How to Eliminate Clutter

A cluttered house is a frustrating house. Sometimes it seems as if you can only beat it back so much before it starts to take over. Follow these simple tips to make sure your clutter stays where it belongs, and always at bay.

Organization Systems

It's important to know what you want coming into your house. This is the first step in recovering from clutter. If you get magazines and catalogs, and you want to keep those, then buy a special box that's just for magazines and catalogs. After they're a certain number of months old, have a rule about recycling them, or cutting out the articles you want to re-read and filing them away while tossing the rest. It's mostly advertising, anyway.

This goes for any kind of clutter. If you want to control how many junk toys make it into your home, have a rule. Each child has 10, for example, and after that, when they bring home a new one, an old one has to go. Also keep toyboxes clearly labeled with each child's name so they know where the toys go when they're finished playing.

Nip Clutter in the Bud

A lot of the clutter that comes into our homes comes in paper form. Bills, advertisements and school lunch calendars are constantly inundating the common home. There are two ways to stop the madness before it reaches your living room table.

First of all, you can be proactive (and environmentally-friendly!) by calling the companies who you don't want to receive paper from anymore. Many bill companies have online bill-pay systems, and many catalog companies will cancel your address if you ask. That way, you never see it at all, and you save paper.

The second way to manage the paper that's already coming at you is to put a recycling bin right next to your front door. That way, when you walk in with the mail at the end of the day, instead of throwing it down on the table you can sort it right there and be done with the whole thing.

Clean Sweep

Of course clutter is frustrating when it's been piling up for a week. Try this simple trick each night to keep the cleaning up at a minimum. Have a clutter basket, and each night before going to bed, go through your house and pick up everything that is out of place. Put it in the basket, and put it in a place where the whole family knows how to get to it. The next day, they can claim their clutter or it will be gone. This way, your job is never too much to handle.

Clutter does sometimes happen, but staying on top of it and instituting some rules for managing it can bring some much-needed peace to anyone who's had to deal with it in their home. Here's to an organized, spotless home!

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