How to declutter your home

Luxury home organizers, Celia and Joti from The Savvy Space, share their tips for creating well-organised spaces.

Start with personal space or an area where you have the most control and don’t have to worry about other people disrupting your process. That will make it easier to manage, which means you’re more likely to keep going and gain momentum for taking on shared spaces like the living room or kitchen.

The first step in creating a successful organisation system is to identify your ultimate goal, either for space or for how you want to feel in your home. What would your life look like if your home were organized? Start by fleshing that out. It’s a good idea to get very specific with this. Once you have a clear vision of how you’d like the space to work for you, it’s so much easier to make decisions about what should be in there and what you need for it to function properly.

Understanding how a space is used plays a big role in how it should be organised. We start by sketching out a blueprint so we can visualise the workflow of a space. Items are grouped and given ‘task zones’. Then we create a ‘real estate’ within those zones, dividing the items into prime and sub-prime categories. Once we’ve determined the ideal location, we focus on accessibility. In the pantry, for example, a prime category would be baking goods and the sub-categories would be flours, sugar, etc. If baking products are bountiful, we may divide it further into powders, sprinkles, etc. And, as baking items are typically not used on a daily basis, they’re placed higher up in a “lesser” convenient real estate area.

Break down the decluttering process.

Keep this stage manageable by dividing items into categories to process one at a time. Start easy and reduce your workload by eliminating the obvious first. Grab a bag to collect and remove any obvious rubbish such as empty boxes or anything that is broken. Repeat this for items that don’t belong and need to be relocated elsewhere.

Become a low-waste advocate. 

Do this by focusing on what is important and purposeful in your life. Primarily, this means being thoughtful of what’s in your home, from finding creative ways to repurpose what you already have, to recycling what you don’t need and purchasing new products mindfully.

Don’t forget to label. 

A bit of simple identification will help ensure everyone in the house can help maintain your efforts. We love Homesmiths, as they pretty much stock everything we could possibly need to organise our clients’ homes! IKEA have the very versatile white Kuggis and Variera storage boxes, as well as our absolute favourite Variera pot-lid divider.

A capsule wardrobe is a brilliant way to organise your closet and refine your style. The idea is to focus your clothes around a collection of a few essential and timeless items in each clothing category (shirts, dresses, etc.), which you then augment with seasonal items. Start by determining your style image, so it’s easier to decide what to keep. Then focus on versatile pieces which can be mixed up so you can have lots of outfit options without overwhelming your closet.