For today’s post on decluttering your clothes, home, and life we’re joined by professional organizer, Christina Giaquinto.
Christina is a professional organizer, spiritual coach, and brand ambassador for Modular Closets. She’s been featured as an expert in many national publications such as PopSugar, Women’s Health, Reader’s Digest, Huff Post, and Bustle. Her mission is to help others declutter and organize their lives of anything that is not in alignment with their truest most authentic self!
I also recently had Christina on the podcast for Episode 32, where she shares even more tips on the physical and mental side of clutter.
Decluttering your clothes is always a challenge for me—especially as a style blogger, I always worry that I’ll give something away and then regret it. She shares some great tips for letting go of things in today’s post!
Physical clutter and mental clutter are equally stressful to our lives. Physical clutter is all the things in our homes we do not necessarily need—like duplicates of items, things we forgot we bought, and old clothes we haven’t used or worn in years.
Mental clutter can be thoughts, belief systems, unfulfilling experiences, or unhealthy behaviors.
Clutter is the roadblock keeping you from simple living and living a life of peace and happiness. If you declutter everything in your life that isn’t in alignment with you, you’re left with a life filled with happiness!
Top 10 Tips for Decluttering Your Clothes, Home, and Life:
1. Write a Master Home Decluttering List
Write a master list of every room in your home with subcategories of all the areas to organize. For example, if you write down, “Kitchen,” then you’d want to write down subcategories:
- Pantry
- Home drawers
- Cabinets
- Spice drawer
- Jacket closet
- Refrigerator
By writing a master list of every room in your home with its subcategories, you instantly free your mind from stress and clutter! You’re already getting organized by doing this.
Then, number your projects in the order you are going to work on them. Don’t feel pressured into doing and getting rid of everything at once!
Depending on your personality, pick the space that is easiest to tackle, the space stressing you out the most, or the hardest one so you know you can do anything!
2. Declutter Negative Energy
Declutter any negativity in your life and get rid of things you don’t really need! This is just as powerful and important as clearing out physical clutter.
Let go of things you’re holding onto like negative people in your life, limiting belief systems, and unhealthy behaviors.
The environment you are in, the people you surround yourself with, and your daily habits and behaviors have a direct correlation to your internal peace.
This is the year you finally allow yourself to fill your life with only the best positive and inspiring energy!
3. Create Lots of Categories
When you are decluttering physical items, the most effective system for doing so is by creating as many categories as possible. Not only does this start your organizing process when it is time to put everything back, but it will make your decluttering step so much easier!
Many times people say this instantly allows them to feel more organized and less stressed because you begin to have a system in place.
When you’re organizing your clothes, it is much more manageable to go through categories, rather than all of your clothes. For example, you can create categories for loungewear, jeans, t-shirts, etc. This will make the process less daunting. Just be sure to give yourself some room to tackle one category at a time.
4. Emotions and Objects
Remember the objects you are decluttering are just that—objects. We need to remind ourselves that these objects tend to hold a lot of power over us, but at the end of the day, they are objects that can not do anything to us.
We need to take back our power and remember the things that truly matter—the things that are irreplaceable are our health, family, and loved ones.
When going through emotions and objects, I recommend grabbing a donation box and asking yourself if you really love the item or if it’s become an item that you forgot you even had.
5. Say Thank You And Let It Go
Clutter seems like it would be easy to let go of because it has a negative connotation. Although we see it as a bunch of random stuff, clutter is also composed of things we create an emotional attachment to which makes it very hard to let go.
Remember why you received the object, or what that object provided for you and allow someone else to experience use or happiness from it. For example, we hold onto clothes we think we may wear one day but have not worn in 2 years.
If you donate that piece of clothing, someone else may absolutely love it, and then that piece of clothing would be bringing positive energy and joy to someone’s life, not collecting dust.
By showing gratitude for what we have in our lives, it allows us to make peace with letting go because we experienced what we needed to. Now it is time to let someone else enjoy it!
6. Phrases To Look Out For
“I will keep this just in case…”
“I might need this …”
“I will put it here for now…”
All of these phrases are traps for clutter. Part of decluttering and getting organized is becoming more conscious of our actions and habits.
If you find yourself constantly saying these phrases, simply start to be aware of them and change your habits. Instead of saying, “I will put it here for now,” take a few minutes to put it away.
This becomes a new habit. Instead of saying, “I will keep this just in case,” adjust your habit to feel gratitude and let go. All these little changes allow you to live a decluttered life!
7. Stop Clutter from Happening
One simple tip to stop clutter from happening is to write a shopping list when you go out and stick with it. We often go into a store with a mental note of what we need which is why we end up buying hundreds of dollars more than what we actually went in for.
Every time you go to the store, write down exactly what you need. This prevents overspending, and clutter from entering your home.
8. Design A New Closet System:
Systems are key! The proper closet system allows you to get organized with ease and prevents you from having to do wardrobe decluttering.
By taking your existing closet and adding a closet system like Modular Closets you instantly add more space. You have the ability to double or triple the closet.
You can check out Elise’s Modular Closets review here, and see more pics in her blogger office here.
Even after you declutter clothes in your closet, if you don’t have an effective system in place, it will be challenging to organize.
If designing your closet seems daunting, don’t worry! Modular Closets offers a user-friendly design tool that’s so easy you will feel like a pro designer.
And if you need extra help, don’t worry because one of their designers can also help you design the closet of your dreams. They will help you design your closet for free!
I am so thankful to be Modular Closets’ brand ambassador and organizing expert and I am also always here to help in any way I can. If anyone has any organizing questions or needs help with their closet, I am here to help.
If you need some organizing inspiration, you can read lots of organizing tips at Christina’s Corner.
9. Clutter Stops The Energy Flow
Clutter stops energy from flowing and feels heavy and stressful. When your home and life are decluttered and organized, you feel lighter.
Not only will your home feel more spacious and your mind will feel less consumed, but decluttering will also allow more energy to flow through your life. It will feel more welcoming and warm like a stress-free home.
Your mind won’t feel bogged down. You’ll feel lighter and have an extra pep in your step!
Your life simply flows more easily because the weight of clutter is not holding you down. This is a wonderful motivator to remember as you are decluttering your clothes, home, and life.
10. Declutter the Amount of Information Coming at You
We’re bombarded by information coming into our minds every day—it can be ruthless. Radio, television, news, magazines, conversations, texts, social media, the phone, and constant chatter all around us affect us deeply.
We may not realize how much stress and clutter this is adding to our lives. The most powerful thing you can do with this clutter is to be aware.
Be aware of what you are watching and how much you are watching. Be aware of how much noise is in your life, and allow more solitude and quiet hours.
Be aware of how much time you are spending on social media. Awareness is key and it is small changes that can make all the difference.
P.S. Elise’s podcast episode on how to do a digital detox talks a lot about this!
Thank you so much to Christina for sharing this guest post with us! I just finished out a whole house clean-out and used a ton of her tips from this post and the podcast episode and I can definitely say I’m feeling so much lighter!
I’ve also been taking Christina’s tip about being more aware of not bringing clutter into the home in the first place, and that has been so helpful!
If you use any of these tips for decluttering your clothes, home, and life, let me know!
Looking for more home content? Get inspo here.
Modular Closets Review + Cloffice Design Inspo
How to Have a Nice Pantry: Organization Ideas
How to Make Your Spice Drawer Aesthetic
Elise Armitage is an entrepreneur and founder of What The Fab, a travel + lifestyle blog based in California. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Since then, she’s launched her SEO course Six-Figure SEO, where she teaches bloggers how to create a passive revenue stream from their website using SEO. Featured in publications like Forbes, Elle, HerMoney, and Real Simple, Elise is a firm believer that you can be of both substance and style.
