Here’s a nifty suggestion just read online. Happy to pass it along.
If you’re always surrounded by seemingly endless piles of clutter — old catalogs and magazines, empty envelopes, the recycling and more — you might benefit from a shortcut to help conquer your clutter. This simple solution might not seem like much, but it could be just the trick.
Keep a small trash can, recycling bin or container in every room of your home. That might seem like a lot of trash cans, perhaps even unnecessarily so. Maybe de-cluttering and keeping your life free of unneeded things is more about making the process as uncomplicated and stress-free as possible. Maybe you let clutter stack up around the house because you can’t get into the habit of bringing stuff to the trash can or recycling bin. (Or maybe you get distracted on your way to toss things.) Maybe you skip getting to tasks you need to start because you’ve got to get over the hump about tossing them out.
Is it not trash or recycling that’s cluttering your life? If so, then you might use this suggestion in a slightly different way. Place “back home” baskets in each room. They’re containers where you might put items that don’t belong there, to be brought back to their rightful places later on. Example – you find your car keys in your pocket while in your bedroom. Into a basket they might go, until they’re back to your back pack, purse, wall hook, or other “home” where they normally “live.”
If your goal is to reduce the amount of stuff you have, period, this idea could work with “out boxes,” where you might put items to toss, donate, or give away to others, presuming that you don’t add to their clutter.
The trick for making this work (and to avoid the containers becoming clutter piles themselves) is to schedule a consistent time each week to deal with each bin, back-home basket or outbox. That way, they won’t become added clutter. Bonus points – you’ll smile and maybe feel that you’ve accomplished something. You will have!