Clean Your Clutter – MOMeo’s Spring Cleaning tips continues with that most notorious Clutter Zone: the master bedroom

Your bedroom should be a relaxing space where you can unwind after a hard day, snuggle up with a cup of tea and enjoy a few chapters of your favourite book. But visual clutter like too much furniture, dirty clothes strewn on the floor, and an overflowing closet can keep you from really relaxing. Here are some tips to get your bedroom in shape.

Make Your Bed

Remember when mom used to tell you to make your bed in the morning? Well, hopefully it’s a habit that’s stuck. It only takes 30 seconds to make your bed but a made bed makes the whole room seem cleaner. “Actually, once you make the bed the room is 50 to 70 per cent clean, so that is an excellent way to start every day! “ says Marcia Ramsland in her book Simplify your Space.

Lugubrious Laundry

Sorting laundry eats up lots of time, and leaving laundry in piles on the floor makes your bedroom a disaster. Instead, invest in a laundry hamper with multiple compartments for your various loads. Sorting your laundry daily not only makes it easier to do laundry, but means you can now squeeze in a load when you find a free moment. In fact, Ramsland suggests writing down a little laundry schedule to help you manage your laundry routine. It can be as simple as:

Monday: Wash whites

Tuesday: Drop off dry cleaning

Wednesday: Wash darks

Thursday: Pick up dry cleaning

Friday: Wash shirts and iron

Saturday: Catch-up or free day

Clothing Catastrophe

Before hitting the stores for the latest spring fashions, sort through your wardrobe. A good way to get rid of stuff you don’t wear is to hang all your hangers in a reverse position (with the hook facing you rather than toward the wall). As you wear and wash your clothes, return them to your wardrobe and hang them normally. After two weeks, any items on hangers still reversed…you’re likely not going to wear. Grab a bag and donate them to charity, or, better yet, consign them and earn some money to fund your spring shopping.

Pick it Up

If there are little clusters of clothes scattered about your room where you’ve shed your daytime outfit for some cozy pajamas, pick them up and sort them into the laundry. “Nothing makes a bedroom look messy faster than clothes draped across a chair or piled on the floor,” says Ramsland. “The same goes for clean laundry. Put clean clothes away before the next meal so you never walk in to see clothes sitting out.”

A Place for Everything

If you’re a fashionista, you love accessories. Whether shoes, scarves, belts or jewellery, accessories can really pull an outfit together. It’s good practice to sort through your accessories once every six months. All broken items and anything you’ve lost interest in can be tossed or given to charity. Invest in some simple closet storage to help keep all your accessories neat, orderly and easy to find.

Less is More

Look around your bedroom. Is there any furniture you could do without? Extra furniture has a tendency to migrate to the bedroom, take up space, collect dust and clutter your stress-free zone. Take inventory and decide whether to keep or donate them.

Bookworm Basics

Sort the books in your bedroom into three piles: Bedroom (ones you are currently reading), Librar, and Other (books that belong somewhere else in the house). Place your bedroom books neatly on a shelf or nightstand, renew or return library books and put all the Other books in their rightful spots.

Keep an Empty Basket

Bedrooms attract miscellaneous items from elsewhere, like your children’s toys, tax papers or your husband’s Nintendo. Keep a small basket somewhere in your room. At the end of each day gather all the items that don’t belong and put them away.