The best way to successfully declutter is to focus on a single thing at any time. That could mean only to deal with a manageable number of items, not mixing making choices with considering what follows next, making sure that each decision only has to be made once (“touch it once” strategy), and others.

The most common way to sort through a category is using four boxes...

Any decluttering project is only going to be as successful as you are able to make decisions about the items you are working through. In my mind, this is the most important aspect of any such endeavour.

Of course, being able to stay focused is part of it, too, but it all boils down to asking the right questions when you try to figure out what stays and what goes.

Just like having a knack for languages or being good with numbers, some people are naturals with being organised. And just like languages or maths, being able to declutter and keep your space tidy is a skill that can be learned: it starts with the knowledge of basic strategies and small steps at first.

From my years of experience, here are the steps most likely to lead to lasting success...

Fashion is all about following trends and being quick to adopt whenever something new appears on the horizon. Unfortunately, change is constant and trends are replaced in short succession, and that dreaded feeling of uniformity and fitting in leads to the search for the next new thing.

Don’t forget that fashion is driven by the choices of a small number of designers with a vested interest in making money by promoting change and offering only the latest things to make them desirable and hip.

We have all seen those offers where you buy ‘3 for the price of 2’, and oftentimes those are actually quite good offers. However, it pays to check the best-by dates on those items as it’s common practice for shops to shift items that are in danger of having to be thrown away. Just saying: be vigilant.

If we scale this up and consider buying in bulk properly, we run into a completely different set of issues. Assuming that the pallet of 20 tins of mixed veg is going to be in date for an acceptable period of time, and the price is reasonably attractive, have you thought about storage at home?

Shopping used to be a chore. We bought things out of necessity rather than because it was a pleasurable activity.

During the last 150 years or so, however, that has changed. It happened slowly at first when the rich took to spending time browsing the merchandise and then having a cup of tea afterwards. When this was established as a pastime of the rich, everyone else started to emulate their example and do the same.

We always hear about renewable energy sources, but do you ever stand still and consider that the word renewable refers to more than just energy?

Let’s start thinking about renewable items as it seems to me that we can do a lot more about those in our daily lives than we can when making a choice of our energy suppliers.

Relying on your own intuition and knowledge can be a good starting point, but sometimes it’s not enough to stew in your own juices and outside input is required to move past a roadblock.

Of course, bringing in other people to brainstorm is common practice in work environments (often overused, think of all those pointless meetings you’ve been to), it’s also not the best use of getting feedback. If open-ended questions are rarely the best approach to moving forward, then what is?

“Learn from your mistakes” is one of those sayings that crop up all the time and in many different situations, and I agree with the sentiment. For the most part…

Of course we should always learn from our mistakes: doing something the same way and expecting different outcomes is pretty dumb to start with. However, the saying has more to do with improvement than with radical change.

You may think that “process” sounds very limited to business and the work arena, but you probably just use different terminology in your private life. Cooking a meal involves some planning: what’s in your pantry, what to buy and when, how much time you need for the food to be ready at dinner time, etc… well: that’s a process, we just call it ‘planning’ in private life. Nothing scary about it at all, and it only differs from ‘business strategy’ in its content, length of time and scale.

Let's look at processes in everyday life and how to improve them...