De-cluttering and Organisation Tips

Hi Guys,

January, the start of the new year, is also a good time for de-cluttering your life.  Like lots of other things I’ve mentioned before in other posts, de-cluttering and organisation is something that has a physical outcome but can also work wonders for your mental health and wellbeing.

I don’t know about you but I can be a very literal person in some ways and I am often a product of my environment (think ‘messy room, messy mind’) and de-cluttering can be done in so many ways, maybe in ways you wouldn’t really realise or imagine! Why wait until Spring?

Keep on reading for my de-cluttering and organisation tips…

1. Have a massive throw out (obvious one) – anything you no longer want, no longer need, no longer wish to have in your surroundings or anything that has seen better days, get rid of it! Whether you throw it out, recycle it, take it to a charity shop, give to family or friends or sell it, it needs to go! Stop putting it off!
2. Minimalise – as I’ve got older, I am growing to love minimalism.  I was sat in my bedroom other day and I just thought: WHY do I have two open DVD racks with 100 DVDs staring back at me?  WHY are all of my cosmetic beauty products standing on my dresser instead of in drawers?  WHY have I got countless candles and ornaments everywhere that don’t match?  I am torn because I like a room to be quite simple but warm, welcoming and inviting at the same time.  Finding the balance between cosy and calculating is this year’s décor mission.
3. Storage – there’s a place for everything and everything has it’s place.  Sometimes, we have to keep things that we don’t really want to keep (think: wage slips, paper bills, tape, blue tack, screwdrivers amongst countless other things!) Make sure you know exactly where these things are and that they are organised and stored neatly.  I have just bought a box file for all of my paper work and each file is separated into categories: ‘Wage Slips’, ‘P45s/P60s’, ‘Gas and Electricity Bills’, ‘Student Loan Statements’ etc.
4. Make better use of your space – for a long time I was using the bottom drawer of my dresser as a ‘junk drawer’.  Old mobile phone chargers, adapter leads, hot water bottles, suede shoe cleaner, old keys.  Any old tat I could find, you name it, it was probably in there!  I have started throwing those things away/finding new homes for them and now I have an extra drawer to store all of the beauty products that I’m going to move off the top of my dresser in my quest for minimalism!
5. Sort your email accounts out – I logged onto my email account a few days ago and I had 927 emails in my inbox! I am one of those fantastically anally retentive people that gets probably the most satisfaction possible when I have a completely empty inbox.  Delete all of your unwanted emails , create subfolders for emails that you need to keep (e.g. my wage slips are emailed to me now so I have a subfolder for those), unsubscribe to companies that you are sick of receiving emails from, mark nuisance emails as ‘spam’.  It’s funny how much you feel like you can take on the world with a clean inbox!
6. Change your passwords – new year, new start, get those passwords changed (have you got a password that has an emotional attachment to something from the past, maybe associated with an ex?) GET RID!
7. Hire a skip – if you do have a lot of rubbish to get rid of, it is worth hiring a skip, there’s nothing better than physically throwing your rubbish away yourself and actually seeing the process happening in front of your own eyes.  It is so satisfying!
8. Get your administrative sh*t together – sign up for internet banking, set up direct debits and standing orders, download apps for certain admin tasks (paying bills etc.), cancel subscriptions that you don’t use, renew or cancel memberships, check all of your outgoings are correct, if you have made any bookings for holidays/events, can you pay any of them off or whittle any of them down?  Delete the fodder off your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram/other Social Media accounts. Make a financial plan, actually use your calendar and diary.
9. Do a ‘deep clean’ – I am doing a spot of décor in a couple of months so a good ‘deep clean’ before any decorating of a room is crucial anyway but this is something that should be done at least 4 times a year.  In my eyes, a ‘deep clean’ might include washing curtains or blinds, flipping a mattress, washing a duvet and pillows (not just the covers), cleaning nooks and crannies that you don’t always clean (light fittings, curtain poles, behind heavy pieces of furniture), polishing and scratch cleaning CDs and DVDs, washing upholstery (my dressing stool is covered in fake tan – niceee!), taking items of clothing to the dry cleaners, wiping shoes and bags clean, giving stained or marked shoes, clothes, bags (anything really) a proper cleaning treatment, replacing makeup brushes and sponges, cleaning jewellery, washing clothes that have been hanging in the wardrobe or sitting in drawers for a long time.
10. Have a change around – change is good for the soul, move your bedroom around, put your bed on the other wall, change your storage units, buy some new (yet minimal!) accessories that match and have a perfect spot in your new room.  I am really looking forward to decorating my bedroom, luckily I can have a massive change and buy some new pieces and accessories for my room.

Hope this will be useful to you guys, if you are somebody who hasn’t ever really thought about these tips before, I challenge you to try them out and see if they do anything for your mind and general happiness.  Let me know in the comments below 🙂

Love Dani x

 

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2016 New Year’s Resolutions

Like I said in my ‘New Beginnings’ post, I agree that New Year’s Resolutions are so clichéd and usually consist of a set of unrealistic goals that we will maybe stick to for a couple of weeks and never reach.  That being said, I think it is all part of the ‘New Year’ fun, that feeling of hope and determination that you can actually change the aspects of your life that you feel are bothering you or restricting you as a person.  Primarily, the key to creating successful New Year’s Resolutions is to make them realistic, achievable and obtainable.  The older I get and the closer I get to reaching the dreaded ’30’ I also constantly find myself thinking, “If I don’t do it this year, if I don’t do it now, when will I?”

So I have come up with 5 New Year’s Resolutions for 2016 that I am going to do my very best to achieve:

1. To eat healthier and drink more water (make it about health rather than vanity).
2. To exercise more, partaking in activities which are fun and enjoyable (again health vs. vanity, increased energy, mental health and wellbeing, doing something that you get a buzz out of: I used to be a keen dancer, I hope to be again in 2016!)
3. To save some money per month (£50/£100 a month, putting all of your 1ps and 2ps in a jar – it all adds up! Don’t panic if one week you only save £10, don’t pressure yourself).
4. To live in the moment, finding something positive in everyday, doing the things that I enjoy (watching TV box sets, reading autobiographies, having a bubble bath, colouring in, re-decorating, going to an aerobics class – what makes you tick?  DO IT!)
5. To find new hobbies and interests, which broaden my horizons and make me step out of my ‘comfort zone’ (remember when you were a kid and everything was new and exciting?  New experiences were usually parent/school led, it’s up to you now to make your enjoyment!  If your friends don’t have the same hobbies, make some new ones that you can share those interests with, DON’T MISS OUT, IT’S YOUR LIFE!)

I hope this has given you some inspiration and helped you to realise that New Year’s Resolutions can be obtainable 🙂 Look out for my ‘New Year’s Resolutions Updates’ in April, July and October to track my progress.  We can do it together!

Good luck,

Love Dani x

Image Credit: theodysseyonline.com