Clear The Clutter From Your Home To Complete The Decluttering Process
Today's Declutter 365 mission is to clear the clutter you've identified from previous missions, and to get it out of your house by donating, selling or trashing it, so that those decluttering tasks are fully 100% complete, and you're making consistent decluttering progress.
As you might imagine though, this mission is not something you can do once, and have it be complete. Especially since as you do more Declutter 365 missions in your home, identifying more clutter, you'll need to repeat this step to clear that clutter as well.
Therefore, this is a recurring mission during the Declutter 365 program, to make sure these items leave your home, consistently and regularly.
There are several choices for how to remove the items, and the main ones include:
- Donation
- Sell
- Trash
- Recycle
This is consistent with the choices you have for each item, when you're decluttering that were discussed in the linked article, about how you declutter your home.
That's because once you've decided something is clutter, it means it does not need to, and should not, stay in your home, but instead you need to get rid of it.
Treat Removing The Clutter From Your Home As Its Own Decluttering Session
The thing to remember while doing this mission is to take the time to decide for each item that's clutter how it will leave your home and take the actions necessary to make that happen.
Those necessary actions can be as simple as throwing a bag of clutter that contains just trash into the trash can. Or to recycle clutter items that can be recycled.
It could also mean to take those clutter donations you plan to give away to the donation center, or call for a donation pick up. Or it could mean to take some steps to actually sell the items you believe are worth your time to sell, to recoup some cash from your decluttering efforts.
Treat these steps and actions, of removing the clutter from your home, as 15 minute at a time missions, in and of themselves.
For instance, if you've got a lot of stuff to donate, use one of your 15 minute missions (or more, if necessary), to load items into your car, and drive them to the donation center.
Or, if you're selling things online, use a 15 minute session to take photos of the items, and another 15 minute session to list the items on the website.
These examples help you get the drift and point of this mission, which is don't let the stuff you've identified as clutter pile up too long.
Often, clutter disposal takes additional time and energy to complete, but since it's a necessary part of the decluttering process you've got to devote some of your 15 minute decluttering sessions to this task as well.
Remember, this last step of the decluttering process, of clearing the clutter from your home and getting rid of it completely, is the final step necessary to make true decluttering progress.
Do This Mission As Frequently As Necessary, Over & Over
If you start to feel like you've got too much clutter accumulating, in stacks, piles, boxes, etc., as you do more and more Declutter 365 missions, I encourage you to take a break from new Declutter 365 missions and use some 15 minute sessions to actually work on getting this stuff out of your house.
It may take longer to get all the Declutter 365 missions done this way, but it will help you in the long run because the stuff will actually be leaving your house.
I've already added this recurring mission within the Declutter 365 calendar within most weeks, in some form or fashion, but if necessary, you should do this mission even more often to keep removing stuff from your home.
If you do this you'll celebrate as slowly, but surely, all this clutter leaves your home, leaving more space and breathing room for you, your family, and for the rest of the stuff you do want to keep and use in your home.
Recurring Versions Of This Mission Within The Declutter 365 Program
If you look at the Declutter 365 calendar you'll see, typically on Saturdays, that I've got this mission to clear the clutter, or a similar mission designed to remove the clutter completely from your home, in that weekly spot.
Here are examples of some of those missions, which explore some aspect of getting rid of that clutter from your home, in some form or fashion:
- Set up a trash day routine
- Schedule a donation pick up
- Donate clutter, by taking it to a donation drop off
- Give your clutter to others, finding them using a website or app
- Sell your clutter, if the pros outweigh the cons
- Sell at a garage or yard sale
- Sell your clutter, using websites such as eBay, Craigslist, etc.
- Sell items using consignment shops or sales
- Sell clutter using online yard sale websites and apps
- Use buy back sites for selling items
- Shred your paper clutter
- Shred large amounts of paper clutter using a paper shredding service
- Recycle your paper clutter, when appropriate
- Recycle your clutter, when you can
- Trash your clutter, if you can’t find another way to dispose of it
- Rent a dumpster to trash large amounts of clutter at once
The most effective way to declutter your home is to alternate back and forth between identifying the clutter in your home, with the Declutter 365 missions, and then to use this recurring additional Declutter 365 mission to completely remove the clutter from your home, and then start the cycle all over again.
Doing both the tasks of identifying clutter, and then removing it completely from your home, eventually leads to a clutter free home!
Want To Do More Decluttering Missions? Get Started With Declutter 365 Today!
Once you declutter one type of item in your home I bet you'll want to declutter some more. After all, decluttering gives you a great reward for even a small investment of time and energy.
The Declutter 365 system is designed to help you declutter, over the course of a year, your entire house, with just 15 minutes of decluttering each day!
Hundreds of thousands of people use this proven system to get rid of their clutter, and bring peace and calm back to their homes.
Declutter 365 works to guide you to clear the clutter without overwhelm, focusing on just one small area at a time, and without making a huge mess in the process, so you see consistent forward progress without all that "messy middle" that makes it even harder to function in your home than before you started.
In addition to building a daily decluttering habit, the Declutter 365 program, along with the accompanying 52 Week Organized Home Challenge, teaches you the skills, habits, routines, and mindsets necessary to maintain the clutter free and organized state of your home from now on, so it'll never be as messy and cluttered as it is right now, ever again.
If you haven't already, make sure to get your copy of this year's Declutter 365 annual calendar here (it's FREE!), find today's date, and do 15 minutes of decluttering on the day's mission. Then, repeat again tomorrow, and again and again. Over the course of the next year, if you do this 15 minutes per day, you'll declutter your whole house!
Get This Checklist For The Options To Get Rid Of Clutter + 32 Other Decluttering Checklists For Your Home
Right now you're decluttering your home, but once you've decided something is clutter the process of decluttering isn't over, because you still have it get it out of your home, somehow.
I've done the hard work of breaking down these tasks into smaller more manageable steps for you, so you don't get overwhelmed or worry you're forgetting a task, and you can go at the pace you want, whether that's fast or slow.
In addition, you can tackle these decluttering tasks in whatever order you want when you use these checklists!
Photos courtesy of readers Lara and Erin
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