Decluttering Your Home Checklist for Parents
The baby and kid gear seems to multiply overnight and makes life overwhelming. The Decluttering Your Home Checklist for Parents will help.
Last weekend, I posted on my Instagram stories a video of our master bedroom. Piles of papers, receipts, books, headphones, and a bunch of other junk littered the floor.
Do you have areas in your home that look like this? If so, it’s not your fault!
Like so many parents during the pandemic, dealing with clutter has fallen off my to-do list. Plus the children are home all day leaving random stuff all around the house.
But that mess was really starting to drag me down. And, it’s probably feeling like a nuance to you too!
Clutter can do that to all of us. Constantly seeing the mess reminds us we need to clean it up.
Each time you see it, your brains perform a mental checklist cataloging where each item needs to go. And that frequent reminder zaps your mental energy.
Well, fortunately, you can do something about that mental drain. It’s easier than you think.
Grab a Decluttering You Home Checklist for Parents and just carve out 5-10 times a day. You can get the clutter under control.
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Decluttering Your Home Checklist for Parents
You know it’s true. As parents of small children, we have so much stuff.
They grow out of phases quickly and the bulky equipment or stacks of onesies seems to multiply overnight.
That’s why the Decluttering Your Home Checklist for Parents is so valuable. It reminds you to look at the parents’ items, the children’s items. and possible outgrown baby, toddler, or preschooler gear.
Grab this free printable (scroll on down) to guide you as you declutter your home.
Where do I start decluttering my house?
The first thing to do is to decide where you’re going to donate stuff once you’ve decided to get rid of it.
Here’s how to do this:
- Set a timer for 10 minutes.
- Google “donation sites + your neighborhood or town.”
- Choose the donation site.
- Note their hours and make an entry on your phone’s calendar for when you’ll donate the stuff.
The second thing to do is have a plan. That’s why you’ll want the decluttering your home checklist for parents.
- Print out the Decluttering Your Home Checklist for Parents.
- Highlight 2 areas where you feel confident you have stuff that is easy to get rid of.
- Go to one of those areas with a trash bag, recycle bag, and donate bag.
- Set a timer for 5 minutes and then find 10 items to discard or donate.
- That’s it. You’re done!
- You can circle back to this room later if you need to.
How do you declutter your house when overwhelmed?
I don’t know a single parent who hasn’t been overwhelmed by clutter, especially during this pandemic.
There is so much to juggle right now. You might not have the mental or emotional energy to do any hard decision-making right now.
So if you’re in this place, you are going to start small. You are not going to do hard decision making at first.
Do not put everything in the center of your room and decide if it sparks joy. That would cause a lot of stress if you’re already dealing with pandemic clutter overwhelm.
So listen, if the steps above about where to start is just too much, instead I want you to start with obvious trash.
Right now, wherever you are, look around and find something that is either obvious trash or recycling.
Look for:
- dried out markers
- broken toys
- old flyers or outdated magazines
- junk mail
- unimportant receipts (think groceries or Starbucks).
- socks with holes
- discard kleenex.
See if you can find 10 things.
Then look around you right now and put away one thing that you know you need to keep. It could be a toy, pair or shoes, or book.
Put away 9 more things.
This experience will build momentum and thus motivation to declutter things . But it does not overwhelm you with decision-making.
Once you’ve repeated this process in three different rooms, then grab a copy of the decluttering your home checklist for parents.
How can I declutter my house quickly as a parent?
Decluttering quickly means tackling the surface clutter. Going through closets and drawers is more time-consuming, although it can be done in small chunks.
- Set up your children with a non-messy activity or screen time.
- Set a timer for 15 minutes and put on fun music or a podcast
- Then look at one surface one room at a time. This could be a counter, table, shelf, or top of a clothes dresser.
- Throw away or recycle obvious trash.
- Quickly decide if you’re going to donate objects one at a time.
- Don’t allow yourself to get overwhelmed with indecision. If you can’t decide to donate it, save it.
- Once you’re done donating those items, put the items to save away in their places.
What should you not do when decluttering?
Here a word of warning. There are some common pitfalls to avoid when decluttering your home:
- Trying to do it all at once. Try small daily sessions instead.
- Leaving stuff to donate in the trunk of your car. Make a plan now on where and when to donate.
- Procrastinate on making tough decisions. If you don’t have a place for it, it goes.
- Keep things just in case. Let the baby stuff go. If your sister has a baby boy, you can help her find deals at a consignment sale or in a Buy Nothing Group.
- Start with the worst area. It’s easiest to start with the smaller messes and build momentum.
Conclusion
Finally, I took my own advice. I grabbed one stack of items.
I sorted out a bunch of obvious recycling:
- outdated IEPs for my daughter
- the discharge paperwork from my one-year old’s birth
- blogging course workbooks that I’ve completed (and have saved online, too)
Then I stopped. Later that day I put away the assorted junk my children had brought into my room and left there:
- colored pencils
- their headphones
- random legos.
My bedroom floor looks amazing now – or at least not cluttered. Better yet this has given me the momentum to tackle my dresser and bathroom drawers and the dreaded master closet this week.
So grab your Decluttering Your Home Checklist for Parents and find this same peace yourself.
