To begin the process of organizing your home, you must determine your level of clutter. Once you determine what level of clutter you have, you can determine which of four approaches you can take toward the first step of organizing which is clearing out your space. Grab my room evaluation chart from my freebie library here, and let’s determine what level of clutter you have. Also, grab my declutter challenge calendar and guide here for tips and tricks on how to purge the clutter from various areas in your home!
Terry Elisabeth’s CLUTTER LEVEL CHART
| THE STATUS OF YOUR SPACES | EXAMPLES |
|---|---|
| Mildly Cluttered – You can find things because they are in their general designated area. | *The pasta is in the pantry. The pantry is cluttered, but you always put the food in there, so you know where to find it. *Your paperwork is all on your desk or in your office. It is not scattered about the house, so you know where to go when you need to dig up a file. |
| Moderately Cluttered – You can find things after looking in a few logical places. | *The pasta could be in the pantry or the storage closet or the garage. This can be fine if you have a small pantry and need to utilize these other areas, but it becomes a problem if the pantry is full of items that do not belong there, and your food could all truly fit in there. *Your paperwork is in the kitchen, your bedroom, and the office. Your mail could be piling up on the kitchen counter when you set it down after bringing it in from the mailbox. Paperwork is probably in your bedroom if you brought papers there that you may have been looking at while you went in there to change. |
| Severely Cluttered – You can find things after digging through a few undesignated piles. | *The pasta is in the pile of soccer gear and other groceries after they were taken out of the van after a game and run to the grocery store. There are not really and designated spaces in your home and/or you feel pressed for time that you do not even bother to put items away. *Your paperwork is in your living room, kitchen, the car, your purse, or wherever you set it down. |
| Critically Cluttered – You cannot find most things and are not even sure what you have. | *The pasta or your paperwork is probably in that corner of the room, but you cannot access that corner because of all your stuff that is in the way. *When walking through your home, you do not really have very many clear areas as you have a lot of stuff. |
Note what level of clutter you have on your room evaluation chart found here, and you will be able to begin organizing your home and move on to the first step of organizing which is to clear out your space. If you haven’t downloaded my 7-step guide to organizing your space, you can find it here. The more honest you are about which level of clutter you have, the easier it will be to determine which approach you can take to begin to get organized.
The four approaches to clearing out your space are outlined in the next four posts. An important thing to note is that you can be at different levels of clutter in different areas of your home. Your living room may be mildy cluttered while your basement may be critically cluttered. So, when you determine how you will begin organizing each space, you will remember to determine your level of clutter as you complete the organization of one area and begin another. That way, you can redetermine, through each space at a time, which approach will work best for completing the first step of organizing.
Again, the four approaches to begin organizing and clearing out your spaces are outlined in the next four posts. Now, grab your free guides and declutter challenge here and let’s get organized!
Happy Organizing!
Author of “How to Organize Any Space in 7 Simplified Steps“