Check Out My Impressive Decluttering Results 5 Years On

We are nearing the five year anniversary of our minimalist journey, and I believe this is a perfect time to look back, appreciate our decluttering results and share how we got here.

I have not always been this organized and tidy, so I want to share the hard work behind it. I hope that this will help you decide how to best declutter your own home, and perhaps inspire you to start now.

To make my initial decluttering easier and more fun, I used a series of games and challenges. I chose December as the month to start, since our family would typically be bringing in a lot of items into our home and I really wanted to try and flip the script.

Four week declutter challenge

While I was decorating for Christmas that year I did a KonMari declutter of all the decorations.

The method suggests bringing all the items in one category to a centralized location so that you can clearly see how much of that type of thing that you have.

This worked great for me, as it let me see the abundance of decorations we had and pick the special ones over the rest.

Speed declutter

In the next challenge I tried, I was tasked with trying to find 60 items in 60 minutes. This meant going from room to room very quickly and looking for things to put in the basket, so I did not have to think too much or bring everything to one location.

This challenge would be much more difficult today, since there aren’t many obvious choices anymore, but back then we had so many items we were not using regularly that it was easy to pick them out. In addition, we were just nearing the end of the baby stage, so things like bibs and baby carriers went straight into the basket.

One room deep clean declutter

For the one room challenge, I decided to focus on the entryway of our rental farmhouse. The idea is to do a thorough cleaning and organizing of one room, and you will naturally find things that don't need to be there.

During my deep clean, I came across extra hats and gloves, toiletries, and some decor items. Looking back, this challenge really helped me to see the benefit of eliminating that visual clutter, because the before and after in this room was pretty striking, and it felt so much more fresh and open.

It made me happy to see this space cleared off, and I wanted to keep it that way going forward.

Capsule wardrobe

The last December challenge was the one I was dreading the most – creating a capsule wardrobe. Despite not being a fashion person, I own a surprising amount of clothes.

I went through every item and divided them into three piles: definite yes, definite no, and need some more time to decide. I remember feeling embarrassed by how much I had to get rid of after not even wearing it once.

As I decided to keep a piece of clothing, I put it on a hanger. I was committed to only keeping 50 items that I could mix and match, and this made me more thoughtful in the process. The capsule wardrobe declutter was a success for me, so it inspired my husband to go through his closet, too.

These four challenges were instrumental in getting a kickstart on understanding what it means to be more minimal, so if you need a boost to declutter your home, I highly recommend these.

After December I moved on to the other categories, such as the linen closet, my jewelry collection, and a huge pile of magazines. The scale of the tasks still surprises me looking back, but what helped me a lot was taking it one room or one category or one challenge at a time.

Linen closet

The linen closet was packed with towels, blankets, and random pillows, with no order or logic whatsoever. I decluttered so much, and I do not regret a single thing.

The linen closet was where I tried the container method for the first time. Setting boundaries for the items in my space became a really helpful technique that I've carried with me going forward.

Jewelry

Decluttering my jewelry was probably the easiest category for me. I had quite a lot, but I rarely ever wore them; most of them I had purchased for a specific outfit or got as a gift. I freed up an entire cabinet, and whatever was left went in two beautiful little bags and my grandma’s jewelry box, all of which I could easily fit into my sock drawer.

Kid items

We had an insane amount of kids’ clothing – so much more than they could possibly wear within a week. We were always getting hand-me-downs from friends and family, but I found myself dressing the kids in the same things over and over anyway.

While decluttering, I made the decision that I would no longer be taking in these hand-me-downs and instead just encourage those people to donate them to a thrift store or to pass them along to someone else.

Toys were a similar story. The family room space was filled with them, and just like with clothes, the kids tended to grab for the same ones again and again, so the huge selection did not make sense. Even though I had a hard time throwing these out because of the money spent on them, our house was so much cleaner and nicer for it.

Decluttering all of these areas, as well as the kitchen and storage closet, took us around a year, and we had a garage sale where we made about $2000 on the items we did not want anymore.

Looking back, however, it was kind of a hassle, so it would make more sense to just declutter in smaller batches and not hold on to these things for long periods of time

Decluttering results

Five years in, we still have to put in some effort to declutter our house, but it is never that overwhelming anymore.

Remember: whether you declutter or not, that time will pass, so it is better to have used it well. Therefore, my final tip is just start now, and it will all be so worth it.

Are you a minimalist as well? What tips to declutter your home did you find most useful on your journey? Leave a comment!