Home Decluttering: Popular Methods for Cleaning Up

For this year’s spring cleaning, why not do something more extensive and completely declutter your home? If you haven’t done this before and have no idea where to begin, read on as Handyman Connection® of Matthews shares a quick look at some of today’s popular decluttering methods.

KonMari Method

The KonMari Method is popularized in 2014 by author and professional consultant Marie Kondo, with her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It gained a recent surge in popularity due to the show Tidying up With Marie Kondo, which aired on the streaming site Netflix. In the show, Marie Kondo visits homeowners and helps them declutter their homes using this method.

The rules of the KonMari method combine minimalism, commitment to tidying up and focusing on an ideal lifestyle. Items are tidied up in the following order: clothes, books, papers, komono (miscellaneous items) and sentimental items. When deciding whether to discard items, one has to ask oneself if that item “sparks joy.” The intent is to have a clutter-free home that contains items that bring a positive energy to the occupant.

Swedish Death Cleaning

The name sounds morbid at first, but once you get the logic behind it, you’ll see why Swedish Death Cleaning is named as such. Swedish Death Cleaning is discussed in The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, a book by artist Margareta Magnusson published in 2018. Unlike the KonMari Method, which focuses on things that give you joy, Swedish Death Cleaning focuses on how the items will make your loved ones happy. The idea is one should gradually declutter as one ages, so that when they pass on, their loved ones wouldn’t have to sift through items that they may find meaningless.

Four Box Method

The Four Box method involves sorting clutter into four categories: Put away, give away throw away, and undecided. One needs to simply pick up one item, place it into one of the four boxes, and process depending on the box name. While it provides more flexibility compared to other methods, the “undecided” box can be a problem if it starts piling up.

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