TIPS How to Declutter a Room In 20 Minutes

Looking for help getting your rooms in order after the new year? Here are some simple tips and ideas to help and how to declutter a room in 20 minutes.

Raise your hand if you started 2024 with high hopes and dreams and plans to organize your house including all the closets and the cupboards.

Does half a hand count?

I’m almost halfway there.

Normally I’m way more squared away. Normally I’m ahead of the game. Normally I’m folding towels and taking bags of donations to Goodwill and picking out shelf paper.

But this year?

Can we still be friends if I tell you I just put away the Christmas wrapping paper from the craft room?

Truth?

Just between us? I’m dragging my heels because I’m trying to figure out where to put everything. It’s a little overwhelming here at Thistlewood right now because when I started the big organization project of 2024 I took everything out and donated some of it and tossed some of it and made piles of all the stuff that didn’t have a home in the cabinets.

Now my cabinets are nice and neat and organized.

But all that stuff that I took out?

It’s looking at me expectantly for a plan.

Sigh.

THERE IS JUST SO MUCH CLUTTER.

Clutter is like that last party guest that won’t leave.

They’ve eaten your cheese dip and taken extra helpings of dessert and then ensconced themselves in a chair telling you about their trip to the Grand Canyon for the fifth time.

You look longingly at the door.

Leave clutter, leave, you tell yourself.

But it never does.

Let’s do this together.

Let’s take charge.

Let’s take control.

Let’s take our houses back twenty minutes at a time….

….and show that cheese-eating, dessert taker, grand-canyon visiting clutter to the door.

Here are my very best simple tips on how to declutter a room without getting too overwhelmed.

how to declutter your home in twenty minutes

1. Start small

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was clutter.

For one week set aside 20 minutes a day.

20 minutes. That’s easy, right?  20 simple minutes. Set a timer. Set your watch. Set your phone.

Choose the clutter pile that gets on your nerves the most. The one that makes you shudder when you walk by it.

And then?

Don’t give it any more cheese dip.

Take 10 minutes and sort through that pile. Throw away papers. Toss old magazines. Put bills in a folder in your office or workspace marked bills.

But here’s the key.

ONLY WORK ON IT FOR 20 MINUTES.

And when you are done. Walk away. Pat yourself on the back. Tell yourself how amazing you are. Call your mom and let her know she can stop by for a visit.

But return again tomorrow to show that clutter pile the door.

2. Baskets are your friend

When learning how to declutter a room, there is one basic adage of organizing. A place for everything and everything in its place. The hardest part of that whole idea is figuring out what all the places look like.

I get it.

I understand. I really, really do.

That’s where baskets come in.

First of all, baskets are cute and pretty and have sides that hold things.

Here are some ideas that I use baskets for. I use a basket for mail. I use a basket for extra take-out silverware packets. I use a basket for random coupons and business cards and tiny pieces of who-knows-what that collect on the counters. I use a basket for things I need to do.

I use a basket for items I want to donate. I use a basket for dog supplies.  I use a basket for unfinished projects.

And on and on and on.

Around here everything has a basket. It all goes in there if I don’t have time to sort through it or deal with it or think about it.

It just hangs out looking cute in a basket until I’m ready.

And then? When the basket overflows I go back to idea number one and spend 20 minutes on it.

3.  Keep the surfaces clean

In every home, there are a few surfaces that invite clutter to pull up a chair.

I don’t know why certain surfaces get cluttered.  I wish I did because I would be a zillionaire.  The key is figuring out which surfaces attract clutter and focus on keeping them clutter-free.

That’s where the baskets come in.

Every night, I check the surfaces and put the stuff from the surfaces into the baskets.

And then?

When the baskets overflow it’s back to our 20 minutes again.

4.  how to declutter a room? Donate

Our house is full of stuff.

Stuff that we don’t really use anymore.  Stuff that I walk by and wonder what I should do with it.  Stuff that stopped fitting into our life in 2017.

On the first of every month, I go through the house (some from the basket where I put it waiting to be donated) and gather up two garbage bags of stuff and donate it.

Someone else might need that stuff way more than me.

And my baskets thank me.

5.  Be kind to yourself

I think that’s where clutter defeats us.

It’s why so many have tried to show clutter to the door and fail.

We look at the clutter and it overwhelms us and we sigh and look away and tell ourselves that we’ll handle it tomorrow.

Why not make your tomorrow start today?

You got this.

You can do it.

Yes, yes you can.

All you need are 20 minutes and to discover how to declutter a room and a few cute baskets to show clutter the door.

Here’s to an amazing new year.

PS  This picture has actually nothing to do with de-cluttering.

Or surfaces.

Or cheese dip.

This picture of the twins in their Chi-O SING costumes (they are dressed as Little Red Riding Hood) made me smile.

I thought it might make you smile, too.

Want to know how to decorate your home for free?
Click here to get my FIVE BEST secrets.

<!– Removed after blog post link 5-28-2019



–>