To make your new home clutter-free, you need strategies that are convenient to incorporate into your daily routine. Let’s look attentively at a few strategies that can thus be just what you need to avoid clutter in your new home.
1. Identify Trouble Spots
The majority of the clutter in homes falls into just a few basic categories. The most prevailing trouble areas for clutter are things lying around that don’t obviously have a place, piled-up magazines or junk mail, or “aspirational” items (items you buy to acquire a skill or create a project but then never use). But certainly, when you know where your clutter comes from, you can form a targeted strategy to keep it from overwhelming you.
2. Just Say No
One of the best approaches to prevent clutter from building up is to never bring it home. This practice may call you to take a hard look at your shopping habits and establish various changes. For example, avoid bringing home free or promotional items you’ll clearly never use. This is also the case for household items. If you already have something, don’t buy another.
Just prior to buying anything new, think closely about how it may add to the clutter in your home. It is similarly a great idea to determine how often you will use something new. If it still seems worth having, try to replace something you already have to keep away from clearly just adding more stuff you’ll need to store.
3. Create a Charity Box
Another sufficient strategy to keep clutter out of the house is to set up a box for items you plan to donate. As you go through your things, try to look into how long you’ve had certain items and how likely it is that you’ll use them again. If you haven’t touched the item in over a year, it’s likely that you won’t be using it again. Instead of letting it rest and stack dust, take into account giving it to charity.
4. Use the One-In, One-Out Rule
A perfect strategy for things such as clothes, books, and toys is the one-in, one-out rule. In a few words, the whole idea is to replace items you already have rather than adding to your possessions. Take one example, once you get a new item of clothing, donate one that you perhaps haven’t been wearing much, if at all. By doing so, you keep the overall amount of stuff in your house to a manageable minimum.
5. Focus on Experiences, Not Things
Another common trouble area for clutter involves gifts. Articles that we receive as gifts can be challenging to forego for sentimental reasons. In contrast to letting items with sentimental value pile up, try to give and request gifts that bring about experiences rather than things. For example, try asking for (and giving) movie tickets, restaurant gift cards, or other items. Instead of clutter, you can collect good memories of times spent doing things with your favorite people.
Keeping your home free of clutter can be a challenge, but certainly, applying these and other strategies can be of great value toward your goal. But, however, if your current rental house is just too small to store all of your things, it may be time to move to a bigger one. If you are in the market for a new Allen rental home, Real Property Management Focus has what you need! Check out our online listings for more information.