17 of The Most Important Spaces to Declutter This Fall
Everyone talks about spring cleaning but the reality is that your home needs more than a once-a-year refresh. Especially if you have kids! Not to mention that the holidays are coming and you would much rather focus on creating memories with the ones that you love instead of being overwhelmed with all of the clutter, wouldn’t you? Here are my 17 spaces to declutter this fall that’ll help you have a stress-free holiday season.
Need more ideas? Check out: 30 Easy Organizing Project Ideas
Before you start in each area, set up 4 different boxes and label them with these labels:
- Trash
- Donate
- Keep
- Give Away
That way you can easily travel around from area to area and this will help you keep things straight with what you want to do with each item.
For example: if you have a bunch of old toys that your kids no longer play with, put them in the giveaway pile and give them to your neighbor’s kids who would love them!
This is a great process for helping you to purge and be brutally honest with yourself with what things you need to keep. Remember that having more stuff does not make you happier. Having a clutter-free life helps you to clear up that mental space in your brain and gives you more peace.
Spaces to Declutter This Fall
Here is my master list of 17 spaces to declutter this fall. The areas that I have chosen will be some of the most used spaces that you will be using in the upcoming season.
- Garage
- Outdoor Spaces (ex: patio)
- Closets
- Office Space
- Pantry
- Spice Drawer or Cabinet
- Baking Supplies
- Bedroom
- Playroom
- Game Cupboard
- Art and Craft Supplies
- Kids Rooms
- Holiday Decorations
- Gift Wrap
- Blankets
- Linen Closet
- Closet and Entryway
Garage
The first place that I recommend organizing is the garage. Depending on the area that you live in the weather can turn cold really fast! So cleaning the garage is definitely easier to get done when it’s a comfortable temperature instead of really cold.
The garage usually tends to be a catch-all space where everyone drops everything that they don’t know what to do with. But having an orderly garage goes a long way to help you have an uncluttered and peaceful mind. Don’t think that just because it’s outside of the house, it doesn’t hang in your subconscious. Because it does!
Outdoor Spaces
Now is also an excellent time to clean up your outdoor spaces. Put away patio furniture, put kids’ toys away, and spray everything down with the hose. That way everything will be safe from the extreme weather conditions that can sometimes exist depending on where you live.
Closets
Closets are a great thing to declutter in the fall. The first thing that you need to assess is your summer clothing. Now that summer is over, you’re able to look back and see what things you actually wore and which things you didn’t. Get rid of the summer clothes that you didn’t wear during the summer months.
Then declutter your winter clothes! Having too many winter clothes can be overwhelming and often leaves you not wearing a large portion of your wardrobe. Declutter the things that you haven’t worn for a long time, no matter how much you spent on them!
Some of us get hung up on not wanting to get rid of things just because we spend a lot of money on them. But I’m here to tell you, if you don’t wear it, then get rid of it and give it to somebody who would love it.
Office Space
Many of you are working from home right now so it’s essential to have an organized and decluttered office space. It will help you to have a clear mind as you are doing your work. Declutter your office one drawer at a time and be fiercely honest with yourself on what items you need to keep versus which ones you are okay with getting rid of. Do the best you can to keep your office desk as clutter-free as possible at all times.
Check out this organizing post on how to create a stylish minimalist home office that you love to work in!
Pantry
The holidays are almost upon us and I don’t know about you, but when fall comes around, I do a lot more cooking and baking than I did in the summer. Getting all things in order in regard to your pantry will significantly help you to know what you already have on hand and not let things get lost in the back of that deep pantry.
So much money is wasted on unused food that we oftentimes already have, but forgot about, because it was buried! So take a few minutes and declutter your pantry. Throw out expired food and set up an organized system.
If you are wanting a step-by-step guide on how to create an organized dream pantry, you can check out this post for more details!
Spice Drawer
Heaven knows that the holiday season is the baking season! So having a well-stocked, decluttered, and organized spice area will go a long way for saving you a lot of time!
Go through each spice and look at the expiration date. I’m not super strict on throwing my spices away by the expiration date but they do lose potency after the expiration date. So it’s probably best not to hang on to spices that have expired 5 years ago. This will help you to assess which spices you need to rebuy and have on hand in order to get you prepped and ready for Christmas baking!
Baking Supplies
The kitchen is one of the most important spaces to declutter this fall because of all of the extra baking and cooking that goes on during the winter months. This is a great time to rethink how you organize your kitchen as well!
When I moved into my home, I had a bunch of people helping me unload kitchen supplies. They were being very helpful to try and help me get the kitchen put together quickly but I didn’t put too much thought into where things were actually going, I was just trying to get it put away.
So think critically about how often you use certain items and how accessible they are. Then be honest and truthful with yourself about how often you use each and every baking dish or kitchen gadget. Get rid of the things that you no longer use and give them to a family member or neighbor or someone who might use it!
Bedroom
Bedrooms are often a drop station where people just drop their stuff and run! Unless if you are in the habit of cleaning your room and making your bed every day, bedrooms can end up looking like a giant cluttered mess!
But having a cluttered bedroom creates a cluttered mind. Free up that mental space and declutter your bedrooms with things that go in other rooms and decide what things you no longer need.
Playroom
Now that most of the kids are back in school, this is the perfect time to declutter your playroom. Over time, kids naturally grow out of toys and stop playing with them. So it doesn’t make any sense for you to keep them around.
If you have some expensive, really nice toys that you’re having a hard time partying with, you can do what I did and create a grandkid tote! Inside this tote is where I put some of my kid’s favorite toys that they have grown out of that I am keeping for my grandkids.
That is obviously a long way away from me, but I love that I don’t have to part with some of their special toys. My mom did this and my kids love going to her house because she has lots of totes full of toys that they can play with!
Here are all of my favorite ways to keep our playroom organized!
Game Cupboard
Something about the cooler temperatures really can make you want to play games together as a family. So take a few minutes to declutter and organize your game cupboard. If your family loves playing games as much as my family does, then this is a top priority for spaces to organize this fall.
Now is a great time to make sure that your games don’t have missing pieces and to create a system that will help you be able to easily find the games that you are looking for.
I have an entire post dedicated to organizing your card games and board games that you can check out!
Art and Craft Supplies
The summer months are filled with lots of arts and crafts with the kids being home. Especially this year! Lots of quarantine time led to lots of art time. Now is a great time to go through all of your art and craft supplies.
If you have a stack of kids art projects that you’re having a hard time parting with, then I suggest that you take pictures of all of the art projects and print a book that is dedicated to your kid’s art. It’s really fun for the kids to flip through the book and to see their creations. This also frees up tons of space.
Or you can also create an art box for each of your kids and have a file folder for each grade Where you keep all of their heart projects report cards and achievement awards in that file for that year.
If you want some tips on organizing and decluttering your kid’s art supplies, then I suggest you check out this post!
Kids Rooms
Decluttering your kids’ rooms after they have gone to school will give you ample time to get rid of the knick-knacks that they can’t seem to let go of. I don’t like to declutter my kid’s rooms while they are hanging around so kid’s rooms are one of my favorite spaces to declutter in the fall.
If you are worried about your kids noticing that you got rid of something, then I suggest creating a bucket or a bag that you put things in as a temporary holding place. If they don’t notice that those items are gone within a certain period of time, then I feel like you are safe to donate them or get rid of them.
Of course, you have to take into consideration the age of your child. The older children are, the more they should be involved in this process and learn how to assess and declutter their bedroom themselves.
If you want more details on how to organize and declutter your kid’s rooms you can check out my full post here.
Holiday Decorations
This is the absolute perfect time to declutter your holiday decorations! Decluttering the decorations that are out of style, or ones that you no longer use can free up a lot of space! It’s also very helpful to review what decorations you already have so you don’t overbuy before you decorate for Christmas. That’s why decluttering your holiday decorations is one of the best spaces to declutter this fall.
I used to have nine totes full of Christmas decorations. A bunch of them I was hanging on to “just in case” I decided to use them another year. I finally decided to get rid of the ones I hadn’t used in a couple of years and freed up tons of extra space!
Unless they are family heirloom ornaments or something, it really doesn’t do you any good to keep old decorations that you are no longer going to use. Storing them in a tote year after year just wastes lots of space!
Gift Wrap
Everybody knows that Christmas is the time of giving which also means the time for gift wrap! It’s easy to let your gift wrap pile grow year after year.
Sometimes I keep gift wrap rolls that have a minuscule amount of wrapping paper on the roll. But creating a nice gift wrap station will really help you wrap presents more quickly and even make it more fun! Purge the crushed bows that have been sitting in your gift wrap area for years. And declutter the wrapping paper that is mangled beyond repair.
Blankets
You may or may not have an obsession with blankets like me, but having a good sit-down conversation with yourself about what blankets to keep and which ones to declutter is essential. I also highly recommend finding a system that will work for you to keep your blanket storage organized.
I also want to add how important it is to wash your blankets regularly! Blankets can get stinky really fast. Depending on how often they are used is important to wash them more often than you think! In the wintertime, my kids curl up with the same blankets day after day to watch a show and those get stinky really fast! So I usually wash those blankets every 2 to 3 weeks.
If you want more ideas on how to store and organize your blankets for the season, check out this post
Linen Closet
Because many people store their blankets in their linen closet, this is a great time to declutter and overhaul your linen closet while you’re already there!
The holidays often give us lots of time with family and friends and many of us have family come to stay with us for Christmas. So this is a great time to assess what items you have in your linen closet.
Declutter the sheets that you’re too embarrassed to use for your guests. And there’s no sense in keeping 30 pillowcases around. Again, be brutally honest with yourself and declutter the things that you no longer use.
Coat Closet and Entryway
Coat season is about to begin so having an organized entryway and front closet will really help you to grab things quickly when you’re on the go and in a hurry. But first, you need to go through all of your winter attire and decide what things need to go. Get rid of gloves that are no longer a set because your kids lost them sledding last year. Donate outgrown coats, and even take some time to wash the coats that you are going to keep.
I hope this blog post has been helpful for you to know which spaces to declutter this fall. Getting ready for the holiday season is super important and will really help you to have a more organized and stress-free season if you do this before the holidays arrive.
Looking for more inspiration on spaces to declutter this fall? Check out this article!
