Take your spring clean to the next level with these game-changing techniques

Give things a home

Putting something where it belongs is a lot harder when it doesn’t belong anywhere. So, assign homes for all your things. This might be obvious for larger items, but for smaller things you may want to start by grouping them together. For example, gather together all the pesky charging cables in your home, so you have one place to look when you next need to find one. Winter accessories like hats, scarves, and gloves can all go in the same box. Get yourself an old-fashioned binder for documents, and categorise them (for example, ‘home’, ‘car’, ‘health’). Once things belong somewhere, you can start to form new habits like…

After you’ve used something, put it back

So, you’ve just got a pen and paper out to write a quick note. The task is done. What do you do next? This is a key moment in the fight against clutter. Using something and immediately returning it to its place is a great way to stay on top of things. It’s the same with washing-up – that dreaded task. Washing up a single plate after fixing yourself a slice of toast is no bother, but facing a mountain of dirty dishes that have built up throughout the day is a real mission. Instead of letting mess build up, take micro-steps as you go to remain in control.

One in, one out

A solid way to create a clutter-free life is to uphaul your buying habits, and setting strict boundaries around this can really help you enforce it. The one in, one out approach means that for every new thing that you bring into your home, something else needs to go. We’re not talking about groceries here, but take a new pair of shoes, for example. Are they replacing a worn-out pair, or are they adding to your collection? If it’s the latter, is there a pair that you hardly wear that could be donated to charity? Getting comfortable with having less is a great way to stay on top of clutter, but also a lesson in learning to be happy with what we have.

Organise by how frequently things are used

When you’re putting things away, try to consider where things should go depending on how often you use them. For example, you don’t want to put a hair styling tool that you use every day at the back of a cupboard where you’ll need to pull a load of stuff out first before you get it. So, make your life a little bit easier by bringing this approach to the way you organise.

Something is better than nothing

It can be so easy to feel as though we need to achieve everything all at once and, therefore, if we can’t do it all right it’s not worth doing. But, the truth is that something is always better than nothing. One mug put in the cupboard is something. One coat hung up is something. One room hoovered. One surface wiped. One box recycled. We all have to start somewhere. And it all adds up.