Marie Kondo and her KonMarie method of decluttering is taking the world by storm. With four books and a series on Netflix, she’s the queen of tidying up with her own tailored method of folding clothes and guidelines for decluttering every part of your home and life.
But let’s face it, her level of detail is a little bit terrifying! We’ve created a room by room guide to decluttering based on the most common issues we see as agents and some simple steps you can prioritise.
Living room
One of the most common mistakes of living rooms is to over-furnish them with too-large sofas and big television units. Move this furniture out – either sell it or put into storage – and replace with something lighter and brighter that complements your space.
Kitchen
Are your benchtops crammed with recipe books and knick knacks? Box them now and get the surfaces cleaned off. Strip all the fridge magnets and drawings from the kids off the fridge. Go through your appliance cupboard, and everything you bought which you thought would save you time, but which has in fact been used once or twice, can go to charity or onto eBay.
Bathrooms
The guest soaps you collected from hundreds of hotels can be thrown or donated to charity if they are in good order. Go through your vanity unit. Throw out anything that is out of date, or which hasn’t been used for a year. This includes medicines, makeup, sunscreen, old hair gel and miracle facecream that didn’t work.
Bedrooms
Kids toys should be culled and tidied regularly. Throw out broken toys and wage a continual war on escaped Lego and Barbie with some storage solutions specially for those toys. Pick up everything off the floor. Put all your clothes on the bed and go through one by one. If you haven’t worn it for a couple of years, you’re unlikely to again. Make a pile for repairs of items that you want to keep. Pack or donate what you no longer want to charity or consider selling better quality items on eBay.
Laundry
Laundries tend to be dumping grounds of everything from sporting equipment to old shoes to cleaning products. If the kids haven’t played with them for more than 6 months, or if they no longer fit, send them to charity or put on eBay. Stick all the cleaning products into a bucket and stow. After all this tidying, you’ll want to give the room a good clean.
