How to organize my home and declutter my life, Tips from a Professional Organizer in Cleveland, Ohio

Today First, I'm going to talk a little bit about Marie Kondo, then I'm going to go over a bunch of strategies and tips, and lastly, I'm going to discuss experimenting with less, which I think is a great option.

Marie Kondo's Organizing Lessons for a Clutter-Free Home

I read Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It must have been very close to when it was published in 2014. I was totally into this book.

This is the strategy I used first to declutter and organize my home. I went through my whole home and decluttered and organized it and followed her book.

I think what's interesting is she literally tells you where to put things, which I really appreciate because we're not told what to do.

There are sections called things like "unpack and detag new clothes immediately." She's like, when is the right time to read a book that you received? Immediately. Take off the tags from the clothes so that you'll use them.

Another section is that the best way to store bags is in another bag.

It's really practical, down-to-earth information, which I find very helpful in terms of how to organize my home because there are so many items and so many different items. Where do you put things? I love that she tells you where to put things.

I think what's basically happening is culturally, worldwide, we have created more and more specialty items. People are purchasing these specialty items and there's overflow all the time because we're bringing so many items in.

Sometimes I love when you go on a tour of a historical home. There was literally a coat rack and that was where they put their clothes. You think about how many outfits we have, and then 100 or 125 years ago, how many outfits did people have? It's so different.

As things have become cheaper and we're encouraged to buy more and more, I think there's just a ton of overflow.

Decluttering Tips to Reduce the Volume of Items in Your Home

If you're thinking about organizing your home and decluttering your life, think about removing anything that isn't necessary. Removing the excess. Lowering the volume of items in your home.

You're probably going to want to repeat this over and over like a mantra: lower the volume, lower the volume.

Whatever item you have, consider how much of that item you have.

Great, you have workout clothes. Fantastic. Do you have a workout top and bottom for 30 days in the month and could wear a new outfit every day? You probably don't need that many unless you're a professional sports player. Probably you need 5 to 10, or 14 and then you're going to do laundry and wash them and reuse them.

Considering the volume: the number of items in your home, is significant.

Professional Organizer Advice: Decide Where Things Should Live

Think about where things should live. Really identify the purpose of the room and have those items in that room. This can also be called finding a dedicated home for something.

Board games. Where do you play the board games? Can they be stored there? Or close by?

A lot of times when you start opening cabinets and closets, there's stuff that doesn't really belong in that space, but we just didn't know where to put it.

I think there are some clear areas of where things should go.

The sheets and towels for guests are in the guest room closet. I don't have an overstuffed linen closet. Everyone's sheets and extra blankets are in their rooms. My kids' sheets are in their closets. My kids' extra blankets are in their closets. My daughter's hand-me-downs are in her closet.

Ideally, those things that belong to my kids are in their rooms or in a dedicated playroom. They're not in every area of the house.

You want to try to return items to the one place that they belong.

As you do that, that's where you can see the volume. If you have stuff in five different areas, you often cannot recognize how much volume is happening because there's only one or two items in each place in five different rooms.

Really think about where things should live.

Let Your Space Guide Your Organizing Decisions

Letting your space tell you is a tip that I love.

To me, it's a real conversation with your space.

How much space do we have in this home for that item?

If you begin to have more than that, I think what a lot of us are doing is just overflow. We don't make the decision.

Instead, let's intentionally make the decision of which are our favorites or what we want to keep to fit that space.

A great example is in the kitchen. I have a drawer of dish towels.

Instead of just shoving new ones in and then taking over another drawer or piling them somewhere else, I'm looking through that drawer and saying, this is all the space I'm dedicating to dish towels.

I'm removing the old dish towels so everything always fits in that drawer.

You're having the space tell you how much of something to keep.

Another example is Ziploc bags, tin foil, and plastic wrap. I have one drawer for those. I'm just buying what we need because I only have one drawer for it.

I'm not buying every size of baggies. I'm buying the few sizes that fit in the drawer.

Let your space tell you.

Another thought as you're organizing your home: place items as close to where they will be used as possible.

You want things in the first place you would look for them and as close to where you're going to use them as possible.

If you mainly use the vacuum downstairs, is it possible to create a space in a downstairs closet for it?

Having easy access to the things that you use most, close to where they get used, is going to make your life feel easier and create less friction.

Experimenting With Less to Declutter Your Life

There are only three categories that I really think belong in storage:

• Sentimental items

• Luggage and travel items

• Seasonal items

Even with your storage space, this can get out of control.

Always look at volume.

How many wreaths do you have? How many are you realistically using?

Sometimes we end up with several versions of the same seasonal item and only use one of them.

Pick your favorite and let the others go.

The last thing I wanted to encourage you to do if you're thinking about decluttering your life and really getting organized is experimenting with less.

This is an idea from Joshua Becker.

We know what it's like to live with too much.

I can't find the shirt I want because it's buried under 30 other shirts.

Where's my phone? There are so many things on the countertop I can't even see it.

I tried to get out a towel and five towels fell on my face in an avalanche.

We know what it feels like to have too much.

He suggests really experimenting with less.

How do you know where the right line of balance is until you experiment with less?

Experimenting is helpful because it represents an impermanence.

How many towels do we need as a family of four? Have an amount and then put another amount aside and see what happens.

I'll give you an example.

We have a dishware set with service for about 12. I have taken about six sets and put them up in a top cupboard in our kitchen.

This is the excess. This is the decluttering.

I haven't gotten rid of them. It's our current dish set. It matches our set. We like them.

When we have a lot of guests over, a dinner party, or a family gathering, I will get them down and we will use them.

But day to day, we're a family of four. Six large plates is plenty because we're running the dishwasher every night.

Putting aside half our dishware creates fewer dishes at the end of the day.

It seems counterintuitive, but when there are tons of dishes, people just use them and use them and use them.

It forces people a little bit into the habit of reuse, of using what they have in a different way.

So that's just one example.

Experiment with less. I'd love to hear how those experiments are going and what you're learning along the way.