Do you ever look upon your space and think ‘I really need to sort this out!’. I know I do, but knowing where to start, how to start and how to do this sustainably can be a huge hurdle to overcome. The mantra ‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ has been floating around the sustainability world for many years now but it’s not very descriptive about how you can do this. Within this blog post we look at how you can apply this mantra within your home. In the first part of a 3 part series, we are looking at Reducing.

As you start to think about what you’ll be bringing with you to university this September, you might find yourself looking at your stuff and wanting to do a big sort out but not being sure where to start. Here are a couple of sorting techniques that may be useful when organising.

KonMari Method

One of these organising methods is the KonMari Method. This method was developed by Marie Kondo and was penned in her book ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’. The KonMari method has two distinct differences that set it apart from different decluttering methods. The first is that you organise your decluttering by category and not by room. The second difference is that it has a spiritual/emotional aspect to the process. If you have been on the internet over the past few years you may have heard the phrase ‘Does this spark joy’ in regards to decluttering and we can thank Marie Kondo for that. Her philosophy is to sort through items by keeping things that make you happy and disposing of items that do not spark joy, but not before showing gratitude for the work they have done. Now this does have some limitations, especially when it comes to essential items (Your mop doesn’t have to spark joy as it is serving a purpose, but those 27 mugs? Maybe see which ones you feel attached to). More than a short term fix, though, decluttering should help you try to be more conscious about what you buy because you genuinely need or want it, and when you could choose to buy better quality in order to buy less in the long term.

To find out more about the method, see the video below 

One By One 

One big hurdle that I find I have to overcome when undertaking decluttering is knowing where to start as it all seems too much. You could tackle this by decluttering each room one by one and not trying to do it all at once. By breaking the decluttering down room by room it can make what can seem like an unmanageable task a lot more palatable. It also means that you can spread your decluttering over many days.

I know that when I am decluttering it can sometimes feel like it is taking over my life so being able to spread it over a few days can make it seem less demanding. Breaking down a big task into bite-sized chunks with a tick list or planner can make it feel instantly more manageable.

How do you like to reduce and declutter? Let us know on our social media pages and let’s learn from each other. 

Stay tuned to our blog for the other 2 R’s in our 3 R’s series! 

by Amy Bayliss-Fox, SGO Project Officer #livingwell