I Tried a '7-Day Decluttering Challenge' to See if It Actually Works — This Is the Schedule That Broke My Bad Habits

It honestly feels like the last few months of my life have gone by in a blur. Days roll into one, and sometimes, I feel so exhausted that by the time evening arrives, all I have the energy to do is curl up in a ball with TV and hot cocoa.

If this resonates with you, you'll understand how carving out time to declutter your home can be quite tough. But the beauty behind decluttering is that it isn't a one-size-fits-all act: there's no set way to do it, so you can make it work around a busy schedule.

When I heard about the seven-day decluttering challenge, I was intrigued to try it for two main reasons: first, it didn't sound impossible, as a whole week would still be given to complete the challenge, and second, picking a timeframe in this way felt like a form of accountability to get the job done once and for all. Here, you can follow along with my journey through the challenge and find out what professional organizers think of the method.

The 7-Day Decluttering Challenge

The seven-day decluttering challenge is rather self-explanatory — it's a challenge where you declutter every day for a week in a row, and you can approach how to do it in whichever way you choose. You could allocate half an hour per day, work room by room, run around your whole home each day with a box, and declutter as you go; you see the picture.

In this way, as noted by Ben Soreff, a professional organizer and partner of House to Home Organizing, the challenge remains open-ended. This illustrates that there is no one-size-fits-all way to begin decluttering a home.

"The challenge accepts that you don't know where to begin or how to start organizing and decluttering, so it focuses on your time and not the stuff," says Ben. "You can start in any room and fix an amount of time for each day. In some cases it takes people years to create clutter in their homes and so it is going to take more time to organize it."

Before embarking on my seven days of decluttering, I stopped to consider strategies and the best way to make my decluttering worthwhile. What did I think was the best way to start culling clutter, and how long did I believe I needed to do so?

I decided to go forward with the following plan for my week of decluttering:

• Day 1: Declutter casually from anywhere in the home
• Day 2: Declutter my living space
• Day 3: Declutter my kitchen
• Day 4: Declutter my bathroom
• Day 5: Declutter my hallway
• Day 6: Declutter my desk and miscellaneous drawers
• Day 7: Declutter casually, reviewing what I have kept and decided to let go

Ben Soreff

Ben Soreff is a partner at House to Home Organizing. He is originally from Portland, Maine and used to work in film & TV Production. Ben graduated from Skidmore College and has experience with Level 5 Hoarders.

I kept a medium-sized cardboard box in my living room to drop clutter in that I wished to let go, and I gathered some spare grocery bags to place the items into once the box got full. If you don't have a box and spare bags, you could opt to use something stylish like the 3 pack of reusable canvas tote bags from Walmart and the braided grass storage basket Hearth & Hand™ with Magnolia from Target.

I sat full bags in my hallway, ready to donate after the challenge was finished.

Provisionally, I decided to declutter for an hour on casual decluttering days and half an hour on other days. But if I felt more time was needed, I decided I would take a break and come back for another half an hour. The break would allow my brain to continue with a fresh head, easing and avoiding decision fatigue and helping me to declutter when I feel overwhelmed.

Mary Jo Contello, a certified professional organizer and owner of Organized By MJ, believes it's important to consider how much time you have to work with before decluttering. "I think the first thing you have to do is determine how much time you can allocate to the challenge. If you have a lot of time, maybe you can tackle a room a day. But if you have limited time, then maybe pick a drawer or closet or a set amount of time."

Mary Jo Contello

Becoming a professional organizer always seemed like it was a natural fit. I have always had a passion for decluttering spaces and bringing order to homes, offices and the lives of people who are tired of being overwhelmed by clutter.After spending years in the corporate world, downsizing and layoffs left me with a sudden need for a new direction in life. I started Organized by MJ with the goal of not only cleaning and organizing people’s spaces, but also providing them with lasting solutions to avoid “clutter hot spots” in the future.

Casual Decluttering

I decided to begin my seven days of decluttering by starting off casually to ease myself in. In the evening, when I had an hour to spare, I simply switched on some music and floated from room to room, looking around the space and bringing anything I felt like letting go into the living room, where I placed it in the cardboard box.

There wasn't a set structure to this, and I liked how the method's lack of rigidity allowed me to look around my entire space to gauge where I was starting the challenge. It also didn't feel pressurized, as I was doing it in a calm way, enjoying music and reminding myself that I didn't have to let go of anything by force.

I gathered quite a few items, doing this in a way that felt like skimming the cream off the top of milk: I collected the surface clutter as I wanted to reduce visual clutter — clearing junk and the easy bits to part with, — and it put me in a good headspace for the deeper decluttering ahead.

Decluttering Each Room

As I decluttered room by room, I quickly realized that allocating half an hour a day didn't feel like enough time. By the time I had begun sorting the contents of my kitchen into piles of like-items (plates together, mugs together, etc.), little time remained to make my decisions.

Some of us may be able to declutter in ten minutes or work to the "20-minutes-or-less rule," but if working with restricted time is better for your brain as it gives you less scope to mull over your decisions and fall into analysis paralysis, I recommend sticking with a time limit. But if you find yourself in my shoes, there's no rule saying you can't work without timers or add an extra fifteen minutes to your decluttering session.

Blocking out time and creating a pile for my 'maybe' items to evaluate on day seven of the challenge were definitely my best ideas. Creating a pile of maybes prevented me from wasting my allocated time for each room as I decluttered, and it prevented unnecessary stress from forcing a decision. I could just place the items aside to evaluate later.

A Final Evaluation

Of course, everyone operates differently, but I personally feel that using day seven of the challenge to review your week of decluttering is the best plan. It allows you to solidify your decision-making and examine your space with fresh eyes, seeing only what you chose to keep.

As I looked around, I asked myself if there was anything I felt I had missed in the space that I had chosen to let go. And any items that were still a stubborn 'maybe' I kept in the box and stored under my bed for a further few weeks before revisiting them once again.

My Verdict

Overall, I think the seven-day decluttering challenge is an effective approach to improving the breathability of a space. However, it's important to tailor it to your needs and take into account the size of your space. If you have a large home, it will take longer to look through everything, so you may need to block out a week where you can devote multiple hours per day to the task. It's also important to consider whether you feel this is a task best tackled alone or with assistance, either from friends and family or from a professional organizer.

A week of intense decluttering can be a lot, so I believe it's also vital to consider how you can make the process more manageable for your stress levels and emotions if you're dealing with many stubborn attachments and tricky areas to pare down. Listening to music as I decluttered and beginning casually was a great remedy to decluttering overwhelm, but for someone else, undertaking this 30-day decluttering method may be more manageable and compatible with their lifestyle.

After the challenge, I decided to keep a small decorative storage bin in the corner of my living space as a permanent drop zone for items I feel I can let go. Incorporating decluttering as a daily practice in this way, known as the magic basket decluttering hack, can effectively help to keep clutter at bay as well as work to repair a person's relationship towards physical objects and the barrier that can stand between detachment from letting them go.

I really like the Wire Kids' Storage Floor BinPillowfort™ from Target as an option for this. It doubles as a table, and the semi-transparent basket allows you to visualize your decluttering process.

FAQs

Can You Declutter in a Week?

Whether someone can declutter their home in a week is subjective and depends on many variables, including the size of the home, how cluttered it is, how much time the person has to declutter it, and how much they struggle to part with possessions.

Ben Soreff, professional organizer and partner of House to Home Organizing says, "For those with extreme clutter or anxiety, you may not be able to tackle the whole house in seven days. I would even suggest not ever doing that. So if you feel that's the case, it is more important to finish one room at a time, and therefore, if you need to set aside seven days in bite-sized chunks for one room at a time only, do it gradually like that instead."

What is the Hardest Part About Decluttering in Only 7 Days?

This is also subjective, as what one person finds difficult about decluttering in seven days may be another's favorite part of the process. Two common difficulties that arise are finding time for the challenge and struggling to let go of items.

Mary Jo Costello, certified professional organizer and owner of Organized By MJ says, "For some, the hardest part is finding the time, and for others, it is letting go of items. Know your weaknesses and get help when needed. For instance, if it's clothes you're struggling to part with, perhaps try them on and send pictures to a friend to get an opinion or, better yet, have them come over to help."

Your friend may also love to swap some closet items with you, allowing you to let go of items that no longer serve you and perhaps pick up a few more that will.