Decluttering tips from professional organizers

This spring, you’re likely to read about how to “deep clean” your finances or “tidy up” your portfolio.

But doing actual spring cleaning is a good financial move in and of itself.

After all, how many times have you lost a bill in pile of papers that built up on your desk? Or had to replace something you lost only to stumble across it later? Or missed a bus and had to call an Uber because you couldn’t find your keys?

“When people declutter and create some order in the home, it saves time, it saves money, it saves stress,” says Lori Reese, a professional organizer and owner of Consider It Done in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Here are three tips from organizing pros to help you tackle your spring decluttering project. If you don’t do it for the sake of tidiness, do it for your wallet.

1. Start small

You may want to declutter the whole house — but facing down a huge task can lead to analysis paralysis, organizing pros say.

“It’s actually easier to take small bites over a long period of time, instead of delay, delay, delay, and trying to do it all in one weekend,” says Mindy Godding, a certified professional organizer and owner of Abundance Organizing in Richmond, Virginia.

Godding recommends starting with small, low-stakes places, “for example, the medicine cabinet, underneath the bathroom sink, the linen closet, the entryway closet, the junk drawer, the pantry — places where it’s going to be a lot easier to make those decisions.”

Once you get rolling, prioritize tackling the places where clutter interferes most with your routine.

“Which area of the house is making you most crazy right now?” Gayle Goddard, a CPO and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, says she asks clients. “Which irritates you most? What gets in the way of your daily life? I ask people to find that point of pain, because that’s what needs to be cleared.”

Starting where there might be sentimental value attached, on the other hand, is sure to slow up your process, the pros say. “You don’t want to go to your photo collection right out of the gate,” says Godding. “That’s a recipe for disaster.”

2. Discard with purpose

You may know that you need to declutter a certain space, but are unsure how to choose what to get rid of. Start by taking stock of what that space is for.

Take your bedroom closet, for example.

“Obviously, that’s for storing clothes and accessories. It’s where I need to get prepared for my day,” says Godding. “So right off the bat, based on that definition, I’m going to be examining that space for anything that doesn’t fit that definition.”

That means the box of knickknacks you shoved on a shelf or the pile of tote bags you have on the floor need to find a new home, she says.

From there, ask yourself how the things in your home fit into your life. If you own something because you love it, or because it serves a vital purpose in your everyday life, hang on to it. If you examine your reason for owning something and it’s because you feel too guilty to throw it out or are tied up with how it made you feel in the past, it may be time to let it go.

“When you get rid of things that are no longer relevant in your life, it opens up the space for new things,” says Reese. “You want to look to the future and embrace where you are now. “

3. Create a system to stay on track

Phew. You donated a bag of clothes and your bathroom counter is finally clear. Now, how do you avoid ending up right back where you started in a couple of months?

You’ll have to create systems that keep you from letting the same things pile up, organizing experts say.

One useful tip is to think about your spaces as finite containers.

“A closet is a container — a finite one. You can’t make the walls get bigger,” says Goddard. “If you want the density to stay the same, where it’s easy to hang up clothes and easy to find what you want, then when you add something you have to take something out at the same time.”

You can think of a space like the junk drawer the same way. Don’t wait until it’s overflowing to clean it out.

“When you start to outstrip your container, that’s your mental trigger that it’s time to go in there, pull all the contents out and find out what needs to stay and what can go,” says Goddard.

One way to keep clutter from building up on a regular basis: give it a place to go. Godding sets aside a basket for incoming mail and papers. Once a week, she goes through the basket and takes the appropriate action while watching her favorite Sunday morning TV show.

“The trick is to add that action to a habit, so that you’re going to stick to that routine,” she says.

Another solution Godding says has been “life-changing” for clients is to set aside space in the home for a bin or a bag for the specific purpose of regular decluttering.

“Every time you’re going about your regular routine, and you get that item where you’re like, ‘I don’t really think I need this anymore,’ instead of just putting it back where it was, and waiting until the big clean out, walk over to your spot and put it in the bag or bin,” she says. “Then the rule is when that bag or bin gets full, you just drive it to your favorite charitable organization.”