How to Declutter Your Room Step-by-Step, Tips from a Professional Organizer in Cleveland, Ohio

Step 1: Clarify the Purpose of Your Room Before You Declutter

The first thing that you want to do when you're choosing to declutter a room step by step is to clarify the purpose of the room. You want to look at the room and think about what is your goal for how you want to use the room.

An easy example would be a bedroom. You want to think about, “What am I going to be doing here? Sleeping, maybe getting dressed, getting ready for the day. How do I want to feel?” What emotion do you want when you're in that room? Think about how those items in the room are serving that purpose. Maybe your bedroom is also a place where you do some wind down or wake up activities like journaling or meditation, stretching, or yoga.

So then if you have a bunch of office paperwork for your taxes piled on your dresser, that doesn't serve the purpose, right? It doesn't match with the purpose of the room. Or if you have a laundry basket full of gifts for your nieces and nephews for an upcoming holiday or birthday celebration, that doesn't fit with the purpose of the room either.

There are smaller homes, apartments, and condos where you do have to have a dual purpose in a room and you want to take that into consideration. Some people have a home office in their bedroom or they have a little craft area in their bedroom. If that is the case, you just want to be very clear from the beginning what the purpose is or what the purposes are. From there, you can build the right room to serve those goals to meet those goals. It's not just going to happen accidentally. You want to make sure you have the items you need easily accessible and try to remove the things that don’t fit with the purpose.

Step 2: Remove Clutter Using the 3 Box Method

Once you've clarified the purpose of the room, then you're ready to remove excess and organize what remains. These are the 3 steps to decluttering your room.

There's a lot that goes into each step, but once you clarify the purpose, remove excess, and then organize what remains, you're done. You've done it.

When you're ready to remove excess, I suggest the three box method and that seems to be the most simple, straightforward method of decluttering. You literally get out three containers: I would like to suggest a trash bag, a box for donations, and a laundry basket.

The trash bag is obviously trash. Then you have a box for items that are still good, but you no longer want them for donation. Lastly, you would have a laundry basket for moving things to other areas of the home. This is for things that don’t fit with the purpose of this room.

Sometimes people are into selling their things, in this case you may need an additional sell box. Sometimes people also choose to create a “maybe” box that they put items into and date it, then move it into a storage area of their home. If you haven’t needed anything in the box after a certain time period such as a month or two, you can donate it without opening the box! Label your boxes as needed.

Step 3: Organize What You Keep in a Way That Works for You

So once you've made those piles, then you can organize what remains. Take a moment to get the trash out of there. If things are on the worse end, you might need to do this several times during your process.

Now that you have everything out, you want to organize what's staying in a way that makes sense for you. I really believe in individual organizing where you really consider what you personally use, how often you use it, and store your things accordingly. Things that you use often should be easy to get to.

If you're reaching for that body spray and five things are falling over every time you reach for it, how can we reduce the friction? Let's bring it up to the front. Do we need those five things that are falling over?

That's the idea behind organizing. Things that you use less frequently, you want to put into storage. If it's once a year or once every six months, put that winter stuff away, put that summer stuff away for the season.

Everything needs a home. If you have things out that don't have a home, then that's where they're going to end up living, in the middle of your space! So, as you're organizing, make sure you find a home for everything. As you're going along, you want to constantly be revisiting the purpose of the room. Ask yourself, does this item serve the purpose of this room?

At the end, that's a really good question to ask yourself. “I've decluttered—does the room’s purpose feel served? Is everything here supporting my goal?”

Real-Life Decluttering Examples

Sometimes the living room gathers lots of day-to-day items, but really for many of us the living room only has a few purposes. Probably socializing and visiting with family and friends. Maybe it's a place where you hang out and watch TV.

So, you want to identify that purpose and then get rid of the rest. Kids' toys are one that can start to invade all areas of the home. If you have really little kids, you may need toys in more areas, but as they grow up, begin to remove those toys from the more common areas.

Another example is the craft room. A craft room can easily become overwhelming. Even in my own craft room, there was so much collected there and I wasn’t really doing any crafting anymore. I had to get really specific with my intent. What crafts am I actually going to do? There were items I had from college, like oil painting supplies, but I don't do that anymore, so I cleared those things out. The purpose I identified was that I'm really only going to do collage, especially greeting card collage because that's useful in my life.

Another example is a client who had a basement with multiple areas. We identified specific purposes for each space: storage, playroom for grandkids, and workout area, and built the space intentionally around those needs.

How to Declutter Without Making a Bigger Mess

The other thing I wanted to cover is how to avoid making a bigger mess. Sometimes, as a professional organizer, we’ll get everything out. I don't actually recommend that to individuals doing this at home alone. What can happen is you take everything out, you get overwhelmed, and now you have a giant mess on your hands.

What you want to do instead is just remove the things you don't want. As much as you can, leave the things that you're keeping in place and focus on removing the excess first.

Then at the end, when you're organizing, you can make adjustments more easily now that the clutter is gone.

When to Buy Organizing Bins and Containers

The last thing I wanted to cover is when to buy those cute bins and containers. People get caught up in this, especially with Pinterest or perfectly organized images from AI.

However, the time to buy those bins and containers is at the end. It is not at the beginning.

You need to go through the decluttering process first so you can see what you actually have left and what spaces you need to fill.

Use what you have to start. Use boxes that are already around your house. Then at the end, measure and figure out exactly what you need so you don’t waste money.

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I hope this helps you think through what storage containers to use when you are decluttering and how to choose what truly works for your home and your life. I’d love to hear more about what containers are working for you!