Decluttering a small house or apartment is just different. In a lot of ways, it’s harder than decluttering a larger space. You see I know this because for the past 20 plus years we’ve lived in a very small home that’s less than 1000 square feet.
Just because you live in a small house or apartment doesn’t mean you need any less than what families in larger spaces may need. The difference is your physical space is significantly limited.
When you live in a small home your spaces often serve many different functions. Your living room may also be your den, playroom, and craft room. Your bedroom may double as your office. Generally, each space in a small home has many functions.
What happens with all of this room multitasking is that it makes your home feel cramped and cluttered. Before you know it, you’ve got no place to just sit and relax.
Is it any wonder you feel overwhelmed?
5 Rules For Decluttering a Small House
You already know that decluttering your small house or apartment certainly will help, but where do you start and how do you keep motivated? You can’t just do the Kon Mari method; drag everything out and place it in the middle of the room. If you do, you may not even be able to move.
So what do you do? I promise it’s really not that hard. In fact, it’s as simple as following these 5 rules for decluttering a small house.
1. How to Make a Decluttering Plan
When decluttering a small house or apartment having a plan of action before you even start will make the process so much easier and will help keep you motivated.
As your thinking about your plan, consider each of the following:
Declutter by Category
The normal decluttering advice is to start your decluttering efforts by room or space. I often tell people to start in the bathroom or with a junk drawer because it’s a quick and easy win and usually doesn’t involve any emotional decision making,
However, because the rooms in a small house or apartment are often multifunctional it can be overwhelming to try and declutter the entire room. For this reason, I recommend making a plan based on categories. In other words, plan a time for decluttering all beauty products or all books, or CD’s then move on to clothing or toys, etc.
By decluttering categories rather than rooms, you’ll be able to make good progress without disrupting your entire household. As you’re making progress it will naturally keep your motivation up!
Schedule Specific Days and Times for Decluttering
When it comes to decluttering a small house or apartment, if you try and declutter your entire home in a day or weekend you’ll end up not only overwhelmed but completely frustrated and likely to give up on the process. This is because small spaces just don’t give you a lot of room to go through your belongings as you make decisions.
In a larger space, it’s easy to take all of the items out and sort through them as there is plenty of other space to move about. However, this is just not true of a smaller home.
What I mean is that if you have a decent size book collection or a large number of craft supplies and you place them in the middle of your living room floor as you attempt to sort through them, chances are no one is going to be able to walk freely through the house as you attempt to tackle this project.
Instead, make short simple, and specific plans for each category. For example on Monday when your favorite show is on you’ll sort through one or two shelves on the bookcase. Or on Tuesday when the kids are napping you’ll sort through the kitchen utensils.
By breaking down your tasks you’ll feel less overwhelmed and more accomplished. This will help keep you motivated.
Write Your Decluttering Plan Down
One of the best ways to stay motivated is to write down your plan and refer to it regularly.
Write it down in your planner the same way you would any other appointment. It will make the task so much less stressful.
You won’t have to think about what you should be doing, you’ll know exactly what you want to work on. Plus you’ll be able to see when you have a busy day you can schedule a shorter decluttering session. This will help you feel positive about staying consistent with your decluttering efforts!
2. Create Space Limitations
2. Create Space LimitationsOnce you have your plan in place, it’s important to create some space limitations when decluttering a small house or apartment.
I can hear you “I live in a small home and already have plenty of space limitations”. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
No matter how small your home is you still decide how much space you will let your stuff occupy. You get the idea. Just know that setting space limitations will not only help you in your decluttering but will also keep your home clutter-free.
Living in a small house I became quite skilled at the art of shoving things into drawers and closets to make them fit. Ugh, trust me it’s not a good skill to have. However, once I learned to set space limits it was so much easier to maintain a clutter-free environment.
Basically, all space limitations are is a predetermined limit on how much room a particular category is allowed to take up in our home.
For example, we have two tall bookshelves. We can only keep as many books as fit on those shelves. We each have one dresser, if we end up with more clothes than fit in the dressers we have to declutter until everything fits again.
The same goes with the kitchen, there is one cupboard that all my small appliances must fit in. They are not allowed to live on the countertops. This keeps my counters from becoming overly cluttered.
My kids also have space limitations enforced. Toys had to fit within a designated box and puzzles and games had to fit within a predetermined shelf area.
When you set space limits, once those limits are reached, you know it’s time to declutter and get rid of what you no longer need or love. This is an excellent way to keep your small space clutter-free.
3. Assign Everything a Home
When you live in a small space it doesn’t take much for your home to look cluttered. This is true even when you spend a good amount of time decluttering and getting rid of all the excess. It’s beyond frustrating and anything but motivating.
To prevent your small house from derailing your decluttering efforts, assign a specific home for your stuff. Everything you own needs a designated spot where it gets put away when not in use. If your stuff doesn’t have a place to live it’s going to sit out and contribute to your home looking cluttered. Before you know it your entire house begins to look cluttered.
Knowing where everything lives, or is going to live, in your home is an important step in decluttering your small house or apartment.
Another benefit is that as you come across items that don’t have a specific space to live or a specific purpose they serve, it’s surprisingly easy to recognize that item as clutter.
4. Create a Landing Space
4. Create a Landing SpaceAnother thing that makes decluttering a small house or apartment tough is that most of them do not have entryways. My home is no exception, our front door opens up straight into the living room.
This is a problem because the doorway to your home is the first line of defense to protecting your home from clutter.
For years, I would get frustrated because whenever someone arrives home things would get dropped on either a chair, the arm of the couch or the dining room table.
In trying to solve this problem, I creating a specific landing space for all those items. It was a simple solution that did so much to cut down on the clutter. Not to mention how much it cut down on my frustration 🙂
You can read more about how to create a landing space for your small home here.
5. Be Purposeful With What Comes Into Your Home
This one is key. I used to love to pick up a little happy today gift for my kiddos or husband. It was usually something small I knew they would like. Of course, I’d also pick up little things for myself, an extra candle I didn’t need, or a cute new throw blanket.
It didn’t take long before I’ve got a bunch of stuff in my home I don’t have room for. I’ll be honest, it was really hard for me to say no to these types of things. But in order to maintain a clutter-free home, one that I worked so hard for, I learned to be purposeful in what I bring into my home.
This means limiting the incoming to things. I started asking myself questions such as; do I have space for this to go? Do I already own something similar? Will the value it adds be greater than the space and time it will take up?
Most of the time, the clutter just isn’t worth the purchase. I still love to give happy today surprise gifts, the difference is more often than not they are a walk to get an ice cream cone, a happy Saturday morning box of donuts, or some type of fun experience.
In the end, those experiences are so much better than anything I ever purchased.
With a little bit of planning, a few self-imposed space limitations, and following the old adage a place for everything and everything in its place, you’ll be living clutter-free in your small space in no time.
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