Without meaning to, many of us end up with cluttered, chaotic homes. We collect so many odds and ends that ultimately lay around collecting dust. It might sound like an overwhelming task to simplify your home but it is so much easier than you realize. With these tips, declutter your home and destress your life.

Quick and Easy Decluttering Strategies

If you try to declutter your home in a single day, you will likely get overwhelmed and lose focus. Instead, organization experts recommend quick tasks, such as these 18 five-minute decluttering tasks, that make the massive endeavor of simplifying your home far easier to accomplish.

Also, a fast clutter bust of a single room is a great way to start your decluttering efforts. To perform a clutter bust:

1. Select a room to declutter.
2. Get an empty box, laundry basket, or clean garbage bag.
3. Moving quickly, place out-of-place item in your box, basket, or bag.
4. Clear a space, such as a dining room table or large counter, where you can dump your box, bag, or basket, once it is full.
5. Create piles for where each item belongs (other rooms) but also sort out things that can be thrown away or donated.
6. Return items to their correct rooms or storage spaces.
7. Immediately take garbage out.
8. Take items to be donated to a local Goodwill or Salvation Army.

Another quick and easy strategy to simplify your home is to create open space. To do so:

1. Select a single surface, a wall, shelf, table, mantle, etc.
2. Take everything off of that surface.
3. Sort items to be relocated, donated, or thrown away.
4. After cleaning the surface, leave it empty for a week.
5. Place a single beautiful item back on that space after the week has passed.

Additional Tips for Decluttering Your Home

Maybe you’re not ready not a clutter bust or a major overhaul of your home. That’s not a problem whatsoever. Small decluttering tasks can make a big impact as you work to simplify your home.

• Create a secondary pantry with one or two shelves. Use this pantry to store extra, nonperishable food items, such as flour, pastas, canned foods, etc.
• Make a donation box that you can drop unwanted items into as soon as you realize you no longer need them.
• Open up your living space by replacing traditional doors with modern barn doors. The more open your home is, the less likely you will be to unknowingly fill rooms with unnecessary items. (Take 20 percent off your BarnDoorz purchase with promo code BACK2SCHOOL! through Thursday, August 31, 2017.)
• Rather than buying a bunch of cute storage pieces, declutter your home first and make a list of what you need before you shop. You don’t want to clutter your home with unneeded organization systems.
• Remember that simplifying your home is an ongoing process. You might clutter bust your living room but find that a month later, it’s a total mess again. Don’t beat yourself up. As you stick with your decluttering efforts, you’ll find a routine that works for you and keeps your home clean and tidy.