10 Simple Decluttering Tips For College Students
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
WHY YOU NEED TO DECLUTTER
SIMPLE DECLUTTERING TIPS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS
FINAL THOUGHTS
If I asked you, “Is there clutter around you?” , I’m sure the answer would most likely be, of course. Unless you’re a clean-freak like Monica from FRIENDS (if you are, good for you!), chances are that your dorm room is filled with clutter.
You know you should probably declutter, but how? Where would you even start?? Don’t worry! In this post, I’ll give you some easy decluttering tips for college students.
Still not convinced? Are you thinking of all the mess around you and wondering how you can ever declutter or organize everything on Earth? Fear not; I’ll break it down into easy steps that you can use for decluttering. These simple decluttering tips work well if you want to declutter your dorm room, home, or other space.
WHY YOU NEED TO DECLUTTER
Ever felt like things are going greatly out of control? This is your sign to declutter your dorm room. While you can’t control everything, decluttering can help you feel more relaxed and in control.
A cluttered room can be distracting, and it adds to your stress. And let’s be honest, your room is already small enough when you’re in college, without all the clutter taking up unnecessary space. According to the National Soap and Detergent Association (USA), getting rid of clutter can eliminate 40% of housework in the average home.
You probably know that you should declutter, but do you know all the benefits you can get from it? Learning about the advantages of decluttering will give you extra motivation to start and go through with it.
Decluttering has plenty of benefits not just for your productivity but also for your health. Decluttering your room can make you feel more relaxed. According to an article by WebMD, decluttering has plenty of benefits, such as increased focus, higher self-esteem, and a lower risk of asthma and allergies.
Reduces distractions around you:
- Increases your focus
- Improves your creativity
- Increases your productivity
- Saves you a lot of time and energy
- Improves your finances
- Lowers the risk of allergies
- Reduces your stress levels
SIMPLE DECLUTTERING TIPS
1. start small
This is probably the most important decluttering tip. Looking at your messy room, you might get a sudden burst of motivation and try to declutter everything all at once. And that might work.. for a while. Once that extra boost of motivation fades, you’ll likely find yourself looking at an even messier room than before!
Or you might look at all the mess and decide to quit because it’ll take up so much of your time and energy. It could go either way, and none of them are particularly beneficial when it comes to achieving your goal of decluttering.
That’s why it’s essential to start small; choose a drawer or a table and focus your attention on making it clutter-free. Successfully decluttering even a tiny area will act as a motivation for you to keep going. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew!
2. Five-minute pick up
What if I tell you that you can declutter in just 5 minutes? A five-minute pick-up is a great way to get started when you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the clutter around you.
Don’t overthink it; just start cleaning any small section in your room. Doing this for just five minutes can make you feel much better about yourself. And once you get in the flow, you might also want to keep going!
But don’t think about it before you start. Just put a timer for 5 minutes and stop only after the timer goes off. You might be surprised at how much you can declutter in just five minutes!
If you do this every day for two consecutive weeks, your room will look significantly different than when you first started. That’s the power of consistency! You can also look at it as a form of self-care. Cleaning and purging out what you don’t need relaxes you and reduces your stress. It’s a simple but effective tip to declutter and stay organized as a college student.
3. prioritize where to start
You know you should start small, but you should also prioritize where you want to start. Instead of decluttering randomly, you can first think about the places in your room or apartment you want to focus on. Is there a particular space that stresses you out when you look at it or even think about all the clutter surrounding it? Or maybe some things just tend to get lost in a particular drawer or cupboard.
These are good places to start your decluttering. Since these cause you the most problems, you will experience an equal sense of relief when the space is neat and clutter-free. This serves as positive feedback to keep you going.
You can start with the most prominent places if you can’t think of anywhere in your house that fits these criteria. Think about the cluttered spaces right in front of you that require your attention. Having clutter anywhere is a distraction, but it’s the most problematic if it’s staring right at you all the time. Try to tackle such areas first.
4. follow the 80-20 rule of decluttering
This rule is a great decluttering tip for college students. The 80-20 rule is also called the Pareto principle. It can really help make decluttering easier for you. In short, the rule says that 80 percent of results will come from 20 percent of action.
You can apply it to the concept of minimalism in this way: out of everything that you own, you only use 20% of things regularly. In fact, research shows that people use only 20% of what they own 80% of the time!
You have so many college books and notes that you need for one semester but won’t even look at them afterward. You can donate or even sell such things. Many colleges accept second-hand books. That was, you’re getting rid of your clutter and helping someone all in one go.
Also, think about all the holiday stuff, the vacation goodies, yes, even that sparkly dress you bought for your birthday that is too fancy to wear on other occasions. Look at all your things and evaluate what items you actually want to keep.
Be honest with yourself while doing this: If you don’t think you’ll use something more than five times in the next month, keep it aside. You can set your own metrics, but you get the point. If it’s something you’ll only need once ~next year~, you can always buy it then! Don’t add to your clutter with things that you never use.
You can set aside the things you don’t need and then decide what to do with them. This brings us to the next point.
5. sort stuff into piles
Making piles of your stuff is the very first step in Getting Things Done for college students and is very helpful when it comes to decluttering as well. In this case, you should make the following piles:
- Things to donate
- Things to recycle
- Things to reuse
- Things to trash
- Things to keep
Just because you don’t need something doesn’t mean you should trash it. All resources are valuable, so please try not to waste them! Making these piles is an easy and highly efficient way of decluttering.
You can also visually see and compare the things you’re giving away vs. the things you’re keeping. Doing this will send positive signals to your brain and give you the motivation to keep going. Don’t micromanage things; just having these basic boxes or piles will do.
6. get rid of what you don't use
If you don’t need something, don’t be tempted to keep it. Students especially tend to accumulate a lot of stuff. Whether it’s the freebies you get in college or the extra things you’ve brought from home to your dorm room. Determine what you don’t need, sort it into piles as mentioned above, and get rid of it. Your room will be much more clutter-free!
7. go digital
This one is a no-brainer. In this digital age, everything that you need can be found online. In fact, here’s a comprehensive list of 50 useful websites for college students that covers many topics.
You can take notes digitally and store them on your mobile devices. You can find some awesome note-taking templates made just for college students here. Important documents can also be stored online. You’ll be surprised at how much space unnecessary documents and notes occupy.
Wherever possible, decline paper bills and receipts. Not only is this environment-friendly, but by doing this, you’re reducing your clutter at the source.
Of course, you will also need to do digital decluttering, but hey, at least your room will look tidy! 🙂
8. declutter with your roommate
If you have a roommate, why not use this time to bond with them? Granted, you’ll be doing the same boring thing, but the social aspect will make it more interesting. Make cleaning a team effort. You can set goals together and do fun things like making it a game and listening to music as you clean while decluttering. And you can reward yourself by going out after all that hard work!
If you have a great roommate, you’ll know what I mean when I say that one of the best things about college is your roommate! But even if your roommate is your BFF, decluttering falls into that dangerous category of things that tend to spark arguments. But you can avoid this altogether by decluttering your room together.
This also works well because you can set aside some time every week to declutter. That way, you can get extra motivation, and even if one of you is unmotivated, you won’t quit.
9. set up a system for organization and decluttering
After you finish decluttering, it’s essential to maintain the clean and organized space. Having a system in place is very important, especially in the long term. You can get away with purging and decluttering your room on a whim once, but you can lose that motivation just as quickly.
To ensure your house stays clutter-free, develop a system that holds you accountable in the long term. This system shouldn’t be too time-consuming, or you won’t follow it. Find the right balance between simple and useful, and establish a method for decluttering that works for you.
If you declutter and stop at that, your place will become messier and cluttered with time.
10. set aside 5 minutes every day
This is a straightforward but effective tip to keep your dorm room clutter-free. The good news is that you have already done the hard part! You have a neat, tidy room, but to prevent it from returning to its disorganized state, you need to continue to put in little but consistent efforts.
You probably won’t need to spend more than 10 to 15 minutes every day, but doing this will save you a lot of effort in the future. After all, it is much easier to keep your room clutter free than to declutter it afterward! Putting in a bit of effort is an easy way to stay organized as a college student.
EXTRA TIPS
first declutter, then organize
You might feel like it’s great to do everything at once when you’re in the zone. Why not declutter and organize simultaneously? It’ll save so much time, right? Wrong.
Here’s why organizing before decluttering is a bad idea. By not getting rid of what you don’t need, you’re actually increasing your organization efforts. Plus, you’re also not properly decluttering because you’re making space for stuff that you should probably throw out.
So don’t make this mistake. Declutter first, and then organize the things that you really need. Doing this will save you a lot of time and effort and make proper organization much more manageable.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Decluttering is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be very hard either. With these simple decluttering tips, you can stay organized as a college student.
Like with most things, finding a balance is the key. You don’t need to give away everything while decluttering, but that doesn’t mean you should live in a stuffed room packed with stuff that you don’t even need.
Both these things will make you unhappy, and the end goal is to feel happy, fresh, and positive, about your life. And it’s easier to do that if your surroundings reflect the same things. So instead of letting your possessions collect dust, it’s best to declutter and free up that space for other useful things.
I hope this post was useful and the simple decluttering tips for college students help you. Have you ever tried decluttering? What tips worked for you? What was your experience with it? Let me know in the comments below!
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