20 First-Step Decluttering Ideas

[Music] here are 20 first step decluttering ideas to help you get started number one declutter the inside of your car that's a great first step because quite often i mean you can't have too much of a horde in your car although there are some people we certainly see yeah and we'll jokingly see like it's full the whole back seat is full and the passenger seat is full and and it's like oh wow like there's a whole it feels like they've brought their whole house with them right like they're living out of their car yeah but it'd be way harder to live out of a car without much stuff in it right and so but the average person just has a bunch of extra stuff that we're keeping in there why just in case and so starting with the car oh it's so freeing when you declutter your car we don't have any excess in your car so i totally agree with joshua becker and what he's saying here in this article your car is a great place to start yeah number two clear off your bathroom counter man flat surfaces this is where clutter often accumulates because it's so easy here i'll just set this here for a moment yeah it's so enticing oh yes oh look at that all that wide open space on the bathroom counter and then all before we know it's makeup it's lotions it's creams it's cleansers it's soap it's toothpaste all of these things that are just piled up there now the key isn't to simply pile it all into a drawer yeah but clear it off letting go of the things that you're not using anymore and then yes storing the things that you do use regularly now you can use our 90 90 rule for that you can download all of our rules in the minimalist rule book by the way the minimalists.com rulebook 16 rules for living with less we have the justin case rule now we have the 90 90 rule have i used in the last 90 days if not will i use it in the next 90 days that's a great rule especially for your bathroom counter oh yeah it makes me think about uh like my shower before i really started doing the whole minimalist thing i just you know you try a product it kind of works you know a face wash or a shampoo or conditioner and like it sits in the shower and then you're like okay that didn't work too well i'm gonna go get something else but you still leave the one that didn't work in the shower just in case just in case and it's funny because uh yeah like i really simplified you know the things that were my now it's like soap shampoo conditioner like that's it one soap one shampoo one conditioner and uh when mariah and i moved in together um we uh yeah we like just simplified it to where um yeah she was like wow this is so much easier to like take a shower without worrying about knocking over stuff i'm like yeah i know right i i so much prefer that when you're able to combine things obviously if you're living with someone they're going to have things that work well for them right you're going to have and so brian and i have completely different face tone so we use different lipsticks yes and so what's nice though is you can do this together you can clear the counter together because the thing to not do is like i'll just throw away all of mariah's stuff here look half of the stuff's already gone right yeah so doing it together allows you to grab their buy-in as well the third thing on this list from joshua becker is remove 10 items from your wardrobe i call this shopping for clothes in your closet or it's like reverse shopping well because here's what happens is like we caught off and hold on to things like i i'm wearing that i bought it because it looked good on a mannequin but i know like i try it on and it's a little too big or a little too small a little too awkward or a little too orange and i'm holding on to this thing for some hypothetical use in the future and so i'll try it on oh yeah you know what i don't like this i don't think i would buy it and if that was a key oh i don't think i'd buy this that's the sign that i want to let it go yeah so would i re-buy this thing in my closet if the answer is no let it go ooh that rhyme danny number four declutter the visible areas of your entertainment center or just get rid of your entertainment center right get rid of your entertainment entertainment there was this 2007. dude that is funny man i can't think of the last time i even let yeah i've seen an entertainment center i'm just kidding i have a credenza which is a fancy way of saying i mean you you've been to my house a few times yeah for sure i do credenza oh yeah yeah yeah we're like we're the bowls sitting on top of and stuff yeah yeah so i guess that's my entertainment center there's some books on top of it there's a piece of art on top of it there's a few va vases is it vaz is 14 inches or higher i don't know depends on how pretentious you are really well then they're definitely bosses number five i think this is an important one clear off your nightstand nightstand clutter oh yeah is there it's like it's so there's a feng shui element to this right dude but i used to use a cajon the cajon that you gave me i used to use that as my nightstand which is like a drum that you sit on right yeah it's like a box basically yeah drum box you could think of it uh so we we had mismatching um night stands so we just happened to like be driving by there was a garage sale like saw the nightstands out of the corner of my eye i was like oh like we've been looking for some nightstand so we got them but they have drawers in them and now it's like now i now i just have extra storage for things i mean i didn't i don't have them all filled up but i just noticed myself like i'll just throw that in the nice thing i'm just like i now have you know uh nightstand junk drawers basically you wouldn't buy at two accidental junk drawers right yeah so yes you can clear the nightstand but don't simply clear it into the drawer by clearing it it's selling donating recycling trashing etc i've been doing it wrong number six walk around your home and fill one box with items to donate we'll do this with ella quite frequently and because she'll have toys that she's no longer finding value in she lets them go and she understands by letting them go she's actually making room for new toys yeah and if she understands that as a kid we can understand that as adults as well or we're also making room for more experiences more space more peace more calm and so one donation box and having the whole family do it you can do it in five minutes and all of a sudden you're getting started on the letting go dude i went and visited uh mariah and i went and visited uh bexanella when we were in missoula just a couple weeks ago and uh ella wanted to play operation and half of the pieces were missing and it was driving me crazy but she really had a good time and i learned a lesson about about um you know not being ocd when it comes to playing operation well let's read a few more of these 20 and we'll put a link to the article in the show notes on patreon here all right number six we already did that number seven walk around your home and fill one bag for trash pickup this is the unfortunate truth we are holding on to a bunch of trash in our homes yeah now if it can be recycled great but as we know we're not that efficient with recycling nine percent of the plastic bottles that we recycle actually get recycled and the same is true with many of our things and so we feel bad so what do we do we cling to it now it's making us miserable and it's not getting recycled yeah and so yes throwing it away is a last resort but sometimes we have to resort to that last resort when we have no other options so we can move on it's in our lives it's interesting i remember we went to a this was in new york we were filming someone who was like a minimalist but they were also zero waste and they were talking about how they had like this one tub of like uh you know bad light bulbs or like stuff they didn't know how to get rid of yeah so they just like held on to it and uh yeah i just i think i was just like encouraging this person like hey sometimes you have to throw some things away it's okay and yeah by the way bravo for living the life you live right but it's either trash in your closet or trash in the landfill and at least in the landfill it would decompose faster than sitting in your closet that's right yeah unless you misunderstand compost piles like me i just dropped an apple on the floor three minutes ago yeah that was uh it's already gone so like all right so yeah so josh um you know back in back in the day like year i don't know in our mid-20s uh you know there would be like a gum wrapper and and josh would like fling it and i'm like dude what are you doing like you can't litter and he's like i'm starting a compost pile but then it became a joke like on tour yeah obviously i don't do any of that stuff now no yeah we would be on tour and like we'd be on an elevator i'd finish eating an apple i just throw it on the floor in the elevator what are you doing i'll just calm down don't worry about helping the environment and by the way it was never more than a gum wrapper like you were not you were not a litter bug at all it was just like a little yeah anyway number eight remove old or expired food from your pantry and fridge we did a whole episode on expired items you can go back and listen to that but i was surprised by and even as a minimalist how many expired items now not all expired items are actually expired so go back and listen to that whole episode we talk about the nuances there and we read some definitions that i think are pretty important to understanding what is truly expired and what is marketing hype number nine declutter old or unused coats and items from your coat closet never [Laughter] you little jacket you my wife calls me a jacket so i have six jackets and it's the one area that i am not super minimalist although i wear them all the time so in one regard you would say okay you get value from those they all fall within the 90-90 rule for me the seasonality rule right and i've certainly worn all of them and anytime where i don't wear them i promptly let go of them yeah but could i get by with one jacket or one jacket one coat yeah for sure but i like having that uh some variety on the top layer because i'm wearing the same shirt and pants almost every single day basically yeah number ten clear off the top of your refrigerator and this is especially helpful for really tall people like me i'm of the height where i see i go to everyone's house and i see everything that's on top of their fridge and it's it's always full of dust and some it always drives me crazy at my house when it's full of dust other people's houses they don't drive me crazy but i i see it and i'm like oh they don't that's funny like just if you're two or three inches shorter than me right you don't see the dust on top of the the fridge and quite often people will pile other things on top of their fridge as well i don't know why but like i remember growing up my mom had it was like all these cookbooks that she'd never used i was like oh there's cookbooks on top of the fridge yeah and dust cookbook is collecting dust yeah right ooh there's like a a blog post titled there or something let's see if we can do a lightning round with the last 10. recycle old magazines or newspapers that are left piled up yes guess what you are not going to go back and read the third quarter details magazine from 2012 yeah if you need time to let it go yeah and if you need to it's online yes indeed yeah number 12 declutter your underwear and or sock drawer i think he means underwear drawer or sock drawer but you can declutter your underwear too yeah go commando it's the only way to be a real minimalist number 13 clear five items from your kitchen counter clear all the items from your kitchen counter we just did an episode about kitchen clutter with max lugavir i think you'll enjoy that episode you can go back and listen to the entire kitchen clutter episode number 14 remove excess towels and linens from your linen closet that reminds me of when i was dealing with my mom's stuff it looked like someone was running a hotel out of her linen closet with all the mismatched bath towels and dish towels and beach towels and bed sheets and blankets and quilts she had a lot of stuff in that closet some of which she used yeah you could tell because it was the stuff that was reused over and over again that was on top and all the other things that smelled a bit musty underneath if it smells musty maybe that's a sign that you can let it go number 15 declutter your laundry space i have a shared laundry room in my building so i don't have a laundry space which makes it easy for me to keep free right sharing the sharing economy leads to a more clutter-free life quite often because you don't have to own all of the things yeah number 16 clear off the tops of your living room side tables or don't have side tables that's another way to do it we do this every night when we set the stage at night we've talked about this in the past but we set the stage we'll spend five minutes or so clearing off any flat surfaces that may have accumulated something throughout the day whether it was mail or books or remote controls or papers or toys we clear it out the end of the night so we wake up the next morning to a calm clean clutter-free house a few more here number 17 minimize your tupperware yeah or don't use tupperware because it leaches plastic into your foods we talked about that during the kitchen clutter episode number 18 declutter your shower keeping only what is essential you talked about that already ryan number 19 clear out your medicine chest again finding expired medications because that is one thing with medications if they are expired it's not that they are expired so much as they tend to lose their potency many medications do after their expiration date but that depends on the medication as well so go back and listen to that expired items podcast episode remember wolf of wall street when they took the expired quaaludes that could happen with your tylenol even good really and number 20 return toys to the toy room toy room becker's such a minimalist my toy room's right next to my war room [Laughter] return toys to the toy room or bedroom where they belong yeah each night ella helps with the with the setting the stage and there are some bins that her toys go back into they don't belong on the floor or on the counters or anywhere else they belong in their homes which are their toy bins you can check out that full article from joshua becker at becomingminimalist.com did you enjoy this standalone patreon highlight if so you can listen to full episodes of the minimalist private podcast available exclusively on patreon visit patreon.com the minimalists or click the link in the description your support keeps our podcast and youtube channel 100 percent advertisement free

Channel: The Minimalists

Views: 205,501

Keywords: decluttering, finances, health, minimalism, minimalists, passion, purpose, relationships, simple, simplicity, the minimalists, podcast, Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus, useful tips, tricks and tips, personal growth, finance, more with less

Id: WmPs0asqUcQ

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022