How to Clean Out the Clutter From Drudgery To Real Simple?

How to decluttering and organizing your home and your life?

1. Develop A Household Routine

Develop a routine to do the work to run as a system without requiring make the decision every day. When we approach tasks with the order, we finish what we start.  Otherwise, we tend to start one job, get distracted by something else, then look around and feel like haven’t accomplished anything. You will have more time to get the work done if you can get up earlier.  You stay in bed for few more minutes can't reduce your painful feeling to get up. Tell yourself get up anyway with no exception.

2. Organize the Storage

Some people regard tidiness is living with less, they are minimalists.   For some other people, it means properly organizing the stuff to keep the home looks clean without require throwing away many things.

Step #1. Throw things away

I am a minimalist prefers not to keep much stuff at home. Why don't people want to throw things away?  Ms. Hideko Yamashita  is a reputable "de-cluttering" expert to bring out the idea that people are unwilling to throw away existing clutter in their living space because:

• Denial the current reality (such as denial you can't put your tight pants on anymore).  
  
• Unable to let the past go
• Worry about the future to think that you may need it in the future some day

Two ways to identify what are the things you want to keep instead of throwing away:

• As suggested by Marie Kondo, ask yourself what are the things can make you happier? You hold the things and feel it. Ask yourself whether it can attach to your emotion strongly? If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.
  
• The frequency of usage.  If you don't wear a particular dress for a long time, it is highly unlikely that you will wear that in the future.

Step #2. Arrange the Visible and Invisible Storage

Storage of stuff can be visible or invisible (visible display and invisible inside the closet). You may prefer your home is absolute tidy by storing everything inside the closets. But this will look dull and boring.  Conversely, if there are too many stuff store in the openly visible space, this will look messy and uncomfortable. Balance the visible and invisible storage is important.

a) Don't fully occupy the space. Not everything needs to be optimized

• Invisible storage – 70% full (reduce the stressful feeling when you organize the stuff).
• Visible storage – 50% full (urge you to discern the real necessary thing)
  

(source via Hideko Yamashita)

b) Make the balance between visible and invisible storage

I prefer the ratio of 5:5 or 4:6 (visible vs. invisible) to attain the balance feel. The closet is around the height of 700mm and put the stuff as visible storage on the top of the closet.

Step #3.  Organize the clothing

Sort the clothing into hanging and folding items:

a)  Sort for the hanging items

Hanging items are jackets or clothing that could get frown easily.
The arrangement can be...
Left side dark color, right side light color
Left side heavy, right side light weight
Left side long sleeve, right side short sleeve

b) Folding the items in small shape for easy finding

Ms. Marie Kondo suggested folding the clothes in a square shape and put them in vertical. When you open the drawer, you can find the items easily.

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Step #4: Control the excessive buying
 
Don’t trap into the big discount or pursuit of trendy fashion by buying excessive clothing, bags, gadgets, and no used stuff.  I don't mean stop buying anything.  Suitable furniture or stuff help to bring good feeling and contribute to the well spend time. For instance, we buy the dishes washer can spare the time for spending the enjoyable time with the family rather than washing dishes.

3. Technology Can Help You but Sometimes Not

• Technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices which do not align with our true needs.  When we wake up in the morning, the phone shows you a list of notifications.  It frames the experience of “waking up in the morning” around a menu of “all the things I have missed since yesterday.  You will be more productive to turn off the notifications on all of your devices and focus on the things you had decided to do.

• Technology helps to facilitate the paperless environment.  Papers and books are scanned and transfer into digital files storage so that we have more physical space to store other stuff.
  

4. Manage The Drudgery

There would be some non-proficient and non-passionate jobs which you regard as drudgery. Piling them up and deferring the job is not a good idea. You have to do it anyway and leave the works pending just increase the burden. I would like to mark the drudgery on the calendar to make it an appointment with myself.  I commit my work on the pre-set schedule to get the work done.
 
Have you ever heard about “one-minute principle”? It means people do something for a single minute, every day at the same time.  You feel the joy and satisfaction from the achievement of that single small task.  You are feeling good and you will gradually to increase the amount of time you spend doing the task which you have set yourself.  You can't do everything today but you can do something every day.