This week I’ve started decluttering for the holidays and would love to give everyone some tips that I’m using and plan on using. Do you have any tips that I have left out?

1. Set a timer for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or even an hour and stop when the timer goes off. Make sure that you put everything away when you finish.
2. Have a basket for each person who lives in your house clearly labeled, a basket for giveaway (I line mine with a garbage bag), a bag for trash.
3. Have a helper or two. Have them put away as you are putting things in baskets, or tote giveaway items to the car.
4. If there isn’t a home for an item, make a home for it.
5. Challenge your kids to find X things to throw away, give away or put away.
6. Schedule a time each day to declutter 1 drawer, or one shelf. It doesn’t take as long as you think.
7. If you aren’t sure if you want to keep an item or not, put it away in storage. Mark on your calendar to give it away in 6 months or a year if you have not gotten it out of storage.
8. Send all of those old photos in to a service that can make a photo album for you. It can be digital or in book form. Better yet, have your kids scan your pictures or put them in an album for you.
9. File questionable things under T for Trash.
10. Do you have duplicates of an item you don’t use? Give it away. If you wait to sell it most of the time it will sit right there and collect more dust.
11. Don’t touch someone else’s things without their knowledge, especially a teenager or an adult. You may be spending money to replace that “broken piece of junk” that they really needed for something we don’t understand.
12. Use a hot file in your desk and keep only what papers need attention this month, everything needs to be filed away in a filing cabinet or just filed under T.
13. Don’t overwhelm yourself, just make a habit of getting rid of 1 (or more) thing if you bring something new into your house.