Decluttering Tips with a Young Family

Decluttering Tips with a Young Family

Many of us have been there. Kitchen cabinets are loaded with meaningless stuff. Your front closet is filled with winter jackets that you haven’t worn in 10 years. Your medicine cabinet is full of expired pharmacy items, and the top drawer in your dresser is filled with socks and underwear with more than one hole in them. We somehow find a way to blame storage space instead of blaming ourselves for having too much stuff.

I am a proud father of two beautiful kids. There are days I come home from my job at Pacific Homes, walk in the door and roll my ankle as I step on my daughter’s doll, Abigail. I continue to walk into the kitchen and see colored crayons on our freshly painted white kitchen cabinets. It looks like a bomb went off inside our home.

My wife Annamieke and I often discuss how we can improve the organization and clutter in our home. This is a very important expedition, especially with a young toddler running around generating messes faster than this winter’s torrential downpouring rain on Vancouver Island.

Here are our 5 tips that we have started using when decluttering with a young family.

1. Do we have multiples of the same thing?

If we say yes, it is time to check it out. There really is no point to having 10 spatulas in the kitchen. This is the kind of thing that creates useless clutter.

2. Can we find a place for it?

Instead of struggling to stuff recently cleaned laundry into our Walk-in-Closet, it may be time to take out our clothing items, sort through them and ask ourselves if we truly love them. This same concept can be done in multiple rooms in your house.

3. Give away one item each day.

You can see quite a transformation over the course of the year by simply reducing one day at a time. Do you really need a 2^nd or 3^rd toothbrush from your last dentist visit?

4. Make a To Do List.

My wife loves her lists; Me, not so much! However, creating the list of places and areas in your home to de-clutter is a very effective way to transform your space.

5. The 3 Box Method.

As we set on our journey to minimalism, we have found this technique works very well for big areas of the home such as a garage. As you set up to declutter, bring 3 boxes to the middle of the room and label them: Give Away, Keep, & Trash. Consider each time individually and make sure no items are passed over.

Clutter and starting the process of decluttering can feel overwhelming, especially when you have young kids. I strongly believe that clutter can cause stress and chaos, not just in our homes, but also in our mind space. Create a home that is tidy, clean, and refreshing, and a space that you can relax and rejuvenate in. That is until the next day when your toddler makes a huge mess of it. Happy decluttering!