• Clean house.
• Weeding out.
• Stuff to charity.

Your house is officially decluttered. Yippy! It’s so freeing, isn’t it?!

Now comes the real challenge, how do you keep it that way?

If you implement these 6 habits in your life, you have a fighting chance to keep your physical space organized and free of extra stuff.

1. Put things away after using them.

Now that your house is spick and span, it’s much easier to keep it that way when you implement one simple little habit. After you’re done using something, put it back where it belongs. For example, how many times do you kick your shoes off in the foyer after work and they are there 4 days later? How many times have you read a magazine and left it sitting on the couch?

2. Don’t store things on the floor.

Storing things on the floor takes up “open” space and provides a location for crap to accumulate. This means; no baskets on the floor with knickknacks, no spaces for tossing “things”, no shoe bins, no floor storage period.

3. Open, complete and trash mail.

This is an easy task that most of us don’t do. Every day you get the mail. Go through it. Reply to correspondence that requires you to. Toss the junk mail. Put magazines in the magazine rack. Don’t have a “mail center” as it just will accumulate mail. Take care of business right away.

4. Make you bed every morning.

It’s so easy to just pull back your sheets and covers to make your bedroom look more tidy. It doesn’t have to be a perfect Army-worthy tuck. Just straighten them up, fluff the pillows and in less than a minute your room looks and feels better.

5. Clean the kitchen before going to bed.

Waking up to a sink full of dirty dishes is never inviting for the day. Do the dishes, wipe the counters and put things away before going to bed. Starting the day with a clutter-free kitchen is energizing.

6. Assess before you buy.

Don’t just buy to buy. You did so good getting rid of things that you didn’t want or didn’t serve a purpose. Now, when you purchase items, go through the same questions. Do your friends a favor and do the same thing for them when buying gifts. No one needs crap in their life.

A massive high-five is in order! You’ve done it! You’ve cleaned out the crap and now you have a few strategies to keeping yourself crap free. I know for some people getting rid of things is hard. For others, it’s invigorating. No matter where you lie on that spectrum, just remember, less is more most of the time.