First Steps to Declutter Your Life

If you’ve watched enough episodes of “Hoarders”, you will realise that the act of keeping things that you don’t need is emotionally stressful and unnecessary. Your home should be a sanctuary for you to rest and relax, especially after a hard day’s work. Thus, take charge of your life and declutter so that you can live healthier by tossing out or giving away the items from our handy list.

1. Old magazines

Sure it’s easy to chuck them to a corner and say that they’re going to be inspiration for your #OOTD or something else more creative. If you really are inspired by anything within the magazine, simply cut it out and paste it in your inspirational notebook or mood board. Then chuck the whole thick volumes (most are advertisements, anyway!) into the recycling bin. Alternatively, have a party with your friends to create dream/mood boards with these magazine cutouts before chucking them away.

2. Receipts and old bills

Do this regularly from your wallet and wherever you tend to place your receipts and bills. If you’re worried that some are important for tax filing, scan them and save them onto your computer or phone. What I like to do is throw away receipts from my wallet every week while important bills are filed in separate folders accordingly. Then I do an annual clean up. Great thing is that more and more companies are switching to e-invoices, which you can easily opt-in for.

3. Clothes

This is a tough one for most women. As we look through our wardrobe, we’d often lament that “this outfit is still good as new!” and it’s highly likely possible…because you didn’t wear it often enough. Keep your wardrobe lean and keep a rule to keep clothes that you’ve worn over the past two years. Otherwise, sell your clothes through apps such as Carousell or donate them to charities such as the Salvation Army. You can repurpose old T-shirts into bags or even bathroom rugs as seen in several YouTube how-to videos.

4. Medicines

It’s good to always take a look into your first aid kit and ensure that all your emergency medicines and creams have not expired. Do this annually as most medications have a pretty long shelf-life.

5. Notes or notebooks

If you’re still the pen and paper type of person, you’ll most likely to have tons of notebooks filled with ‘important’ meeting or school notes. Learn to be less emotional about these notes and just throw them into the recycling bin. If you’re really unsure whether a particular note is important or not, simply snap a photo or scan or tear those pages out instead. Keeping folders of notes takes up a lot less space than several notebooks. If you’re in university or just graduated, you might even find some juniors who’d be willing to buy your notes!

If you receive a lot of notebooks as gifts, then now is the best time to take stock of which ones are the prettiest to giveaway for those Christmas parties. Or you could add in a few personal notes and photos into the notebook so that it becomes a thoughtful present to your best friend.

6. Pens

Not sure about you but I get plenty of ballpoint pens from events. They’re great as I haven’t had the need to buy pens for quite some time (they’re also great to bring along when you travel) now but the downside is that I have a lot of pens. Do an annual pen test and simply throw away those that have dried up or don’t work so well. Otherwise, you could get creative and turn those old useless pens into a penholder!

7. Cards

Mind you, we’re not saying to chuck out ALL your cards. We do know that some are quite sentimental and are meaningful to you. Thus, keep whatever is memorable to you in a box and ensure that you only keep the box’s capacity of cards. Otherwise, another neat idea is to turn all your cards into a framed artwork so that you’ll always remember the sender and it decorates your wall. Another idea is to incorporate some of these cards into your scrapbook or photo album so that it becomes a little more personal.

8. Old or unused electronics

In this day and age where we often do everything on our laptops or desktops, you may have forgotten about that old phone that you no longer use or you may seldom use that blu-ray or DVD player but it doesn’t mean that others don’t. Sell them on eBay or Carousell and if the item is faulty, you can dispose them properly through e-waste collection services.

Photo credits: Pixabay