How to declutter your home without burning out: a room-by-room plan

Set it up so you can finish

• Work in short sessions: 20 to 45 minutes, or one drawer or one shelf at a time. Stopping while you still have energy makes the next session easier to start.
• Finish what you open. Only take out what you can sort and put back in that session.
• Have your bags or boxes ready before you start: keep, donate, sell, recycle, rubbish.
• Take the outgoing things out of the house quickly. Donation bags left in the hall drift back into rooms.

Room-by-room order

1. Bathroom: out-of-date products, half-used bottles, samples. Few emotions, quick wins.
2. Kitchen: duplicate utensils, chipped mugs, gadgets you have not used in a year, expired food.
3. Wardrobe: clothes that do not fit, that you avoid, or that need repairs you will not do.
4. Living room: books, media, cables, ornaments, piles on surfaces.
5. Paperwork: shred what you do not need, file what you must keep, and scan where it helps. Check how long you need to keep tax and financial records where you live.
6. Storage: loft, garage, spare room, under the bed.
7. Sentimental items last.

Keep, donate, sell: simple rules

• Keep it if you have used it in the past year, it fits your life now, and you would buy it again.
• The one-year rule for clothes and tools: if a full cycle of seasons has passed without using it, it is a candidate to go. Make exceptions for genuine emergency or seasonal items.
• Duplicates: keep the best one or two.
• "Just in case": if it would be cheap and easy to replace when actually needed, let it go.
• Sell only items that are worth the time of listing and meeting buyers. Set a deadline; if it has not sold by then, donate it.
• Donate items in good, clean, working condition. Check what your local charity shop or donation point accepts.
• Recycle or dispose of the rest properly, especially electronics and batteries.

Sentimental items

• Keep the best, not all. One or two drawings from a child's school year rather than every one.
• Take photos of things you want to remember but do not need to store.
• Give a container a limit: a single memory box. If it fills, choose again.
• Gifts: you can value the person without keeping the object.
• Other people's things: do not declutter a partner's or family member's belongings for them.
• If something is too hard right now, put it aside and come back to it later. That is not failing.

Keeping it tidy

• Everything needs a home. Clutter is often just things with nowhere to go.
• One in, one out: when something new arrives, something similar leaves.
• A ten-minute reset each evening: return items to their homes.
• Deal with the entry points: post, shopping and freebies. Recycle junk mail on the way in.
• Clear surfaces attract clutter less when you treat them as empty by default.
• A seasonal check: a quick pass through wardrobes and cupboards a few times a year.