Moving to a new home usually specifies the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. And crafting that new chapter into a great one starts with keeping your new home clean and free of clutter. If you’re like a lot of people, clutter in your home seems to accumulate so quickly that decluttering your Palatine rental home becomes a great big hassle before you know it. The best practice forward is to keep clutter from accumulating in the first place. But as a matter of fact, that can be a little easier said than done!
To get your new home clutter-free, you need strategies that are hassle-free to incorporate into your daily routine. Let’s look more closely at a few effective strategies that can be just what you need to implement to avoid clutter in your new home.
1. Identify Trouble Spots
Many of the clutter in homes fall into just a few basic categories. The most typical trouble areas for clutter are things lying around that don’t really have a specific place, piled-up magazines or junk mail, or “aspirational” items (items you buy to acquire a skill or create a project but then never use). But in actuality, when you know where your clutter comes from, you can set up a targeted strategy to keep it from overwhelming you.
2. Just Say No
One of the best ways to prevent clutter from building up is to never bring it home. This technique may require you to take a hard look at your shopping habits and develop quite a few changes. As an example, avoid bringing home free or promotional items you’ll maybe never ever use. This is also true for household items. If you already have something, don’t buy another like it.
Prior to buying anything new, think about how it may add to the clutter in your home. Take into consideration, additionally, to determine how often you will use something new. If it still seems worth having, try to replace something you already have to keep from just adding more stuff you’ll need to store.
3. Create a Charity Box
Another pretty effective strategy to keep clutter out of the house is to produce a box for items you plan to donate. As you go through your things, try to think of how long you’ve had certain items and how likely it is that you’ll use them again. If you haven’t touched the item in over a year, the odds are that you won’t be using it again. Instead of leaving it there and building up dust, try giving it to charity.
4. Use the One-In, One-Out Rule
The best strategy for things such as clothes, books, and toys is the one-in, one-out rule. Briefly, the idea is to replace items you already have instead of adding to your possessions. To cite an instance, any given time you procure a new item of clothing, donate one that you haven’t been wearing much, if at all. Consequently, you can keep the overall amount of stuff in your house to a manageable minimum.
5. Focus on Experiences, Not Things
Another common trouble area for clutter involves gifts. Items that we receive as gifts can be really difficult to discard for sentimental reasons. As an alternative to letting items with sentimental value pile up, venture to give and request gifts that create experiences rather than things. As an example, try asking for (and giving) movie tickets, restaurant gift cards, or other items. Instead of clutter, you can collect good memories of times spent doing things with your favorite people.
Keeping your home free of clutter can be a challenge, although opting to implement these and other strategies can do a great deal toward your goal. But on the other hand, if your current rental house is really too small to store all of your things, it may be time to move to a bigger one. If you are in the market for a new Palatine rental home, Real Property Management Northwest Chicago Suburbs has what you need! Check out our online listings for more information.
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