A Guide To Decluttering Your Park Home

Decluttering our park homes is something that often crosses our minds at this time of year. A New Year’s resolution or just a need to tidy after seasonal revelries can spur us into action. Particularly for residents of park homes, where creating and preserving space is essential for a good quality of life, effective decluttering can have a huge impact.

To this end, we have surveyed a wide range of advice available online and in popular books from decluttering ‘gurus’ like Marie Kondo. Here we present our own ‘decluttered’ list of what we hope will provided useful suggestions for park home residents.

  1. Declutter by category

When it comes to tidying, we usually go from room to room. The temptation is to continue this method when decluttering. Try instead to go by category. To cut down the number of decisions you need to make at once, try starting with one type of thing like clothes, pots and pans, books or paperwork.

  1. Nostalgia is your enemy

To avoid distractions when you’re decluttering, it can help to separate items such as letters, mementos, holiday souvenirs, cards and family photos. Dedicate a space or storage box or similar to take these items as you come across them. Promise yourself an evening to go through them at a relaxed pace later.

  1. Start with everything and edit

Medicine cabinets and makeup boxes, sock drawers and overflowing trays of ‘bits and bobs’, can seem overwhelming. Whatever you are sorting out, it is a good idea to lay everything you are working on out in front of you first. Being able to take it all in with one glance, can help to edit it all down to what you like and need.

  1. Does it bring you joy?

This is a popular decluttering ‘mantra’ to decide what to keep and what to give or throw away. ‘Does it bring me joy?’ works well for some. Or try the alternative: ‘Is it the best, is it beautiful, is it necessary?’

  1. The 90/90 rule

Another method to edit down your belongings when decluttering is the ninety-day rule. Have you used the item in the last ninety days? If not, make a note of it, put it into a separate container or tag it with coloured tape. If after another ninety days you still haven’t used it, perhaps it is time for it to go.

  1. Aim for fewer items of higher quality

This applies especially to things like tools, make-up and bathroom products, these types of item are sometimes duplicated.  Keep the best and get rid of the rest. This can help keep your spaces decluttered in future too, as higher quality items tend to last longer.

  1. Divine dividers

There is a magic to dividers, which themselves take up some space, but seem to still create more. This is especially true in kitchen cupboards, where vertical dividers can create more space and really help with ease of access. In drawers too, the rummaging time you will save by dividing the space will be noticeable. For clothes, something as easy as shoe boxes can work very well as a divider.

  1. Learn to fold

It is worth taking five minutes to google a good folding method for clothes and pick one that suits your storage options. A general rule is to start with a ‘vertical’ fold and then with a series of ‘horizontal’ folds, to create a small package out of that t-shirt or pair of jeans. Look at how you can then stack these. When you can, avoid stacking clothes on top of each other in drawers. Instead, try to arrange them on their ends from the front to back or side to side. This greatly improves ease of access.

  1. On the hook

If you need more hooks for towels, robes and jackets, these can quickly be installed. An overdoor hanging set of hooks on the back of the bathroom door in your park home, for instance, can quickly clear a cluttered space.

  1. Beautiful Bins

If your surfaces are often left with sprawling items on them, consider getting a set of attractive ‘bins’ or boxes. The tops of dressers or shelves can be instantly tidied up and decluttered this way.

  1. Shop in your clutter for gifts for your family and friends

Decluttering can seem like a thankless task when you begin. If you need to improve your motivation, try ‘shopping’ for people you know among your own belongings. Who do you know who might enjoy that book you read twenty years ago or would look better in that stylish outfit that just doesn’t really suit you? Bringing a little joy to others can add some cheer to the whole process.

  1. Permit yourself to ‘buy again’

There are many reasons for unnecessary ‘hoarding’. One of them may be thrift. The idea that some unused item, one unknown day, may come in useful and so save you money, can turn into an unstoppable reason to always keep things. Simply giving yourself permission to buy again, especially when it comes to relatively inexpensive mass-produced items, can help you to let go of the ones that you have.

  1. Develop decluttering habits

Once your initial decluttering drive is completed, how do you avoid accumulating more again?

Avoid dumping small items on surfaces and tables in your park home. Catch-all trays, in and out boxes, key hooks by entrances are all good ideas to avoid this and keep your spaces decluttered.

Open mail and parcel deliveries and new packaged items over the recycling bin and dispose of envelopes and packaging as you open them.

We hope these tips help you declutter your park home and enjoy the peace of mind and internal sense of calm and clarity it can bring.

This is a marketing article from Park Home Assist, multi award-winning providers of residential park home insurance.  If you would like to speak to an advisor regarding insurance for your park home, please contact our friendly team in our Northampton office on 01604 946 796.

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Published – 14/01/2022