Clutter creates stress in and of itself. But once you’ve gotten to a place where things are cluttered, how can you undo the damage without getting overwhelmed? Here’s 5 tips!

1️⃣ One minute rule. This is a simple strategy that I learned from Gretchen Rubin. It’s very simple. If you think of a task that needs to be done and it takes less than one minute to complete it, go ahead and do it. For me, this means things like sorting and tossing the mail as soon as I bring it in, putting away my purse as soon as I get home from church, hanging up a sweater that I wore but which might not need to be washed yet, folding the blanket from the couch when I’m done with it, etc.

2️⃣ Clean up photos on your phone. Nobody wants to face the dreaded storage space alert when they go to take a photo of an important moment. If you’re anything like me, you have thousands of photos and many need to be purged. The very idea of going through that many photos to delete what you don’t want to keep is a barrier to even getting started. Instead of trying to do it all at once, do a little daily. Here’s how: Go to the search bar in the photo library and put in the current month and day. Your iPhone will pull up all photos from that day from the current year and all previous years. Go through those and delete what you don’t need to keep. Continue this process daily. It only takes a couple of minutes, and by the end of the year, you’ll have whittled way what you don’t want to save.

3️⃣ Relocate. Whenever you go from one room to another, scan quickly for things that need to be put away in the room where you’re headed. Even if you don’t put them away right away, you’ve at least moved them one step closer to the goal.

4️⃣ Create “bright line” rules. This one is especially useful for tasks that you dread to help you avoid procrastinating on them. The best way to rid yourself of clutter is to prevent the clutter from accumulating in the first place. My rule for things like dishes and laundry is that as soon as I can, I proceed with doing the next step to move toward finishing the job. So, as soon as I hear the laundry machine is done, no matter what I’m doing, I go and put the clothes into the dryer. As soon as I hear the dryer go off, I go and fold and put away the clothes. As soon as I am done eating, I rinse my dish it and put it in the dishwasher. When I am cooking, I wash and rinse things and put them in the dishwasher as soon as I’m done using them. This way, they’re not waiting to be washed at the very end when I really don’t feel like it! When I have a hard and fast rule to follow, I can’t talk myself out of procrastinating. You can use this method on more than just laundry and dishes!

5️⃣ Do a 5 minute “power sweep.” Set a timer for five minutes and go all out with whatever random things you see that need to be tidied up or put away. I love this method as I feel accomplished and often will continue beyond five minutes.

Need some help with habits like this? You can find out more about my coaching here!

| Kaci

Reader questions:
1/ What tips do you have for maintaining order and eliminating clutter chaos!?
2/ Are any of these something you could implement?