What is a good rule of thumb for cleaning out your house?

Question

I just visited a couple of friends who had absolutely no clutter and they had no junk stashed anywhere. (I looked in closets and an extra garage) I want my house to look cleaned out. I want to eliminate 5 married years of stashed junk!! HELP!! What advice can you give?

Answer 1

There is a wonderful website that will help you with your house cleaning and keeping your house clutter free in baby steps. It helped me a  lot. http://flylady.net/pages/begin_babysteps...

Answer 2

i only have one and i cant seem to follow it myself: face the hangers your clothes in your closet are hanging on one way. in six months, if they are still facing the same way get rid of them.  

Answer 3

I don't know about if you aren't planning on moving, but when we moved to the new house I literally threw out more than I moved. Seriously.

If I couldn't think of where I was going to put it before I packed it - it didn't get packed.

Answer 4

Schedule one day a room and stick to it.

Make 4 bins; keep, donate, trash, storage

Start in one corner and work to the other side, leaving nothing out of place when you leave. Dust as you go along too.

Try to put more in the donate bin rather than keep and get rid of it buy going on to free cycle or calling your local salvation army. www.freecycle.org (everything is free,donated to keep usable items out of the landliffs)

Put all your storage in one place in the room.

When it comes to paperwork, keep your taxes and all your ID in a fireproof box (safe) that you can get to if something happens. You really don't need to carry your birth certificate, health cards, or SS cards with you everywhere you  go. Get rid of bills that is a year old and sign up for e-bills for your home bills, in some banks you can get a copy of your bills sent right to your bank account on line services page instead of being sent to unsecured e-mail addresses such as hotmail, yahoo (sorry), google, etc etc.

When it comes to your bathroom, move all your medications out of the bathroom, with all the moisture while you bathe it does affect medicine being stored in the same room, best to keep up in a wicker basket untop of the fridge or microwave.

In the garage, invest in shelving and storage. unplug fridges that are plugged into the wall in the garage, unless you really need to use the fridge its been estimated that you could save 150.00 a year by not having some appliances plugged in such as the extra fridge or freezer.

Clean up as you go, never leave a mess anywhere, if you wash your bathroom down with a rag after you shower your bathroom will stay almost spotless. Fold all your towels in the closets the same way, and sweep your floors everyday.