22: Quick Decluttering Wins So You Enjoy Your Summer
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Welcome to episode 22 of Permission to be Messy. I'm your host, JoAnn Krall. And today I'm sharing some quick decluttering wins so that you can enjoy your summer.
Okay. The first thing is to clean out just one. And what do I mean by this? It means pick a closet, a drawer, a bin, a file folder. That's either digital or paper and just declutter that one spot.
So that could be a coat closet. That's become a breeding ground for no longer worn jackets and like mismatched gloves. Or maybe a drawer in your kitchen that has just a little of this and a little of that. I'm not a fan of junk drawers. I like to think of those extra drawers as utility drawers and make sure that everything in there is essential.
Or it could even just be a Google drive folder, but just pick something small, tackle that, and that's it for the day. If you do this every day during the summer and spend just a short amount of time, you'll be amazed at how much you'll get rid of.
Some great places to start could be your purse or your wallet. It could be a drawer full of random remotes and chords in the TV room. It could be a spam or promotion folder in your email box, or even your refrigerator.
In my home decluttering program, I always start with the, night side table or bedside table or a nightstand, whatever you call it. I think this is a great place to start, because it is the last thing you see before you go to bed. And the first thing you see when you get up and when that is clean and functional it really can help your sleep. You'll be amazed. Try it.
The second thing would be to empty a surface. Horizontal surfaces typically become dumping grounds. And if you've ever noticed, when you've cleared off a surface and you slowly watch the clutter build it, all it takes is one item to be put down and then they seem to multiply like bunnies. So think about something that you could surface that you could clear up. It could be the top of your dresser.
So what you would do is take everything off that particular surface, sorted, get rid of what you don't need, clean it off, and that's it. Try not to do a big giant surface. Cause obviously the goal is to have quick wins. So maybe you could start with a bathroom counter, maybe a coffee table, maybe your dining room table, maybe the top of your dresser. or maybe there's a bench or a chest at the end of your bed.
Any of those areas, anything that's a flat surface. Just tackle one.
The third thing you can do. And this is one of my favorites is to go through and just do a decluttering spree every day. Literally going through your home and finding things that are trash or things that are donate and not worrying about the things you're keeping and organizing them, just going through and just getting rid of whether it's a certain number of things, or are you going to spend 15 minutes getting rid of things?
And don't worry whether things are small or big, just get rid of something.
And this is about making quick decisions. You literally could look around a room and think, okay, I don't need that. Get rid of it. And so give yourself a goal and you could challenge yourself, to get rid of more, or you could just set one number and be consistent with that.
It because think about it. If you got rid of 10 things a day, For just 30 days, that's 300 things. And if you're not bringing in more stuff, which is always key. You're going to be lighter. And if you just keep doing this all year, you'll be amazed at how quickly this will add up. And then this way you're not thinking, oh, I've got to go tackle that closet.
You look at it, like I'm in this room. I want to get rid of 10 items. You can look at the surfaces. You can go into drawers, you can go into your closet. If there's a closet in that room. And do that. And you may find yourself saying, you know what? I can do more because you'll be amazed at how quickly this can happen. So you're not spending hours and hours a day decluttering.
All of these quick wins, we'll give you some momentum, an instant sense of accomplishment and can be done in under an hour. And it really just proves that decluttering doesn't have to be difficult. But it does require action so I hope that, you've been inspired to maybe just take some quick action.
And you could mix these up. You could day one, you could say I'm going to do. one space, day two, I'm going to do one surface. And then on day three, I'm going to do a decluttering spree, and then repeat the process.
It's important to not get bored and frustrated with the decluttering process. So that is one way that could help. So I want you to think about today, what small spaces are bugging you and what small steps that you can take to tackle some of your clutter right away.
If you've been following along my, my business journey you'll know that I've closed my membership until probably the fall. I'm only offering one program for sale right now. Put that in the show notes, my Get Organized:. Create Your Action Plan program. And I'm also adding another aspect to my business.
And that's going to be about helping people start an online business and really bringing things back to basics and cutting through the clutter of all the information that's out there. So stay tuned for that.
Also in the show notes, I'm going to put a link to a quick survey that I did to my email list. So if you're on my email list, you may have seen it may have not take that survey. If you're not on my email list and you'd like to take it because you're interested in either my membership upcoming, or you are interested in learning more about what I'm going to be doing for online businesses.
It's quick survey. And also it helps me to see who my listeners are because one of the questions is, do you own a business or not? So it'd be really curious to see what percentage of you do. And then if you don't own a business, maybe you're interested. Maybe you're not, that's all fine. This podcast is a little bit of everything about organization for home, business and life. So it applies to everyone.
And as always, I'm wishing you much productivity. Peace prosperity and the permission to be messy. Thanks for listening.
