If you’re dealing with a messy room and looking for help, this post will help give you some easy and practical ways on how to quickly declutter a room!
Dealing with a cluttered, disorganized room, regardless of which room, is super frustrating. You can try to ignore it, but eventually it just becomes too much. You need to do something about it, but you just can’t find the energy.
Trust me, all of us have been there. Clutter can become overwhelming very quickly, especially when you have kids or pets – or even both!
Although it can feel like way too much, this post will try to help you gain some sanity back by giving you some easy ways on how to quickly clean up your room, whether it be a kitchen, living room, playroom, or bedroom.
This post is all about some easy and practical ways to quickly declutter a room.
How to Quickly Declutter a Room
1. Remove distractions
Okay, first up – it’s time to put down that phone! I love social media as much as the next girl, but that TikTok binge can wait until you declutter. We all say to ourselves, “okay, just one more video and I’ll start.” Then before you know it, you’re three hours in and now instead of cleaning, you have to go start dinner.
It’s totally okay if you want to play some music on your phone while you declutter. There’s a lot of people who actually need some kind of background noise to focus on the task that they’re doing. But if your plan is to go scroll your Instagram feed every five minutes, you will never get done with decluttering, especially if you only have a small amount of time to do so.
2. Focus on what’s bothering you the most
The first thing you should do is look around your room and notice which areas or what type of mess is bothering you the most. If you’re in the living room, are your kids’ toys everywhere? If you’re in your bedroom, are your dirty clothes out of control? Take note of this.
Whatever it is that is currently making your skin crawl, go for that first. I promise that it will be so much easier to start when you use that as motivation. Once you see how it feels after the most frustrating thing about that clutter is gone, it will be easier to keep going once you notice how good it felt.
3. If you can’t pick – start with the floor
If you can’t choose what is bothering you the most at the moment, then start with your floor first. You would be surprised how much cleaner a room looks once you pick up everything off the floor. I typically start with the floor first because stepping on toys, clothes, etc. can be so overstimulating that it’s enough for me to give up altogether.
Honestly, it doesn’t even matter if it’s not in a nice, neat pile. It’s totally okay if it’s in an unorganized pile on another piece of furniture – just as long as it’s off the floor. Once you have a relatively clean floor to work with, I promise you will feel a lot less overwhelmed with the amount of clutter in the room.
4. Now sort whatever you just picked
You either picked the most annoying mess OR you chose to start with the floor. After you did that, it’s now time to sort. The best way is to try to stick to three piles: keep, donate, and trash. This is when you need to be honest with yourself about certain items. If you don’t use something, it really should go in the donate or trash pile.
If you’re 50/50 on it, I would put it in the donate pile just in case because you’re going to have to hang onto it anyway, which will give you a little bit longer to think about it. Right now, we’re trying to quickly declutter your room, not take the entire weekend to do because let’s be honest, who has an entire weekend to dedicate to that? (If you do, I am so jealous of your life!)
5. Time for storage
After sorting your clutter into three piles, you’re going to focus on your keep pile. Your donate and trash piles can easily be tossed into two different garage bags and labeled to take care of. You’re going to look at the keep pile and see what items definitely need to stay in that room. Do you have blankets that need to stay in there, or maybe you have a book or two that you keep in that room?
Now that you have identified the things you have to keep in that room, you’re going to look around and see if you have any bins or woven baskets that you aren’t using. Maybe you have a cabinet under your tv that you can keep some of these things in. For example, I actually grabbed the tray from my bathroom holding my extra toilet paper to use to hold small things in my living room. My bathroom has a cabinet so I can just put extra toilet paper under there. Get creative!
Below are a few Amazon pieces that can help with storage for the future:
6. Put things in their place
Since you’ve stored away anything that needs to stay in the room that you’re decluttering, now you can focus on the rest of the keep pile. We both know that you definitely have some items in that room that don’t need to be in there. If you’re in the living room, do you have a bunch of coats laying on the ground or any shoes? Go put those away. If you’re in your bedroom, do you have cups or plates that need to be cleaned? Go put those in the kitchen.
I know it feels like I’m calling you out, but a lot of clutter comes from displacement. I know that there’s a lot of items in there that probably don’t belong in that room – and it’s okay! I do the same thing. I can’t tell you how many snack wrappers end up all over my house…it’s actually a little embarrassing. It’s okay, but it’s time to put it in its place.
7. Take note of your declutter
This sounds a little vague, so let me be more clear – I want you to notice the patterns in your clutter. Are there certain articles of clothing that tended to pile up more, or did you notice dog toys everywhere? Maybe you have coats and shoes everywhere? This means you could benefit from adding hooks or even a place to store shoes. Do you have dog toys scattered throughout the room? You should probably get a larger container for those toys.
Being proactive is the best way to prevent clutter like this. If you can foresee what will eventually become clutter in your room, this will make your decluttering easier. This is not necessarily a step that would help you now, but it will help you declutter much faster in the future. And we are always trying to do things to be nicer to our future selves!
Below are a few Amazon pieces that you may like to help:
8. Progress not perfection
One of the most important things to remember is that you don’t have to complete this list perfectly. The fact that you even looked up a way to declutter in the first place is a great first step. Maybe you didn’t feel like sorting all the items into piles and you just picked up and threw away all the trash in the room.
That’s still one of the best and quickest ways to clutter! You would be surprised at how many people just let trash sit around on their tables or in the corners because they don’t feel like getting up to throw it away. If this list inspires someone to do just one thing on it, then my job here is done!
9. Make future plans to do this more often
Try to plan a little declutter session as often as you can. The more often you declutter, the quicker it will take! I know a lot of women that wait until their kids are asleep or they wake up in the morning to do a little “reset”. If you’re on a TikTok, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and this is a great way to go about it.
It’s also okay if that’s not something that’s feasible for you and your family. We’re all out here trying the best we can and if that means clutter is a constant, it’s totally fine. But having a quick declutter session scheduled in as often as possible can really help with your mental health.
Like I mentioned above, it is totally okay if you can only pick and choose a few things to do on the list. We are prioritizing progress over perfection. If this list inspires you to just take one step towards decluttering your room, then it worked. Happy decluttering!
This post is all about how to quickly declutter a room.
