Should I Clean Or Declutter First?
Are you sitting around your home, staring at a mess, and asking yourself “Should I clean or declutter first?” Cleaning and decluttering tend to go hand in hand, but I will help you answer that question. Always declutter first!! Here’s why.
#1 It is impossible to effectively clean your home without dealing with your clutter first. If you eliminate the clutter, your home will instantly look cleaner. Clutter always makes a home look dirty, even though it may not be that bad. Put away anything that is laying out in the middle of your room or on a horizontal surface (table, countertop, sofa or dog sleeping on the floor). Once you put things in their proper place, you can easily see and clean your floors and horizontal surfaces. Just think of the time you will save looking for that particular item (when you need it) that wasn’t put away, where it actually belonged, in the first place.
#2 Why would you make it harder on yourself by picking things up just to clean underneath them? If you’re going to pick something up to clean, why not just put it back where it actually belongs? If it doesn’t have a designated spot, you have 2 choices. You can either (A) create a spot for it or (B) simply get rid of it. Donate it or toss it. Either one works. If you don’t eliminate the clutter and just put everything back in the same spot, that space will still look dirty, even though you may have technically cleaned the surface underneath it.
#3 Here’s a thought, once you’ve decluttered and cleaned that area, keep it clutter free. That sounds a lot easier than it actually is for most people. Horizontal surfaces are so easy to set things on top of. You might think that you’ll ‘deal with it later’. But will you? ‘Later’ usually doesn’t come until that pile becomes so high that it eventually topples over and makes an even bigger mess. Then, you end up making another pile because the first one will take too long to go through and put away. Make your life simple!! Take a couple of minutes to put everything in its designated spot before you even start to set it down on that tabletop. Trust me!! It will make your life so much easier in the long run. Think about all that time you would save cleaning, if you simply had a clutter-free surface in the first place.
