No matter your age, living in an unorganized or cluttered home can have negative effects on your mental and physical wellbeing. As an older adult, this can be especially hard to deal with, as you may have limitations and hindrances to consider, including mobility issues, chronic pain, and poor mental health. Not to mention that you’ve had more time to accumulate various trinkets, whether they be souvenirs, presents, or mundane purchases.
The act of decluttering even a single room, let alone your whole home, can therefore be very daunting. Luckily, there are a variety of simple strategies that can make the whole process a lot smoother. These tips apply to everyone, from experienced cleaners to true beginners. The only thing you need to get started is an open mind, patience, and a willingness to make a change for the better!
Learn to Let Go
To successfully declutter any space, you will first need to get rid of things that you no longer need. While it may seem sad to let go of your possessions, it is a crucial part of decluttering; if you kept all of your clutter, you would merely be moving it around, not solving your problem.
Framing this process as “getting rid of things” can make it seem quite sad. Instead of doing that, it can be helpful to think of it as “only keeping things that will bring you joy”, as it reframes the process in a more positive light. Try to feel gratitude for each of your possessions and remember what they have taught you, while also acknowledging that they no longer serve you. For particularly sentimental items, it can be helpful to send them off in a special way—this could mean meditating on items and the memories they hold, or using a traditional or cultural ritual to release them from your life. It might feel a bit strange, but giving your items a proper send off can help to make the process of letting go easier.
Letting go doesn’t have to mean throwing your things into the trash, either. In many cases, throwing things into the garbage is actually not the best option, as a wide range of things can be recycled, reused, or redistributed. For example, clothes can be sold or donated, provided that they are in good condition, which can be particularly helpful for shelters and charity shops. By taking the extra effort to send your items to thrift stores, donation boxes, recycling bins, and online auctions, you can also do your part to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills—which, according to PubMed, are hazardous to both human health and the environment. Giving away your unused items can also feel easier than simply throwing them away, as it can be comforting to know that they will get to have a second life.
As you begin your cleaning process, try to set up piles of things you will keep, things you can donate, sell, or throw out, and things that you are unsure of. This “unsure” pile can then be revisited at a later date, when you may feel more decided. To donate clothing, try visiting a local thrift store, or bring your items to a Goodwill, Salvation Army, or American Red Cross location. For household items, try listing them on Facebook Marketplace or with a local Buy Nothing group. If you have any trouble with the technological side of things, such as how to attach pictures, don’t be afraid to ask for help! Your family members and friends are likely more than happy to help.
Create Categories
According to renowned decluttering expert Marie Kondo, tidying your space room-by-room is not the most effective method. Rather than choosing one area of the house to tackle, Marie recommends decluttering by category; her method follows a set order, starting with clothes, followed by books, then papers, then miscellaneous items, and finally finishing with sentimental objects. This order is deliberate, too. Clothes are usually easiest to sort through, as you can generally tell straight away if a particular item of clothing is something that you are likely to wear again; sentimental items, on the other hand, can be harder to let go of, even if you logically understand that they are no longer useful. By following this order, you are training yourself to get better at letting go of the things that no longer serve you.
Within these broader categories, you can also create smaller sub-categories to make the task easier to manage. For clothing, some examples of sub-categories include summer clothes, winter clothes, and clothes for special occasions. Since the miscellaneous items category is particularly broad, separating by zone—i.e. kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, outdoors, etc—can help to make it less overwhelming.
Though it may be tempting to jump around and declutter random things as they come up, this is also not the best way to do things. As an example, let us imagine that you are decluttering your closet, and come across an old box of postcards. You may then be tempted to organize these postcards, making you leave your closet and move to the attic. Then, while putting your postcards away, you may notice an old recipe book, which you will then bring to your kitchen… where you will promptly get distracted and begin organizing your other recipes to make room for the new book. Before you know it, you have gotten sidetracked and your closet, cupboards, attic, and kitchen are all in a state of disarray. Instead of following items to new areas of your house every time they come up, try to create a holding zone—laundry baskets and boxes work well for this—to place items that are not part of the category you are currently working on. That way, you can finish your initial task before tackling another. For categories which have items in multiple areas, you can tackle one room before starting the next; your main goal is just to stick to the category.
Declutter Before Organizing
In a similar vein, you should do your best to avoid getting caught up in organizing while you are still decluttering. When cleaning, things will often look worse before they get better—though a cupboard with lots of items shoved into it may look clean when it is closed, in actuality, taking everything out and reorganizing is better in the long run (even though it will look messier while you do so). While it can be tempting to try to organize and put away everything as soon as possible, taking the time to fully declutter is key. You cannot organize effectively without having enough space to do so, and decluttering will open up that space for you.
Take the example of a closet of clothes. If it’s full to the brim with clothes, you will not have the space to organize, no matter how much you may try to fold and squish your clothes. Getting rid of unused clothes will free up space, and you will be able to efficiently store all of the clothes you truly care about—no shoving, stuffing, or cramming needed!
Beyond the practical reasons for decluttering first, there are also mental and financial benefits. By decluttering first, you will be able to clearly see the difference you’re making. Each unnecessary item that is removed shows you that what you’re doing is working, which is not only a great motivator, but also a scientifically proven way to reduce stress. According to research published to BMC, dirty homes have been directly linked to increased stress and mental health issues. Having less clutter in the way also makes organizing less overwhelming. Decluttering first can also have a positive effect financially, as you’ll be able to avoid spending unnecessary money on storage containers. Less stuff means less storage needs, which means less money spent! If money is particularly tight, selling some of your unused items can also give you a nice pot of money to draw from when buying storage boxes later on.
Organize by Usage, Category, and Size
Once you have finished decluttering, you can start organizing! For many people, this part of the process is a very soothing one—after pulling all of your things out to sort through them, putting the remaining items back neatly can be very satisfying. In order to maintain this feeling of satisfaction and keep your home organized for longer, this should be done in an intentional, well thought out way.
To start, consider how frequently you use specific items. High frequency items like keys, hygiene products, and current season clothes should be stored in easy-to-access areas. To step this up a level, try to think about where you use these areas the most; keys might go in a basket by the door, while your hygiene products could be grouped in a convenient caddy in your bathroom. Items that you don’t use as often, such as off-season clothes, can be put away in storage bins, attics, and other areas that are harder to access.
In conjunction with organizing by usage, try to group things by category. While keeping your important documents in a set spot may be fairly intuitive, you can (and should!) aim to organize the rest of your possessions in a similar way. As an example, you could keep travel items like packing cubes, travel pillows, and suitcases in one area, which will make your life easier when you need them. This principle can be applied to most item categories too—when you need to do something, like travelling, it’s nice to have everything you need already in one spot.
In terms of the organization process itself, try to use each item’s size and shape to your advantage. Large items should be stored in large cupboards, and stackable things should be stacked. If you find that you have a lot of smaller items, but only have large spaces to put them in, investing in organizational storage inserts can help. Instead of having loose stationery or cutlery rolling around in a disorganized drawer, try making smaller compartments within the drawer, and then fill each with a different item. You can repurpose old boxes and containers for this, or buy dividers like IKEA’s Skubb Divider Set. The goal is to create set areas for most of your items, so that you aren’t constantly having to dig through a full drawer.
Take it Slow
Some of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to declutter their homes are moving too quickly, and setting unrealistic expectations and goals. You’ve likely spent your entire life collecting this clutter; clearing it all out in a few days, even a month, is simply not achievable.
Setting yourself these huge goals does a lot more harm than good. While setting small, achievable goals has been linked with many benefits—including motivation, quality of life, and mental health, as evidenced by this NCBI study—setting goals that are too large can do the opposite. When you fall short of your unrealistic goals you end up discouraged and burnt out, rather than motivated to keep going.
Instead of treating decluttering as a one-off occurrence, where you will dedicate a specific amount of time to getting it all done, try to think of it more as a hobby. You can set aside a set amount of time each day, week, or month to dedicate to decluttering a small section of your home. Even just 10 minutes a day will add up over the course of the year; 10 minutes a day, repeated every day of the year, comes out to over 60 hours! Continuing to put in consistent efforts will also improve your confidence in your cleaning abilities, making you even faster at completing tasks. A cleaning project that may take 15 minutes now may only take you 5 minutes in a few months.
If cleaning in small time slots doesn’t work for you, and you prefer to have “deep cleaning sessions”, try to choose a specific day of the week or month to do these sessions. Doing so will naturally build up the habit of cleaning, while also leaving you plenty of time outside of cleaning to recoup. You could also turn these cleaning days into opportunities to spend time with friends or family—if they enjoy cleaning, or simply want to chat while you sort through old cookbooks and recipes, invite them over! As an older adult, you likely have less opportunities to hang out with your loved ones than you did in your youth, making this all the more important. If your friends come over to help you clean, you can also return the favour by helping them!
Ask for Help
Though it can be hard to admit, we all need help sometimes. As you age, you may begin to experience age-related challenges such as mobility issues and decreased strength, which can negatively impact your ability to do many cleaning tasks. Things like moving furniture, lifting boxes, and carrying heavy objects may have been easy when you were younger, but now may be quite hazardous. If you ever find yourself questioning if something is safe, err on the side of caution and ask someone for help. As with cleaning together with a friend, this can actually turn into a great social opportunity; people love to feel useful and needed, so inviting younger family members over can turn a tedious task into a lovely bonding moment.
Overall, decluttering is just as much a mental task as it is a physical one. You will likely need to make adjustments to your lifestyle, and some cleaning tasks like letting go of sentimental items may bring up past memories, grief, and sadness. Be kind to yourself as you navigate this challenge, and remember that it won’t be over in a day. Take your time. You can do this!
