Decluttering and organizing your home is always a good idea, but it’s especially important as the seasons change and we prepare ourselves (and our homes) for the both the holidays and new year. Take time to inventory your home room by room, and make a list of things you want to keep and the things you should purge. Here, we break down room-to-room the items you should resolve to get rid of this year.
1. Kitchen: Freezer Leftovers
Have you opened your freezer lately and pulled out something you can’t identify? Throw it away. Leftovers can quickly collect in your freezer, and if they aren’t used within the following weeks or labeled clearly, it’s easy for them to be shoved to the back of the freezer until you find yourself running out of space and needing to dive into a deep clean. At most, food should only be left in the freezer for a year. Otherwise, it should be tossed.
2. Living Room:
Magazines and Catalogues We receive them in the mail on a weekly basis. We mindlessly grab them when we’re at the grocery store. We find them in packages we’ve ordered online. If anyone thinks print media is dead, they’re wrong. It can be difficult to find time to read through a magazine in one sitting, so they sit on our couches, counters, and coffee tables for months until we finally decide to throw them out. If you currently have any magazines that you don’t intend to read, recycle them or pass them on to someone who may benefit from the articles.
3. Bathroom: Beauty Products and Samples
We love free stuff, but not once it starts to accumulate in every nook and cranny of your bathroom cabinets. If you have unopened samples and travel-sized products you won’t use, throw them out. You’ll also want to throw out expired makeup, sunscreen, and hair products that won’t perform as they should or have the potential to be a breeding ground for bacteria.
4. Bedroom: Old Clothing
If you’re holding onto a bridesmaid dress to “wear on another occasion” or a pair of “goal jeans” that are currently too tight, it’s time to overhaul your closet. Grab three boxes and start organizing into categories: keep, sell, and donate. Keep the things you wear frequently that make you feel confident and comfortable, and get rid of the things you haven’t worn in over a year. Throw away any socks missing a match, and let go of shoes you don’t wear.
5. Office: Unused Office Supplies
Our favorite (broken) pens. Half-used notebooks. An endless array of Post-it notes. As much as we enjoy fresh office supplies, we’ll never go through them quickly enough. If you don’t work at home, consider taking your unused office supplies to your workplace and leaving them for your co-workers to use. You can also repurpose them to help organize other areas of your home, such as labeling bins in your garage or jars in your kitchen. If something’s broken, though, it’s time for it to go.
Until Next Time
Semper-Fi
Eric