By Janet Adetu
Welcome to the New Year 2017, here’s wishing it a prosperous year ahead for you. It is the time to discover the new you, put the past behind and step into the new future. This is the season to declutter all those things that are silent burdens in your life, but you just haven’t found the opportunity to make the difference.

We all accumulate a lot each day, week, month and year a lot of it amounts to sheer junk. The piling up of huge amounts of paper cardboard boxes and packages doe not help either. Whether it be your wardrobe, kitchen store, office desk or home study. Start by getting rid of those seasonal greeting cards that are one to five years old. Take that burden off your shoulders, buy what is relevant to your life today, live in today’s generation, and go paperless where you can.

Let me share a few quick easy strategies to overcome this cumbersome task.

They may look easy and cliché but until you really delve into the exercise you may be pleasantly surprised.

Purchase a few CONTAINERS:

It is a good idea to invest in a few small, medium and large containers or boxes before you start you’re decluttering. This will help the exercise be less daunting and orderly when you begin to sort. To help your orderliness you can add some labels, markers and cello tape if you may. The containers will help easy filing and quick accessibility in the future.

Discover and OPEN:

Open all stored boxes, drawers and bags that have not been touched for

weeks, months or even years. You may discover that you have purchased the same item many times all tucked away in small corners. Remember if you have not opened it in a while it may not be that important. Your declutter exercise will reveal to you that you actually have so much useful things that you really did not know or remember about.

IDENTIFY the good and the bad:

Distinguish old from new, broken from fixed, needed from unwanted. Some of

your items may be old fashioned, outdated, expired or damaged. Identify how important and necessary keeping that item will be to you that way you will know whether to keep, innovate or lose. If it is still valuable to you maximize it’s worth and do not let it rot away.

Sift, SORT and Select

Sort your wardrobe according to work wear and social/ casual wear. Sort shelves by books unwanted magazines and papers. File all pending letters away from executed, sort departmental files accordingly. Sort all drawers according to pens, pins, pictures and papers. When you have sorted all out maintain this as you continue your daily activities. Sounds easy but just try it.

COORDINATE :

Consider colour when coordinating your wardrobe. Arrange shirts and blouses, suits and blazers according to lighter colours first followed by dark colours. Separate stationary from bits of paper, magazines from newspapers, official documents from private printouts, tinned foods from packages. You know best what is useful to you. Colour coordination will help you identify what you own to avoid searching through a whole pack of clothes and still never finding what you are looking for. Place all similar things together.

Line Your RACK :

Rack your shoes and bags according to usage, business, social, sporting leisure, knock about or casual. It is easy to stack old shoes for a long time without wearing them. If you believe you have worn the life out of a pair if shoes discard them. All shelves should be layered according to the desired purpose.

List and LABEL:

Where necessary label all sorted boxes, label shelves and work trays. In

arranging your boxes ensure labelled items are placed accordingly. Labelling will aid identification without having to open boxes. Ensure your labels are clear and boldly written.

GIVE a gift :

Express the art of giving this 2017, what you don’t need can be gold to someone else. Give out what you don’t need any more to family, friends, or charity. Giving back to the less privileged is rewarding and a pleasurable honour to make someone’s life better. Gift giving is an important etiquette practice, so do not take for granted. Endeavour to give gifts regularly what you will consider as old to you is new to someone else.

 Good luck as you open a new chapter of life clutter free.