Conquering Declutter 365
TL;DR;
Maybe the title is a bit overboard, but considering how many times I’ve started and failed to declutter my home using the year-long program called “Declutter 365”, I’m feeling amazing about beating my previous tries!
Several years ago, I stumbled upon a decluttering program that I knew I had to try. I had been looking for a way to finally declutter my home for good, and I needed a plan. I knew I could just “declutter for 15 minutes a day” or “declutter the most noticeable spots first” or “just go by category and toss what doesn’t spark joy”, but none of those ways were working. I was on the search for a plan that would help me declutter my home, my systems, and my whole life.
Then I found Declutter 365. This decluttering program is hosted by the Get Organized website. Once you sign up for the (free) program, you are provided with monthly calendars that have daily missions for decluttering that eventually works you through your whole home. These daily missions are meant to only take about 15 minutes to do (although some may take longer depending on your situation) and will eventually hit every area and system you have.
This is one of my favorite things about the program; it’s not just about decluttering your home. You also work on systems such as your laundry schedule and your morning and evening routines. Also, you work on creating a home binder to manage everything you have going on. The system walks you through in small steps getting every part of your life organized and manageable.
Unfortunately, I have never been able to complete this program fully. Every year I seem to make it farther and farther in to the calendar until I start skipping and missing days. Last year I made it until February 3rd and then I stopped printing and marking off items. I still followed the daily emails and sporadically completed missions, but I have always wanted to fully complete the program. I don’t require that I finish a task on that day, but I do make it my goal to finish all seven tasks in the week at some point. Sometimes this means I’m doing all seven on a Saturday, but I get them done!
This year, I am still going strong. We are mid-February and I marked off all of my tasks on the calendar. Go me!
The Declutter 365 “program” is hosted on the home management website called Home Storage Solutions. This website has a TON of good information. Some of the information on the site includes:
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How to clean different areas
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How to handle difficult cleaning situations
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Before and afters from members that have completed missions
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Free downloads of checklists, routines, and information pages
The site is a little dated and very busy, which can make it difficult to read and hard to find things. Also, there are a lot of ads on the site, which can get in the way of reading the important information and can be misleading. However, once you get used to finding and reviewing the articles, there is just so much good detail.
The Declutter 365 program is a calendar of 15 minute daily missions. Some of the missions may take longer than 15 minutes depending on your home, but really, if you can spend at least 15 minutes, you will get the benefits of the program. There is a mission for most days of the week with Monday’s mission usually being an article to read and prep work.
For example, in January the main focus was on the kitchen. The whole month was spent tackling clutter in each of your drawers, pots and pans, pantry, spices and even recipe organizing. Usually I am overwhelmed when it comes to decluttering. However, with these short missions, I find myself talking myself into getting them done instead of putting them off. One of the daily missions was to clean out your spices, get rid of anything expired and to organize what is left. This mission fell on a Friday night where we were all at home just relaxing as a family. We had 10 minutes until our dinner was finished and I could have easily sat down and waited for dinner.
Instead, I used the 5-4-3-2-1 from the 5 Second Rule (more to come on that in my next post), and I got up and started purging. Since I had made it at least as far as my spices last year, there wasn’t much to do. I tossed a few, add them to my grocery list, and wiped down the shelf. All of it was completed before dinner was ready, and I felt great for crossing it off the list.
I’m halfway into February and I’ve purged spices, bakeware, my pantry, my fridge, recipes and so much more. I’m excited to see this streak continue, and using blog posts to check in on my progress is actually keeping me motivated to stay on track. Maybe that’s the secret sauce for this year.
I would love to declutter every area of my whole house this year and then just go into maintenance mode for the years to follow. I know it’s going to take some time, but I feel like it’s manageable to do daily missions that are only around 15 minutes per day. If I need to, I can batch them all up on a Saturday or even a Sunday to get them done ahead of time. I’ll keep posting on my progress. I even have “Declutter 365” as a tactic in my 12 Week Year tracker so that I can earn points for the goal of Keeping My House Always Company Ready.
What about you? Are you doing an decluttering projects this year? Do you do well with daily challenges or prefer to tackle whatever is calling your attention the most? Please let me know below, I’d love to hear from you.
