By Samantha Karp

Far too many of us wait for the perfect time to get organized. Like with having a child or starting a new career trajectory, there is never a perfect time to start. As with taking on any new challenge, if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting forever. Get started today with the following tips and tricks to declutter, reassess, and optimize any space, with the goal of saving yourself (and your loved ones and cohabitants) precious time, money, and energy.

1. Give yourself permission to take a crash course in the contents of your own home. With the goal of being able to move through your days with more intention and without having to spend or squander precious resources, be honest and ask yourself if you have recently or regularly thought, “I can’t find my…” or “I need to buy…”. Ultimately, 9 times out of 10, it’s there somewhere and no, you don’t need to buy it, you just need to uncover it. Once you do, you can work towards clearing out the extraneous items that were hiding it.
2. Start with a highly trafficked, low-emotion area. Allow yourself to experience the instant gratification of a decluttering challenge by starting with an area you use every single day, the contents of which you are not terribly emotionally attached to. Many people use the kitchen or bathroom as their jumping-off point, emptying out all the contents therein, grouping them into categories, and assessing the items within those categories. 3 bottles of Tylenol, all partially full? Combine them into a single bottle and toss the other 2 bottles. 4 spatulas of the exact same size? Donate 3 of them, especially if you have a dishwasher. Regain the awareness of just how much you own and make decisions about what it is you both want and need to keep.
3. Be honest, and if necessary, ruthless. Honestly ask yourself if you ever reach for that blouse, that blazer, that pair of trousers. If you spend the time looking at it and tossing it to the side every day, recognize that you’re wasting precious time assessing options that you do not favor. The more items you feel negatively about, the more time you’re wasting. Donate or sell the items that you don’t wear or love.
4. Get rid of one item a day. Challenge yourself to part with or use up at least one item every single day, whether it be a sock with a hole in it (toss this!) or an old bottle of shampoo (use this up!). Slowly but surely, you will see your space lean out, and you’ll force yourself to use up what you already have available.
5. Shop your home, but keep your backstock at the store. Try out a “buy nothing” day, followed by a “buy nothing” week, and so on. Before clicking “add to cart”, take a thorough look inside your cabinets and be certain that you don’t already have 3 bottles of ketchup or 6 cans of olives. While you’re at it, curb the habit of buying too much unnecessary backstock. The storage in your home is precious, and few people go through a bottle of ketchup that quickly.

About the Author: Samantha Karp Weitzman, Esq. (@thewellcuratedcloset) is a licensed attorney and property and casualty insurance broker with a distinct passion and affinity for efficiency and frugality, achieved through home organization. Her philosophy centers around utilizing the items that already exist in a client’s home to create a streamlined and optimized space, without unnecessary expenditures and with the goal of reacquainting clients with their possessions and helping them make intentional decisions about whether to keep them.

Samantha Karp Weitzman, Esq. (@thewellcuratedcloset) is a licensed attorney and property and casualty insurance broker with a distinct passion and affinity for efficiency and frugality, achieved through home organization. Her philosophy centers around utilizing the items that already exist in a client’s home to create a streamlined and optimized space, without unnecessary expenditures and with the goal of reacquainting clients with their possessions and helping them make intentional decisions about whether to keep them.