Type "decluttering your home" into Google and it will return no less than 1.3 million hits. Sure doesn't make decluttering seem easy, does it? After sifting through some of the blog clutter I have hopefully found the easiest, simplest and quickest ideas for you to purge your home.

1. Designate a spot for incoming papers - Create an 'inbox' and put all mail, school papers, receipts, notices, bills, etc, into it. It will cut down on clutter on various counters and tabletops.

2. Tackle messes one room at a time - one area of the room at a time (ie. the shirts in your closet, one drawer of the nightstand, one shelf of the bookshelf). Work in short spurts - .5 hr to an hour at a time then come back to it. Resist the urge to start in another room in the meantime! 

3. Sort using 4 boxes - They are: "put in another place", "donate", "throw away", "storage". Whatever you do, don't let go of an item until the decision is made!! At the end of the session, spend 10-15 minutes emptying the boxes. do it immediately, especially with the 'throw away' box so you don't start changing your mind!

4. Use banker boxes for storage. Label them with numbers on the outside and put a list on your computer as to what is in each. Buy stick on numbers for an easy fix.

5. Unsubscribe to all the magazines you are not reading. As your life situation and interests change, cancel the subscriptions to magazines that are not being read. It will save money and clutter! If not willing to unsubscribe, when the new issue comes in, the old one goes out - finished or not!

6. Do a rapid mini-declutter! Move quickly through your medicine cabinet, makeup drawer and kitchen to throw out anything that has expired or that you have not used in awhile. This process will move rapidly and may inspire you to move onto something that may take a little more time.

7. Never leave a room empty-handed. Take something with you that needs to go to the garbage or to another room / floor of your house.

8. Hang / sort clothes according to colour. Start with lightest on left, going to darkest on right. Do this with shirts, then with jackets, then pants, etc. Fold and roll T-shirts with fronts facing out and colour code. 

9. Be honest with yourself! As you sort, ask yourself "Do I really need this item?" If you hesitate, you probably don't so throw it out! 

10. Create a 30-day list. The problem with decluttering is that we can declutter our butts off (don’t actually try that — it’s painful) but never win the battle because we buy more stuff! Fight that tendency by nipping it in the bud: don’t buy the stuff in the first place. Take a minute (yep, do it now!) to create a 30-day list, and every time you want to buy something that’s not absolutely necessary put it on the list with the date beside it. Make a rule never to buy any unnecessary items unless they’ve been on the list for 30 days. Often you’ll lose the urge to buy the stuff and you’ll save yourself a lot of money and clutter!

Remember, beating clutter requires building new habits, applying new organizational methods, and creating new household routines. The clutter cure takes time, and can't be short-cut. For more tips and trips, check out the website www.organizedhome.com

“We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.” - Donald Horban