Four Decluttering Tips I Learned During the Pandemic

If there’s one driving principle behind home organizing during the pandemic, it’s that a tidy house leads to a tidy mind. If your home regularly looks like it was attacked by a herd of goats, I can almost guarantee that you might feel a little distressed and frazzled inside.

Here are four tips that keep my mental state clean, clear and under control:

Declutter your bedside table. There’s been a lot of chatter in the past couple of years about the importance of maintaining good sleep hygiene, but I think the pandemic has heightened this necessity. To avoid ‘doomscrolling’ nights and mornings away, I’ve found it very helpful to keep my iPhone out of the bedroom. Beyond this, I’ve also moved extraneous items like magazines, newspapers, empty glasses, tissues, etc. off the table to inspire more serenity and calm before bed. What stays? A nice book, my eye pillow, ear plugs, lip balm and hand cream (especially necessary with all that hand-washing). 

Shift your mindset from ‘declutter’ to ‘repurpose’. Not everything has to go! Since donation sites and thrift stores have been mostly inaccessible during the pandemic, I’ve encouraged my clients to reimagine their ‘donate’ items as being “repurposeable.” For instance, instead of giving those Tupperware bins the boot after upgrading to glass lock containers, consider repurposing them as storage containers in your pantry, bathroom, and miscellaneous drawers. T-shirts that once would have been donated can take on a new life as very useful cleaning rags.

All bagged up with nowhere to go. Pre-pandemic, I preached the importance of getting those ‘toss’ and ‘donate’ bags out the door ASAP to avoid rifling through everything afterwards (clothing donator’s remorse––it’s a thing!). Again, since many donation sites are still inaccessible, this is not entirely realistic. Considering how much more time we’re spending at home, it’s better to declutter your space and put those bags in an unused closet, garage, attic, etc. than to delay decluttering altogether! 

Declutter future clutter. Spending so much more time at home has forced me to be even more mindful of what I bring into my space. More stuff means more clutter, which can be a strain on your eyes, space, and mind. It’s forced me to be more deliberate with my online purchases. Am I really going to use that neck massager more than once? If the answer is ‘no,’ then delete it from your cart.