Decluttering For The Holidays
Family and friends are coming for the upcoming holiday! Have you started to panic yet? Whether your loved ones are coming for a few hours or a few days, it can be stressful to imagine their judgment of your home, its clutter, and your organizing abilities.
You might be tempted to start stuffing items in closets and under beds. You may even be considering giving up and canceling the visits altogether. Before you take drastic measures, give my 4 step plan a try.
Assess
What areas will be seen by guests? If they'll be staying for a few hours, this will include the entrance to the home, the common areas (living room, dining room, kitchen), and a bathroom. If they'll be staying for a few days, you'll have to expand this to at least one bedroom. Make a list of the areas in question and try to view them as if you were a guest in your home.
“Pro tip: If you have trouble imagining what your home looks like to others, take a photo and use the photo to make your judgment. It’s a neat trick that will work to change your perspective!”
Now, for each area, make a list of what the problems are. Are the kitchen counters cluttered? Is there a stack of magazines on the living room floor? Is the dining room table unusable due to stacks of mail? You get the idea.
Attack
Review your schedule for the amount of time left before guests arrive. Make a plan for when you will chip away at your preparations. When the appointed time arrives, set a timer for 25 minutes (on your phone, on the stove, or using your dedicated timer (affiliate link). No matter how much time you plan to work, don't do more than 25 minutes at a time. When the timer goes off, take a bathroom or snack break, or walk a lap around the block before setting the timer and doing another 25 minutes.
During your project, stay focused on an individual area from your list. Start by hunting for and throwing away any obvious trash and recycling. Once that is accomplished, pick locations for categories: things that go in other rooms, things that are to be donated, and things that need to be trashed or recycled.
“Pro tip: Don’t go running all over the house to return items that are out of place or you risk getting distracted and off track. Gather them in one spot and do it all at the end.”
Stand at the door and work your way around the room in a clockwise direction, paying attention to one area at a time. As you find items that are in places they shouldn't be, decide if they will be kept, donated, or trashed. For items you're keeping, move on to the next step.
Arrange
Usually, even the most disorganized people have places they prefer to keep the majority of their items. Start by returning anything that belongs in another room to it's rightful location. If the other room is also on your list from your assessment and there's no room for the items to be properly put away, it's ok to put the items in the vicinity of where they should end up to be dealt with when you get to that room.
For items that belong in the room you found them, put them away properly if there is room. If there is not room (for example, there is no room in the pantry to put the cereal away) you will have more decluttering work to do. Determine how much room you need in order to store the items and work to declutter the exact amount of space you need. You've got a deadline so I don't recommend going overboard and hauling out everything in order to do a major purge. Just find enough to discard in order to make it all fit. It may be tempting to start shoving the overflow in random cabinets and drawers, but try to resist the urge. If you give in, it's likely you'll later learn you don't know where anything is!
“Pro tip: When the little voice inside your head tells you that you’ll save time by shoving things away to deal with at another time, consider how long it will take you to tear everything apart in a panic when you later can’t find what you’re looking for. Spend a few minutes on the front end to do it properly and save yourself many more minutes and a whole lot of aggravation on the back end.”
Accept
If you've reached the point of guest arrival and still feel embarrassed about the state of your home, I have some good news. Many people have problem areas of their homes that they'd be embarrassed for others to see, so your situation is not unique. When you go to others' homes, you have no idea what hoops they jumped through to get it to look presentable for your visit. They may have stuffed everything into a closet so full that it's a danger to anyone who tries to open it.
Even if you ARE the most disorganized in your social and family groups, I can guarantee that everyone has problems that they struggle with and they may be struggling in areas that you are a rock-star in. The truth is that most people won't judge you harshly for the condition of your home, and if they do, their opinion doesn't have to matter more than yours.
“Pro tip: You have no control over what other people think. If you are doing the best you can, that’s all that really matters. ”
Preparing for the holidays can be a stressful time but with the structure of this plan to deal with your clutter, hosting guests doesn’t have to be embarrassing.
ASSESS
ATTACK
ARRANGE
ACCEPT
Using these 4 steps you can tackle the most important areas so that they are presentable, so that you can fully enjoy the holiday season and your visiting guests.
