Decluttering The House with the Four-Box Challenge

Since we moved house back in 2013, our house has been one big cluttered mess. There are boxes from our move still piled high because we have no where to put the stuff that is inside said boxes, and newer stuff just gets piled wherever it can! The main dumping ground seems to be our bedroom – mainly because it is out of sight when visitors come over.

We are getting the loft boarded up – soon I hope, I can’t cope with the clutter for much longer! That means that stuff we want to keep but don’t always need, can go up there leaving the place a little bit more minimal.

I was asked to take part in the Four-Box Challenge by the Plastic Box Shop, which is a tried and tested method for managing your clutter.

It is exactly as it says on the tin (or in this case, box!) – four labelled boxes help you sort out all of your stuff: Store It, Keep It, Bin It and Donate It. They have devised a handy flowchart to help us all decide what needs to go where (sometimes we need that little reminder that we don’t need to keep EVERYTHING!) You can click on the image below to download and print it off.

Now for the embarrassing part of this challenge – sharing my clutterbug infested bedroom with you! No wonder I can’t concentrate or sleep well with all of this around me. This isn’t actually as bad as it has been some weeks – we seem to clear it and it all just piles back up again – it’s down to the lack of storage issue more than anything else though.

Our bedroom also doubles up as my office, and that too, my friends is an embarrassing pile of mess! I blame the clutter on the fact that we never really sorted ourselves out properly after we moved – mainly because we had planned on moving again within a few months. That didn’t happen, and now 18 months or so down the line, we’re still a cluttered mess.

Despite the evidence that you see above, I try not to hoard too much stuff if I can help it. When it comes to having a declutter I am pretty ruthless – if something hasn’t been used in the past 6 months and is unlikely to be used in the next 6 months, it gets either donated, binned or sold (car boot sale or online auction usually).

The way I normally declutter is grabbing several large bin bags and the recycling bags that our local council provides and start throwing stuff in – trying to remember which bag is for what. That’s why the four boxes that I was sent were so handy – all labelled up nicely for me to see exactly what was what! The boxes were of a good size, however, I seriously need four skips to declutter this place!!

As we started to organise bits and bobs into each box, I realised that for us, we need a couple more boxes – Recycle It, Sell It and File it were the ones that jumped out for us!

Once I get going on a clear out session though, I really do get on a mission and soon, everything was sorted into boxes. As you can see, we soon ran out of space in said boxes, and at the moment, this is how things are – although, the bin it stuff has been binned, and the donate it stuff has gone to our preferred charity shop.

We have so much to do with our house – redecorating for a start – it used to be a rental property and we’ve not done a thing to it since we moved in. I wanted to get that done for Christmas, but we are running out of weekends now! As I said earlier, we’re hoping to get the loft boarded out – this I really hope is done before Christmas – I need the space downstairs in the living room and kitchen!

Having the boxes to sort stuff out into was a great help – much easier than random bags everywhere like I usually do. I hope to update this post very soon with a less cluttered space!

What do you think of the Four-Box Method? Is it something you do already? Or do you think you could make use of it now with your clutter? Let me know in the comments section below this post.

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