Top 10 Ways Organizing & Decluttering Your Home Saves You Money
Organizing and decluttering your home has many benefits, and one that may not, at first, seem obvious, but is definitely true, is that it will save you money.
While the end result of both decluttering and organizing your home is worth the effort, there's no doubt that the process to get there can be hard work.
Therefore, to get yourself motivated to begin, or to keep motivated when you're in the midst of that hard work, it can be helpful to think of the benefits you'll experience as you work toward and attain your goals.
One of those big benefits is that in a decluttered and organized home it is a lot easier to save money.
Here are the top 10 ways you'll save once you've begun decluttering and organizing.
1. The Less Stuff You Have, The Less You Have To Store
The first step in any organization process is to declutter. The reason is that you should never organize clutter.
There are many reasons organizing clutter doesn't make sense, but one of them is the cost of the organizing process. Think about how much all those organizers and storage solutions can cost, so you only want to use them for stuff you should keep, instead of things that don't deserve to actually get stored to begin with.
2. You No Longer Need To Purchase Multiples
Once you've decluttered and organized your home you'll have a place for everything, and you'll know where it is. That means when you need to use something you will be able to quickly find it, and won't have to the store and buy yet another of the items since you can't locate the one you already own.
Not having to buy multiples of different things saves you both money, and contributes to you not re-accumulating clutter.
3. Financial Organization & Keeping Track Of Papers Avoids Late Fees & Penalties
Once you've gotten rid of paper piles, and instead gotten your finances organized, you're going to save a lot of money by avoiding late fees and penalties.
For example, you will be able to locate, when it's time to pay bills, all the outstanding ones so they can be paid on time. Similarly, you can avoid library fees for overdue books, and not forget about annual tasks like renewing your car registration or paying an insurance bill that can have negative financial consequences if not done on time.
4. Get Rid Of Storage Unit Or Fit Into A Smaller Home
Once you've got your home decluttered you'll have room for anything you do need to store in your home itself, which means you won't have to pay for a storage unit.
It can make financial sense to temporarily pay for a storage unit, such as if you're moving from one home to another and need to keep items elsewhere for a short period of time in between. However, if you're using a storage unit as a long term solution you are not necessarily using your money in the best way. (Get tips for how to declutter an off-site storage unit or locker here.)
Similarly, you can think of all the space in your home as having some type of intrinsic monetary value. After all, when purchasing a home or residence you almost always figure out how much it will cost per square foot. You can think of the space that clutter takes up as occupying, or renting out, part of your home's square footage.
Make sure anything taking up space in your home should actually stay there, instead of being clutter, so you're not paying for more space than you need. You may find after getting rid of the clutter you don't actually need as much square footage as you thought you did to live in, and a smaller house is almost always a less expensive home.
5. Valuable Items You Own But Are Clutter Can Become Cash {Or Tax Deductions}
What is clutter to you can be quite useful to someone else, which is why, sometimes, clutter can be hard to identify. However, if you're keeping items that, for you, are clutter you're not utilizing a valuable asset you have. Depending on the value of the item, and how much time and energy you've got to dispose of it, some of these items can be worth some cash when sold, or at least turned into a deduction on your taxes if you decide to donate.
6. Save Money With Meal Planning & Organized Food Storage Areas
One thing all households have to spend money on is food. When you know what you've got in your food storage areas, such as in your pantry, freezer and refrigerator and planning meals, you're going to see a significant savings. You'll spend less at the grocery, won't have to eat out as much, and will avoid food waste by eating leftovers and what you've already purchased. It's exactly why I suggest, periodically, eating from your freezer and pantry!
7. The Mindset Of Decluttering Will Keep You From Purchasing Excess Stuff In The Future
As you declutter on a regular basis, such as when doing the Declutter 365 daily missions, you begin to get into the decluttering mindset.
Part of that mindset is that you start to want to control clutter from even entering your house from now on, so you don't have to then declutter it later. You also become much more adept at identifying clutter, and can catch yourself as you even consider bringing something new into the house.
Once you get into this clutter control mindset, you'll choose not to purchase it at all, no matter the sales price or "deal" if you don't have a place for it, and/or it doesn't serve a purpose.
8. Repurposing & Making Do, Which Are Staples Of Frugal Living, Will Become Easier
As you declutter daily you will also notice that not only do you control clutter before it enters your home, but also that you are able to become more creative with making do, or repurposing the items you already have on hand, instead of bringing in new things. This is both eco-friendly and saves money!
9. You Will Almost Certainly Find Money Or Valuables You'd Lost Or Forgotten About
As you remove excess items from your home, and make a place for everything that you do keep, you will almost certainly run across either money or other valuables that you'd lost in the past, or had completely forgotten you owned.
Not only are these fun surprises you run across as you do the hard work involved in this process, but you will often save money through these finds as well. I've documented quite a few discoveries that Declutter 365 participants have made when clearing out their clutter, so check the linked article for more information.
10. Saving Yourself Time Does Also Save Money
Finally, decluttering and organizing will ultimately save you a lot of time, including by having less to clean, as well as not needing to look for misplaced items, among other ways.
In many ways time is priceless, but as we all know time can be "bought" through money as well, so saving time really does mean saving yourself money.
With additional time you could save money since you'd have more time to do something yourself, instead of paying for it, or time to look for a better deal or clip coupons. You could also find, with lower expenses, that you have to work less, or have more money available to pay off debt!
Organizing and decluttering your home really have so many monetary benefits that it's worth the effort!
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