Declutter Your Home: Start with the Junk Drawer

If you’re looking to declutter your home, it’s often hard to know where to start. Start small. Start with the junk drawer.

Why Start with the Junk Drawer?

If you’re ready to declutter your home, consider starting with the junk drawer. It’s a small, manageable task. And the completion of this task can feel incredibly satisfying.

When I clean my house, I tend to focus on one area at a time. If I focus on the enormity of the cleaning task as a whole, I often get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all.

If you want to declutter your home, the junk drawer is a great place to start.

My junk drawer often includes batteries that died years earlier, pens that don’t work, and dull pencils that need a sharpener that doesn’t exist (at least in my house). It contains straws, an ornate teaspoon I don’t recognize, piles of paperclips and rubber bands, rolls of tape, stamps (and not the “Forever” kind), a screwdriver, Chinese takeout menus, and ugly magnets sent to me by real estate agents. For some reason, the drawer is also always filled with crumbs.

I use those stamps straight away, put the paperclips and tape with my office supplies, recycle the menus and magnets, throw out the dead pens, and rejoice that I finally found that screwdriver that has been missing for the past six months.

It’s a good feeling.

Declutter Your Home. Start Today.

Ten minutes is all it takes. Don’t buy into the all or nothing trap. Remember: Perfection is the enemy of the good.

If you want to declutter your home, start with the junk drawer and then later in the day pick another 10-minute space to conquer. The coffee table, a desk drawer, the coat closet, the top of your dresser. Fold your laundry. Or make your bed. Or de-grunge one shelf in the refrigerator. Take on one thing at a time, and you may just find yourself feeling productive and inspired.

Ditch the junk. It’s weighing you down. (I know it weighs me down.) Declutter your home as part of your self-care regimen. Clean one drawer today. Even the smallest of spaces can yield big rewards.