If your house is starting to feel a bit old and crowded, and you wish you could just start again, you have the symptoms of a spring cleaner. There is only one cure: you need to go through your house and get rid of the mounting stuff that is cluttering up your life and cramping your style.

There is something utterly cathartic about ridding yourself of all the things that are getting in the way and embracing a more minimalistic viewpoint. The ‘less is more’ approach is gaining popularity and focusing on experiences instead of stuff is a clearer route to happiness than drowning in scatter cushions.

So, if you are ready to subscribe to minimalism, it’s time to get serious and break out the bin bags.

Work Room by Room

Trying to tackle your whole house at once is a crazy idea. For one thing, you won’t be able to focus on the task at hand and, for another, you will quickly feel overwhelmed by everything you need to do. You need a strategy to figure out how best to tackle your mess. Go through the house gradually, one room at a time. This will help you to stay focused and think about what you want to achieve in each space.

Start with the room you feel is most important. This might be the kitchen or your bedroom but could equally be the living area too. Take everything out of the cupboards and then look at each thing before deciding whether it can stay or go. This sounds maddening, but you will find so many things that you love and had forgotten over the years that reacquainting yourself is actually quite fun.

Be Ruthless

Once everything is out, you do need to be ruthless. However tempted you are to put everything back and forget about it all over again, you need to be strong and get rid of what you don’t need. No-one likes clearing their stuff out, but you have to do it before your stuff completely takes over your house.

There will always be a few items that you don’t need but just want and that’s okay. The point isn’t to remove everything, but to cut down on the things that serve no purpose. If something makes you happy, it is serving that purpose and can stay. Just make sure that it isn’t hidden away to be forgotten again.

Sell, Charity or Chuck

If you have good quality things that you no longer want but could easily sell, you should consider this option. Ebay is a really easy site to use if you want to sell online, or you could have a classic garage sale. Not only will you raise some money to go towards new things, but you will also be able to be a bit more pragmatic about what you get rid of. When you know that you could get some money, it’s always easier to part with stuff.

Throwing perfectly good stuff out is usually hardest when you know that someone else could make good use of it. So don’t just chuck it, put it aside and take it to a charity shop later. This will give it a new lease of life and should assuage your guilty conscience too.

But there will be a lot of stuff that you should just get rid of. A skip might be a good idea if you want to do the whole house all at once, or you could use https://www.samedayrubbishremoval.com.au/Rubbish-Removal-Sydney-CBD.php. These guys will arrive on the same day, load all your rubbish into their van and take it away for you. Perfect for a spontaneous clear out!

 

Deep Clean

Once you have cleared out all the stuff you don’t need, now is the best time you could ever hope to do a thorough deep clean of your whole house. Move all your furniture to vacuum underneath and get rid of dust bunnies that have gathered, wipe away the dust from your ceiling fan, empty out cupboards and give them a clean too. Essentially, take this opportunity to clean everything that doesn’t normally get a look in.

If you have carpets, this is also a great time to give them a thorough clean while the furniture is out of the way. You could rent a proper carpet cleaner that will wash and condition the carpet, but you could also sprinkle baking soda onto the carpet and hoover it up again to release any bad odours.

Redesign

Unless you are planning to move house anyway, this is also a perfect time to rethink the design of your house and decide on ways to make it better. For example, since all your things are now out of the way and everything has been deep cleaned, now is a good moment to decide to redecorate or even go for a full overhaul.

There are lots of bold design trends for 2018 including replacing flooring, hanging large artworks and creating a spa-like bathroom. Have a look at where you can introduce more light, where you can use colour to bring out features in your house and invest in some statement furniture if you really want to go to town.

However you choose to refresh your home and interiors, do remember that the aim here is to give yourself an opportunity to live a less cramped and crowded life. This means that while you are choosing new furniture, it is worth considering your current storage solutions and how you could create new storage spaces. Hidden storage in sofas, beds and built-in wardrobes are always a great idea as long as you aren’t tempted to just fill them up and never use what’s stored inside!

Once your house is finished – cleared out, cleaned up and redecorated – you will feel so much better in your home. You will be calmer and happier now that your space is defined by you rather than defining you. And once you have achieved that, you will never want to clutter up your house again!

Amy x