Home Inspector’s Tips to Declutter Your Home in a Day

Do you have a Home inspector coming tomorrow? Or worse, you have a showing scheduled?

With a deadline, and a goal of making your home look clean and uncluttered, you need to take a dispassionate approach to organizing and downsizing your piles of stuff. Whether it is the bedroom, garage or kitchen, many years of living in one space allows you the luxury of hanging onto items that you normally might toss. So you need to ask the hard questions:

  1. Have I used this item in the past year? If you haven’t used it, get rid of it.
  2. Will I use it in the year ahead? If you don’t have a real need or plan to do something with it, the answer is “no.”
  3. If I was shopping right now, would I buy this again? Apply your current tastes, habits and priorities to this long-kept item.
  4. If it is broken, is it worth fixing? And will you? Have you replaced its functionality?
  5. Would I keep this if I moved? Would it be worth packing up, moving and unpacking in a new space?
    Answering the questions above will help you decide what to toss, what to donate and what you simply can’t live without. If you find you have many items to donate check this A-Z guide of where to donate anything you might want to get rid of.

Finished Inspecting Your Home? It’s Time to Organize

Once you have done your own home inspection and determined what you are going to keep and what you will donate, it’s time to get the “keepers” organized. Here are some methods for bringing order to your home in a few hours. These are just a launching point to get you to think creatively about how everyday items can be re-purposed to help you get organized.

  • Use extra Tupperware and other boxes to organize jewelry and other small items
    Put all those extra food containers sitting in a kitchen drawer or cabinet to use! You could also employ ice cube trays (which stack) for instant organization of jewelry (think pendants, earrings, rings, etc.).
  • Use magazine organizers in the freezer
    Buy some plastic (that is, easy to clean) magazine organizers to put on your freezer shelves to contain all the lumpy bags of frozen produce that fall out whenever you try to find something and organize your frozen foods so you’ll be able to find what you want faster.
  • Use a CD rack to organize your plastic container lids.
    Everyone has this problem. Plastic lids are stuck in every kitchen drawer and the right one is always missing.  Use a slotted device, like the CD holder, to bring fast organization to that chaos, saving space and making the right lid easier to locate when you need it.
  • Contain electronic cables with Toilet Paper Rolls
    Coil the cable, slide it into the roll, and write the type of cable on the roll. End the tangled mess and the frustration of digging through a mess of cables as your phone or computer dies.
  • Stash your bathroom supplies and appliances in small baskets
    You may need to buy a few cheap baskets at a home supply store, but the baskets bring instant organization to all the shampoos, lotions, brushes, hair dryers and toiletries scattered on the bathroom counter and bath stall. One of those baskets could be a shower caddy that hangs from the shower head. You can also suspend small baskets for shower supplies from shower curtain rings to get them up and out of the way.

These ideas are just a starting point. Get creative with the storage containers you have piled up, or you could purchase at a dollar store. Decluttering will not only make your home feel more spacious, it will make your home easier to clean, more attractive to guests and, if you’re selling your home, more welcoming to potential buyers.

HomeGuard Incorporated
California Home Inspection Company

Serving: San Diego, Sacramento / El Dorado Hills, Modesto / Stockton, San Jose, Livermore, Novato and Napa Areas

Before you list your home on the MLS or after you’re in contract, think of HomeGuard Incorporated! We are here to provide you with home, roof and termite inspections, Natural Hazard Disclosure Reports (NHD) and Home Warranty. We have served California realtors and their clients for 30 years. We are ready to help make home inspection easy and affordable. Call 855-331-1900 or contact us online today to schedule an inspection.