How to Have a Clutter-Free Home When You are Messy at Heart
If you are looking for clutter-free home ideas today, you will find them here. Tips that you can use to help streamline your rooms so the clutter stays away. These are easy steps you can work on each day to remove a bit of the mess and hopefully create a home you love that is free of clutter.
When learning how to declutter, tips are a great way to make progress without stressing out. So, let’s get started.
Few people know this about me, but I am a messy person, and a clutter-free home does not come easy to me. I think I was born that way, and for me, at least, decluttering was not something that came naturally.
No matter what I did the rooms in my home were never neat and tidy. No matter how hard I tried, there always seemed to be stuff everywhere.
I wasn’t a slob so much as just a messy person. I would never put things away when I was done with them. I found it so much easier to just leave things sit where I finished using them, just adding to the pile of stuff until my rooms looked like complete disaster areas.
The rooms weren’t cluttered so much as just full of things that needed to be put away.
And the problem was, I honestly felt that putting things away was a complete waste of time.
When I was a young mother, I had a friend whose home was always spotless. I am talking never EVER anything out of place.
There were never toys strewn all over her yard, and her kitchen was visitor ready all the time. Seriously, no matter when I would stop by, her kitchen would always be spotless.
I remember being in awe when I was there. She had four kids, just like I did. She had pets, a husband, and a lot of things always going on, just like I did.
Yet her home was always put together all the time. And, if I am being completely honest, It was really annoying.
Back then, I thought it was just my makeup. The way I was built. Even when I was a teenager, I remember my room would be so bad at times I had to get things off of my bed just to get into it.
My mother would threaten me with everything just to get me to clean it, and after an entire Saturday spent cleaning, it would be perfectly spotless from floor to ceiling.
The funny thing was I loved having my room neat and organized. But it would never last. Like clockwork, my room would be a cluttered mess all over again by the following week.
It wasn’t so much a mess as it was full of things that needed to be put away.
Habits are the Answer to a Clutter-Free Home
They say it takes 21 days to create a new habit, just three weeks to make it stick. Habits are the change that many homes are missing, and if you can add one new habit each month, you will transform your entire home without too much struggle.
For me, the habit I was missing was to put my stuff away when I was done using it. And if I hated to take that extra step to return things to their home, I needed to set up shortcuts. An easier way for me to put my things close to away and, in turn, keep my room and, later, my home less messy. ‘
That one new habit was the change I needed all those years ago. I have been adding new habits ever since, creating ways that make my home neater and company-ready without stress and headaches.
Clutter-Free Home Ideas
These ideas are the things I used to help me get my home in shape. I suggest working on one at a time until you have it in place then come back here and add in another. The great thing about these tips is they are easy but super effective in keeping a neater home.
Idea #1. Stop Paper Clutter
One of the biggest problems for a messy person is mail. There is just so much of it, and it keeps coming into our homes every single day. Let’s start by setting up an easy mail system in your home.
I found that by having a mail system, I could more easily keep the paper under control. When our kids were young, we set up a family command center in our kitchen. A place that allowed us to keep important school papers and schedules organized, so they did not get lost in the messiness of our kitchen counters.
When our kids were older, I moved our mail system into our office giving each of our boys their own bin on a bookshelf. This gave me a place to toss in papers, magazines, or notes for each without having to worry that they would become lost or misplaced.
The boys all knew to check that bin every day to be sure there was nothing inside that needed their attention.
Even today, with our boys all out and on their own, we still use this updated system. Whenever they visit they go into the office and grab their bin to see if there is anything inside they need to take with them.
More Paper Resources:
This includes hubby as well. He too has his own basket where I can toss any paper that pertains to him as soon as I come across it. I can’t even tell you how much this simple system has changed our paper issue.
By sorting out the mail that belongs to each person, what I am left with is bills and junk mail. The junk mail can quickly be tossed away, the Bills then go directly to my desk to be dealt with on Sundays.
Read: How to set up a Weekly Planning Basket for easy tips that help keep paper contained, all while creating a system you can use each week.
What used to mess up more than one room in our home, now seems almost nonexistent. And the best part is the mail takes just seconds to deal with, making this system a top 5 favorite in our home.
Idea #2. Stop Sink Clutter
There is nothing I hate quite as much as a sink full of dirty dishes. And with a dishwasher, there is no reason for it either. Yet, even today, my sink tends to have at least something in it waiting to be washed at all times.
I decided to try an experiment that completely changed my kitchen mess.
I read somewhere that if you own fewer dishes, you will be forced to wash them more often. This idea was so simple and made complete and total sense to me.
If I owned less, then I would have less to put away.
I decided to give it a try. I took ⅓ of my cups, bowls, and dishes and packed them into a box. I then put that box in the basement just in case I needed them.
The funny thing is, I never did. Not once. And even better was how well this habit worked.
If I wanted to be sure I had enough dishes for each day I needed to load and run my dishwasher each night. This forced me to clean my kitchen after every dinnertime meal. (gasp) Something I never did before.
FYI – Most messy people are professional procrastinators and have the ability to put off chores until they are long past their due date. How do I know this? I am one myself, and it is something I struggle with daily.
Another thing I did was time myself to see how long this chore took me to complete. This was another eye-opening experiment. What I thought was 45 minutes was actually less than 10.
Yes, it took less than 10 minutes to unload and reload my dishwasher and transform the look of my kitchen sink.
Give it a try and see. Nothing gives the appearance of a clutter-free home like an empty kitchen sink.
Idea #3. Stop COUNTER Clutter
Ugh, clutter. One word that can cover so so much, especially when it comes to our kitchen counters.
It can be trash, junk, paper, clothes, dishes, toys, tools, and just about anything else that is lying out in the open instead of put away in a drawer or cabinet.
Back in my seriously bad messy days, an open surface was just calling for me to use it. To toss my bag or that pile of books in my arms. To sort the day’s mail or to work on a project. To lay down my phone charger or toss my empty water bottle.
It was so much easier for me (or so I thought) to drop the stuff in my arms rather than put each item away. I would get to it later, I would say to myself, but later simply got buried under more things until that open surface spilled out onto the chairs and finally the floor down below.
The problem was, putting things away after I finished using them was just not going to happen for me. It goes against my messy nature, and no matter how hard I try, I still find myself tossing the scissors on the kitchen table instead of putting them in the drawer where I found them.
I needed a shortcut to make this work for my messy self. A way to at least get the clutter contained and together in one place so I could put those things away all in one shot later.
That is when I created the term “drop basket.” This was my super simple fix to my extremely annoying habit.
How does a drop basket work to stop clutter?
In each of my main rooms, I have a basket. One where I can toss in things when I am finished using them. No matter what it is, if I just don’t want to take the time to put it away, I can simply put it into the closest drop basket.
At the end of the day, I try to empty each basket, putting things away all in one shot. This is what I like to call a room reset, and it has completely transformed my entire home.
Believe it or not, this one tip was a complete game-changer for me.
By creating a shortcut, I could keep not only my kitchen table mess-free but just about every open surface in my home.
The best part was that lost items no longer haunted me like they used to. If I needed something and could not find it, my first place to look was always in my drop baskets. And that was usually where that item would be found, saving me so much time and frustration—another win-win for this simple tip.
Idea #4. Laundry
If you are a messy person, then you probably hate to do laundry just because it is something that always needs to be done.
Every single day.
To help, I needed to come up with a shortcut. A way to make things a bit easier so I wouldn’t postpone it to the point that my kids were looking for socks on their bedroom floor, not caring if they matched or not.
Using the drop basket idea, I decided to put a clothes basket in each of my kid’s rooms. This not only kept them from tossing dirty clothes right where they took them off, but it also helped me to grab things more quickly without having to scavenger hunt each bedroom looking for missing soccer uniforms or cub scout ties.
The best part was, once I put those dirty clothes baskets in each bedroom, I literally cut my laundry time in half. I guess I never realized that most of my laundry chore was spent in the gathering phase.
More Laundry Hacks:
Now that all the dirty clothes were in baskets, I could just grab and go saving me quite a bit of time and frustration.
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Idea #5. Every Day Clutter
Life is messy; I totally get it. And there are no tips to fix any of that. But there are things you can do to erase the messiness of the day, so you are not slapped in the face with it when you wake up in the morning.
I like to call this a Room Reset.
And this one tip has turned my home from a hot mess to a tidy space overnight.
What is a room reset?
A room reset is taking time at the end of the day to reset a room to its neat state. To neaten things up so you are greeted with a tidier space in the morning. Now, I am not talking a scrub and polish every night before bed. I am just talking about the clutter. The stuff that is lying all around the room.
And the best part is I have a way to make the room reset take just a few minutes every time you do it.
How to do a room reset:
- Walk the room and put any items away that belong in this space.
- Take a sturdy laundry basket and walk your room again, gathering up any stuff you see that needs to be put away in another room. This would include dishes, food, clothes, papers, and toys.
- Finally, walk your home basket in hand, and put the items into the room where they belong.
- Room reset, done!
Remember, do not worry about old clutter; just the things that need to be put away—all the way away. Your goal is to reset the room to how it was when you started.
Sure it won’t fix the full clutter of that room, but it will keep it from getting any worse. This way, you can begin to work on the clutter, knowing no matter what the day brings, you will keep it from getting any messier than it is now.
There is nothing wrong with being a messy person; I am still messy at heart. I just needed to find a way to make it easier for me to be neat too.
With these simple tips, you can still be messy without your entire home being cluttered and disorganized. Keep it simple, remove the excess, set up shortcuts, and relax. You got this.
Now that you know how to have a clutter-free home let’s get you ready to tackle your first room by setting up a Decluttering KIT. This simple basket will contain all the tools you need to declutter and organize a room, making it easy to start when you are motivated to get busy!
Read How to Set Up a Declutter Kit and take another step closer to an organized home.
Baby steps can do amazing things when you are working to create a home that is less messy and more organized. These clutter-free home ideas are meant to do just that. Get you a few steps closer to a home you love.
