How to Declutter in 4 Easy Steps

1. The cluttered mess now

I'm going to show you the mess that my den is right now because I've kind of started in here. I've sold furniture, and the stuff in it just sits out. So it's kind of a giant hot mess in here right now.

We're going to get a five by ten storage, and we're only getting something that large because I have family antiques we want to store. We've already sold our shoe cubbies. So, our shoe baskets are just lined up along the wall. And then there is the mess.

I've been collecting these donation boxes from my neighbors, and the boxes have just made a mess. I sold our kid's art table, which had a whole bunch of toy storage in it as well. So I've got to get all that stuff cleared out because this will be where my RV pile will go.

Two chairs are going into the RV. I've got to recover them, but they're going into the RV so they can stay in the RV pile. I just need to go ahead and get this area kind of cleaned out.

I want to do this without making a monumental mess that I must also clean up later.

2. Trash, donate, storage

So I have my black trash bags ready to go, my donation box ready to go, and then I'm packing for storage. And I decided to pack them in clear containers.

That way, we can completely see what's in our storage unit instead of having to open boxes just in case we have to hunt for things.

To make sure that we don't keep too much, I am measuring just shy of five feet by 10 feet on our living room floor. That way, I know how much space we will have in the storage unit.

I keep a notebook for Christmas, and I'll just put the person's name at the top and their budget at the top, and I write down everything I buy them that year for that. And I keep it in a notebook, and I have multiple years. So this goes all the way back to 2008, and then I ran out of space, so I had to get another book, but I don't need to keep this one. Knowing what I bought people in years past is useful, but I don't need ten years' worth.

3. Sentimental decluttering

So I'm about to get to a section that is going to be kind of hard for me, which is my secretary, that I have a lot of things that are sentimental in there.

I made myself two signs. Do I love it enough to pay for storage for two years to keep it? Do I love it enough to clutter up my RV with it?

So I'm going to put these two signs in front of me, and so when I get to the hard stuff that's going to be right behind me, I'm also going to remind myself, can I replace it when we are out of the RV for less than two years storage cost?

4. The progress

So I've made a lot of progress, but I'm starting to not feel very well. So I'm going to take a break and try to rest for a little bit before I tackle the secretary. I really want to finish that today because that would finish up this room but I'm trying very hard not to put myself into a flare.

Later on, I was feeling better. So let me show you what I got done. I've got a huge donation pile. Here's my tape for the things we will keep in storage. Now, these are our shoe buckets. I just had to move those over there, so ignore those.

This is my keep pile from everything from today, and you can see this is all cleared off except for our RV, where we still are stuffing money in here and there for things. My kitchen's a mess. I went to the grocery store today. We're still using my diffuser and oils, and this is our little fruit bucket, so we're still using that.

I moved all the boxes over here, so they're kind of out of the way, and then, of course, we're still using our shoe buckets. But this is my donation pile and my trash pile. Look, it's huge. It's huge. This is the picture that Maxi broke. I pulled the picture out, and I'm donating the frame.

And this is our RV pile. So these two are going into the RV. Of course, the guitars are going in the RV, and then this is just a small pile of keep things that are kind of a mishmash of the girls. Overall, I'm super excited. This is pretty huge.

How to declutter my den

As I worked through how to declutter my den, I hope I gave you ideas for decluttering yours. What do you struggle with when it comes to decluttering? Comment below to share your thoughts.