be happier than ever before, it will also help you build up routines. Sort out your life and remember, if you need extra space to store your things, BOXIE24 offers the best self storage.

6. Declutter your clothes and wardrobe

When you spend 15-20min daily decluttering your home, at some point you will start decluttering your wardrobe and many people will notice that they are not using every piece of clothing on a regular basis.

So a good start to declutter your wardrobe is to split your clothes into three categories.

In the first category, you put in the clothes you are wearing regularly – the ones you want to keep in your wardrobe. It makes sense to categorize your clothes so that all T-shirts have their own spot in your wardrobe, all jeans have their own spot and so on. This way you will gain an overview. 
The second category is about seasonal clothes, you don’t need to store all the clothes in your wardrobe. It is a good idea to store clothes for the winter during the summer in a separate place and vise Versa. So pick the clothes from the first category that are not used at your given weather conditions and store them in a self storage space or in your basement.

Furthermore, it is a good idea to store them in moving boxes, but try to use boxes that are moisture-resistant and tear-proof. BOXIE24 offers stable, stackable and tear proofed moving boxes. Don’t forget to label them, so you always know what is stored.

In the last category you put all the clothes you don’t need anymore. If you are located in Germany you can bring your clothes to a used clothing collection (“Altkleidersammlung”) or if they are damaged you can throw them away. The “Dachverband FairWertung” suggests to throw them away in your normal household waste. But if you find some pieces you don’t want to throw away because of emotional value or because your second or third child could wear them in the future, why not store them in a storage unit.