A GON Reader Asks

Hi Maria,

I love your newsletter! I am a procrastinator, but love a clean, decluttered home. My question is, if I plan to begin decluttering doing room by room, do you clean first or declutter first...and I mean real deep cleaning and brutal decluttering?

Also my husband is a compulsive food-on-sale buyer and our basement is starting to look like a grocery store. Any suggestions would be very helpful.

We are retired and I would love to have a decluttered, clean, organized, relaxing life.

Christine
Nottingham, Maryland



Maria Gracia Responds

Hi Christine,

If you are looking to take on two big projects like decluttering and deep cleaning, the first logical place to start is decluttering. Think of when you have your carpets professionally cleaned. The first thing that gets done is moving all of the furniture out of the way so that the carpet underneath can be accessed. The same concept applies to your question. It would be near impossible to do a cleaning like you are wanting to do if there are tons of items in the way. Think of when you have dusting to do. It is MUCH easier to dust when you don't have tons of knick knacks and other items to move out of the way first.

I would suggest taking on one room at a time. I find that one completely finished room makes me have a much bigger sense of accomplishment than seeing five half finished ones. Pick a room and start with the smaller items first, deciding what stays and what goes. Things you haven't used in a long time should immediately go into the 'go' pile without overthinking things. Once the smaller items are cleared out, you can move on to larger items until you have completely decluttered the room.

This is when the deep cleaning comes in. The funny thing about clutter is that it is a great hiding place for dust and dirt. Once the clutter is gone, the dirt becomes visible again. Clear away the clutter first and THEN work on the deep cleaning. The less items you have to clean around, the easier the job will be.

As far as your husband goes, he sounds like a very prepared type of guy. Not a bad thing until you start storing more than you can eat in years. Maybe you could take an inventory of all of the items he has purchased. Mark down how many cans of corn you have or how many jars of peanut butter or whatever it may be. You could keep this list somewhere easily accessible so that he could grab it before he heads out to shop. Maybe if he has a visual, in writing, of how many of each item you actually have on hand he will scale back on his buying.

Another thought is to limit the amount of storage space for bulk items. For instance, if you have one 4-shelf storage unit for the purpose of storing bulk items, your husband doesn't shop again unless he can fit new items on that unit. In other words, you two will be using up a portion of what you have before the next shopping trip.

A lot of times it is easy to lose track of which items we need, especially when it's the things we regularly buy. We forget which items we already bought and which ones we didn't. A simple inventory checklist is all he needs to get back on track with any over-shopping that may be occurring.

Hope this helps!

Maria

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