How to Use a Remodel to Declutter

If you’re remodeling a room in your home or apartment, you have a great opportunity to declutter your belongings and move towards a more minimalist lifestyle. Since you’ll likely be clearing many things out of the room you’re remodeling, it’s the perfect time to go through your belongings and figure out what you don’t really need.

Consider the Size of the Remodel

The amount of decluttering you’re doing during a remodel will relate to the size of the remodel. If you’re doing your entire home, you’ll need to dedicate more time to figure out the best way to declutter a home before you have to temporarily move out during the construction. However, if you’re only doing one room, you may only need one to two days to clear everything out of the room and declutter it. Make sure to check in with your general remodeling contractor about what can stay in a room and what cannot during any sort of renovation.

If you’re doing a remodel on your own, you’ll still need to figure out what to clear from the area you’re remodeling before you really start in. When you’re figuring out your timeline, make sure to include enough time to declutter the room you’ll be renovating, and make sure that your trips to your local home improvement store include some thought to how you’ll organize your belongings once the remodel is complete.

General Decluttering Tips

If you’re looking for the best way to declutter a home during a remodel, you should probably start by thinking about the best way to declutter a home in general. Here are a few key tips to keep in mind no matter what room you’re decluttering and remodeling:

• Make Sure You Give Yourself Time To Declutter. It’s easy to get overwhelmed during the decluttering process. However, if you give yourself the right amount of time to declutter before a big remodel or during a smaller one, you can get all of your work done without burning yourself out. Doing an hour or two of work a day for three to four days can be much more effective than trying to do six to eight hours of decluttering straight.
• Can You Keep It Up? Once you declutter a room, it won’t necessarily stay that way. When you’re getting rid of your things, think about why you bought them in the first place and why you had to get rid of things. Make sure you’re not buying things that you won’t actually end up using. In addition, make sure that your storage solutions don’t lend themselves to a space becoming cluttered once again.
• The Six-Month Test. If you’re unsure about keeping a piece of clothing or another item, put it in storage for six months. By the end of the six months, if you haven’t reached for that item once, you’ll know that you’re likely not going to ever use it. Donate or sell the clothing that you get.
• Spark Joy. The queen of decluttering herself, Marie Condo, is famous for this method. As you’re going through everything in a room, you ask yourself whether or not the item sparks joy when you look at it and hold it. If the answer is no, it might mean that you should get rid of it.

With these tips in mind, you can find the best way to declutter a home and begin applying it to the space you’re trying to declutter.

Kitchen

If you’re remodeling your kitchen, it’s a great time to declutter your counters, cabinets, drawers, fridge, and pantry. When it comes to finding the best way to declutter a home, starting in the kitchen is a good way to go.

Kitchen remodeling doesn’t always mean you’ll be completely ripping out your kitchen and starting new, but you will likely still need to empty a lot of your kitchen out, even if you’re just having kitchen plumbing repair or appliances or countertops replaced. Even if you don’t need to empty out your kitchen, it’s a good idea to use this overhaul to declutter.

To start, declutter one area of your kitchen at a time. For example, start with all of the non-food materials in your cabinets, such as plates and glasses. Separate the items by their use, such as cooking, baking, special occasions, entertaining, serving, etc. Once you’ve separated everything out, get rid of anything that you don’t use that often or anything that you have too many of.

When cleaning out your pantry and fridge, you can follow the same idea, but make sure that you start by getting rid of any expired or bad foods. When you replace things in the cabinets or pantry, organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

Bathroom

Bathrooms are a huge place for clutter, which is why they’re one of the best places to start when you’re looking for the best way to declutter a home. Your bathroom can contain a multitude of products, from makeup to personal grooming to cleaning supplies. Making sure that you regularly are getting rid of expired or rarely used products is the key to making sure you don’t end up with an overly cluttered bathroom cabinet shortly after you declutter it.

Make sure to ask the bathroom remodeling services that you’re using when they expect to start and finish the work so you know the timeline you’ll have to finish the decluttering. Whether you want to declutter your things before the remodel starts or if you’re okay with working through it in a different part of your house during the remodel, the timeline of your remodeling service will impact the timeline of your declutter.

To start, take all of your products out of the cabinets or shelving and go through each of them. Do you actually use it? How often do you use it? Will you really use it in the near future? Get rid of any products you don’t use as well as any expired products. When you’re replacing things into your bathroom after the remodel, make sure to put everything away in as organized of a way as you possibly can to ensure that things will stay decluttered.

Living Room

If you hired a home remodeling contractor to help remodel your living room, you have a great opportunity for the best way to declutter a home living space. If your living room has shelving, bookcases, consoles, or cabinetry with storage inside it, it’s possible for it to become cluttered.

When you’re moving your living room furniture, make sure that you empty everything out of it first. Follow the same procedure as you would for the other rooms — empty everything out, decide what you want to keep and what you don’t need. When you’re replacing your furniture and smaller items, make sure that you place everything in a smart spot. If you have things that you use every day, make sure that you place them in an easily accessible spot. For example, make sure you have a designated place for your remotes or other controls so that you don’t have to worry about going into a cabinet and disturbing the contents to dig out your remotes every day.

The most important part of decluttering a living room and keeping it decluttered is to keep in mind that everything you bring back into your living room should have a purpose in that room. Try to avoid storing items that won’t be used in the living room there — if you don’t have enough room for it in the room it belongs in, the odds are that you have too much in the other room that you could declutter to make room for these “overflow” items. In fact, these overflow items probably can be gotten rid of considering the fact they aren’t important enough to take up space in the room they belong in.

Bedroom and Closet

If you’re remodeling your room and looking for the best way to declutter a home, you have a great opportunity to declutter a room that you most likely spend a lot of time in. Whether you’re getting new bedroom furniture or a completely new remodel, you can use this as a chance declutter your room and closet.

Make sure that you pick furniture pieces that have effective storage. This may mean not getting a nightstand with a giant drawer and cabinetry and instead opting for one with a shallow drawer that will just fit what you really need in your nightside stand.

When it comes to your clothing organization, there are quite a few ways to declutter your things. One of the most cluttered areas of your house is inevitably your closet, so the best way to declutter a home is by decluttering the closet.

To declutter your clothes, take out every piece of clothing that you have and lay them in one spot, like your bed. Go through every piece of clothing and separate it into a few piles: clothes you wear all the time, out of season clothes, clothes you don’t wear often, and clothes you never wear. Donate or give away the clothing that you never wear, and realistically look at whether or not you’ll wear the things in the clothes you rarely wear pile again. This is a great time to implement the six months rule from above. Store seasonal clothes out of sight to further declutter your closet. If you really want to declutter, consider a capsule wardrobe.

Basement

A basement renovation is a great way to declutter your home. Basements tend to be used as storage spaces, which means they end up becoming a graveyard for all of the odds and ends that you can’t seem to part with but never use. If you’re doing a basement remodel, the odds are that you have to clear out everything that is currently in your basement. Instead of taking whatever is in your basement and just relocating it, make sure that you fully declutter every box and bin that you have before putting it back in your basement post-renovation.

When you’re going through your basement items, be harsh and as realistic as possible when you’re going through things. If you’re opening boxes and being surprised by what’s in there, the odds are you may not need it anymore. These things have already surpassed the six-month test, and it’s time to let them go.

Make sure that anything you’re getting rid of is properly donated or otherwise given away whenever possible. You should try to only throw things out if there is no way to avoid it.

Remember to Donate

If you’re following the best way to declutter a home, you’ll have many, many things that you’re getting rid of. However, instead of throwing away perfectly good items that you just don’t use, make sure to donate them or give them away.

When you’re donating larger items, like appliances or furniture, make sure that you look for a charity that will accept these items. Some charities will only accept clothing donations, while others will accept homewares or appliances as well.

While you can look for general charities that accept a multitude of donations and then sell them to make money to then donate or invest in their programming, you can also look for organizations that use what you donate. For example, certain homeless shelters or women’s shelters will accept food and toiletry donations, so look at your local charities and see what they may be in need of when you’re beginning your donation process.

No matter if you’re doing a small bathroom renovation or a complete kitchen remodel where you gut the entire room, you can use your renovation or remodel as a chance to declutter the areas of your home where things tend to build up. Decluttering is an important part of living the minimalist lifestyle than many people aspire to achieve, and finding a good time to declutter can be one of the keys to successfully implementing minimalism.

How often do you declutter? What rooms in your home tend to get the most cluttered? Have you ever used a remodel as a kick-starter to your renovation? Let us know in the comments below.