Clutter Control - How to Deal With Incoming, Existing and Outgoing Clutter

Existing clutter

Go through your home, room by room, and start the decluttering process by going through all the places that might have clutter (floors, desks, bookshelves, closets...). Put all the stuff you don't need to a big plastic bag and take it to trash. Naturally you want to categorize that stuff first so that every item gets recycled the right way if possible.

Rest of the stuff is for donations and selling or "grey area" (this means you don't know yet whether to keep it or toss it away). For the grey area stuff you might want to keep it for a certain amount of time and the next time you do your clutter control check, then put it away (once again: you sell it, donate it or put it to trash can) if you haven't found any use for it. For example, this is how I deal with magazines.

All the extra stuff on the tables that don't belong there should go to their own places. For magazines you might have a basket, where you put all the existing ones that you are currently reading. After a week or two take a look at those magazines and decide which ones you still need and which ones you should get rid of. Same goes for books. You might have a special area in your bookshelf for books that are in progress. Take them there.

Letters and bills. It's very easy to open a letter and leave it there. If I happen know that this letter is an advertisement, I might toss it away instantly (after opening it). If it's a bill or a real letter - something that needs more processing - I put it to inbox which is on my workroom's table and handle it later. You might have a schedule for bills (at a certain time of the week if it's possible or handle them straight away).

Rotten food. Go through your fridge and check out all the food that is not good anymore. Take them to trash, preferable into a trash can which consists of organic waste only. Take a look at the other places too where you store food. Maybe you can find stuff which is outdated. You might want to get rid of that too.

Incoming clutter

Perhaps the most important steps you can take in decluttering starts outside your home.

Take a deep look at your magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Do you really need them? Is it possible for you to unsubscribe them? If you have piles of unread newspapers or magazines on your kitchen or coffee table, maybe you want to consider if they are worth subscribing anymore.
This is happened to me: I had many magazine subscriptions and I couldn't read them all because of lack of time. Quite soon I had lots of unread magazines and new ones just kept coming in. I then decided it was about time to unsubscribe most of them and keep just the essential ones.

Think carefully before buying something. Is it something you need in the first place? If it's not, can you live without it? Also, try to avoid impulse buying. If you have decided to buy something, hopefully you have made that decision with a good consideration first (especially if the stuff you are buying is expensive).

Outgoing clutter

Don't just toss it away - categorize it first to see how to deal with it.

Stuff that is still good you should donate it for a local non-profit organization or sell it (for example on flea market).

Taking all the stuff to garbage is just too easy. However, in many places there is a greener way of doing things. You should categorize the outgoing stuff and then decide what kind of garbage this is. For environments sake you should recycle as much as possible. Decluttering means also being responsible towards nature so make sure that this is in top priority when tossing out the stuff you don't need.

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