You Should Try the Before and After Approach to Decluttering
If you’re a visual person, clutter probably bothers you, but the horror of it doesn’t necessarily make cleaning easier. If you’re having trouble finding motivation, try this little trick that taps into everyone’s obsession with good before and after photos.
Take before and after photos.
This tip comes from the book Be a Minimalist and it’s really simple on the surface: pick a small area of your home, like a countertop or a junk drawer, and take a photo of it. Then clean it. Just focus on the small area you photographed. When you’re done, take a new photo and compare it.
Do this whenever you have a few minutes to dedicate to a minor cleaning task so that the photos sit next to each other in your camera roll. When you see the difference by simply swiping between two photos, you’ll feel motivated to keep going. Without photos, it can be hard to remember what the mess even looked like, leaving you less motivated to clean up or keep it clean. You need a reminder of where you’ve been to get where you’re going.
Why does it work
Like other popular decluttering methods , this one requires you to work in short bursts and in small spaces. This is important, especially if you feel overwhelmed when you think about how much you actually have to clean. If you phrase your organization like this: “I need to organize my house,” it will seem too difficult, but if you think, “Today I need to organize my bathroom,” it will be much easier.
I tried this last weekend while I was cleaning and organizing my makeup, which is a task I haven’t done in…well, a long time. The “before” photo didn’t shock me too much on its own, but once I had an “after” photo that I could compare to a few hours later, and I could see the difference by running my finger between the two, I was truly stunned. . While I was cleaning, I got used to the new, organized look, so by the time I was done I was happy enough with it, but not thrilled since I couldn’t remember what it looked like before anyway. . The tangible proof in the photos was helpful and prompted me to quickly move to the shelf I reserve for tools and hair clips.
You’ll want to do this as quickly as possible to keep up the momentum, so make sure you have bins on hand where you can sort items into four categories : keep, throw away, donate and sell. Don’t spend a lot of time debating what you should keep. (If you need help deciding whether to keep something or not, try this similar method .) Your goal is to quickly move from before to after so you can see the results of your work and feel motivated to keep working.