If the thought of decluttering your home causes your anxiety levels to rise, you aren’t alone.
For many, the task can feel so huge you don’t know where to start. Not to mention that once you do get started decluttering, it’s easy to find yourself distracted and making more of a mess than when you began.
It’s a vicious cycle.
That’s where the CORE 4 method for decluttering can help.
What is the CORE 4 method?
Kayleen Kelly is a professional organiser who specialises in chronic clutter and clients with ADHD. To help make life easier for her clients, she came up with the CORE 4 method, which breaks down the task of decluttering into 4 easy steps:
- Clear out
- Categorise
- Cut out
- Contain
Following these steps helps you stay focused and get the job done. There’s no quitting when using this technique, because each step is clear and leads nicely onto the next one.
How the CORE 4 decluttering tip works
Choose a room or area in your house to declutter, follow the four steps and don’t move on to another room until it’s done.
1. Clear out
Every item in your home should have a place. This first step involves removing everything from the room that doesn’t belong there. Speaking to Livingetc, Kayleen explains how she does this.
“I use bins assigned to each room to collect items that belong in other areas of the home and set them aside to be rehomed later. This allows you to quickly collect and clear out the items without jumping around your house trying to put things away,” she says.
2. Categorise
Once you’ve cleaned out everything that doesn’t belong in the room, it’s time to take stock of everything you own. You might need to do this in sections. Still, the idea is to take all of your items and put them into categories. Doing this will make the next step even more manageable.
3. Cut out
This is where you could also channel the approach made famous by Marie Kondo. Working through each category, make a quick decision and decide whether you want to keep it or eliminate it. If you spend more than three seconds deciding if you will keep an item, it stays (for now).
4. Contain
The fourth and final step is about giving items a designated home. Make sure you keep and store all items in their categories, so that it’s easy to find them and put them away again.
And there you have it, you’re done with one area of your house. You are well on the way to a clutter-free home.
