Juliana Yates - Decluttering Made Easy: How to Declutter Your Home on a Dime

Decluttering Made Easy: How to Declutter Your House on a Dime

By Juliana Yates

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I am Juliana Yates, and years ago I became fed up with the clutter in my household. Between children, pets, myself, and my partner, there was a never ending flow of stuff flowing into, but not out of my house. That is NOT a sustainable situation, so I finally decided to do something about it. Decluttering not only makes your house look better, but it also clears your mind. When you live in a cluttered space, your mind cannot help but be cluttered as well.

Of course, I did not have the money to hire a professional organizer for my household, so I had to figure out how to declutter on a dime. There is never a bad time to save money, but today's economic times make frugality something families and individuals of all situations are striving to achieve. With pay cuts, job losses, and the ever-rising prices of things like milk, meat, and produce, saving money throughout the home helps to maintain a better quality of life even in hard economic times. One way you can enhance that quality of life and save money is through decluttering and organizing your home.

I am sharing my very best decluttering tips, tricks, how-tos, and what-not-to-dos in this eBook. Read it today, start decluttering, and enjoy a happier, less stressful lifestyle almost immediately. You will be happy that you took the time to read my book and declutter your home and life!

Y ou may not realize how much your stuff controls your life. Disorganization and clutter can make it hard to find things you want, get in the way of the maintenance of your home, and cause additional stress in your life. Among the many ways that too much or unorganized stuff can cost you time and money include:

• Making you late for work or other commitments because you can't find keys, articles of clothing, or materials necessary for your job or school.
• Causing you to spend additional funds to purchase duplicate items that you can't locate at home.
• Increasing grocery bills unnecessarily because you don't have a good understanding of what is in your pantry.
• Increasing maintenance or repair costs due to the fact that unorganized items are more likely to suffer damage.

Removing clutter reduces the stress of stuff, allows you to open your home to friends and family at any time without feeling like you need to conduct over-the-top spring cleaning, and keeps your belongings safe and secure.

M any times people avoid decluttering and organizing their homes because they feel like they don't have the time or money to spend on the endeavor. If you pass through the organizational aisle of any home improvement or department store, you can see why people think it will be an expensive undertaking. A small specialty shelf in a discount department store can run $50 and the same type of item can cost over $200 in a home dcor boutique.

The good news is, you don't have to limit yourself to these types of items. By employing some of the tips and tricks I outline in the following chapters throughout your home, you can cut organizational costs by over 75 percent while maintaining a beautiful and uncluttered area that you can still live in.

Decluttering to Help Save or Make Money

One of the aspects of decluttering you may find is that it can help you save or even make money. For example, you can gather up old items that are simply sitting around in the basement, attic, or any other room, and sell them on the eBay auction site, where avid buyers of all sorts of items search daily. Additionally, you can make it easier with less worry about shipping by selling locally in a community yard sale, your own garage sale, or by placing a listing on the Craigslist site.

To place ads on eBay, you'll need to sign up for a membership. There are also fees involved based on the price you list your item at to start with, whether or not you offer a "Buy it Now" price, and based on your final sales price.

With Craigslist, there normally is not a fee involved, but you will need to sign up for a free account to create ads. You can list your items in a few local towns or cities you are in or nearby for maximum exposure. Always be careful about the people you arrange to meet on Craigslist. Use common sense safety measures with people you do not know.

With both eBay and Craigslist, the key will be writing great descriptions and including at least a few pictures of the item so buyers will know exactly what they are getting. Doing these simple things could mean earning some great extra money for those items you have just laying around.

The other aspect to think about is donating items to a local church, community center, or places such as the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The way this helps save money is because you can use the donation as a tax deduction, which may mean paying less on your income tax return, or possibly getting more back!

It's important to always keep these ideas in mind when you're considering just "throwing stuff away." Remember the popular phrase, "One person's trash, is another's treasure!"

B efore we take a look at things you should do to organize your home on a budget, let's look at five of the most common mistakes people make when they declutter their home. These mistakes can make the process more expensive or harder than necessary and can dishearten a family or individual so that they give up the task completely.

1. Don't purchase storage items before you declutter the area. Many people buy shelves, bins, and boxes without understanding what they have or what they want to do with their stuff. After they get rid of items or come up with a plan for storing things, they realize that they don't have the right tools for the job. This results in an extra trip to the store which wastes both time and money. Instead, follow the steps for decluttering provided in this eBook before you purchase any storage options.
2. Don't try to get everything done in a single day. Depending on the size of your home and how much clutter you have, organization could take several weeks. Break the job into a single room, closet, or area. You can complete a small room in several hours, giving yourself a sense of accomplishment and allowing a day or two of rest before you start another project. Just make sure you aren't simply moving clutter from one room to another, as that will create a perpetual cycle.
3. Don't move from an area before you are done. Some people work several areas at a time or move onto the living room when they aren't done with the kitchen pantry. Leaving the job undone results in items sitting for days, weeks or months, adding to the clutter. You will find things are harder to find when you leave them half organized. Leaving items in an unfinished state also encourages you simply to move them to another area to get them out of the way. If you cannot complete an area in the time you have, then come back to that area next time you are working on decluttering.