What's the difference between decluttering and cleaning?

Although decluttering and cleaning are often confused because people think they are the same, they serve two distinct purposes in maintaining a home. Decluttering is the process of removing unnecessary items from a house to create various organized spaces. Cleaning is the act of ensuring that surfaces are sanitized. Learning this distinction will ultimately save time and energy.

The order of operations is significant in efficiency. Always de-clutter first, and then clean. Attempting to clean around the clutter is a waste of time and produces unsatisfactory results. Clean surfaces can be properly sanitized, making the cleaning work more effective and less time-consuming.

While decluttering changes how spaces function, cleaning maintains those functions. For example, after decluttering a kitchen counter, cleaning now means wiping down the counter rather than moving things around. This difference in sequence alone reduces the cleaning time by almost half, from my experience with organizing.

Maintenance requires teamwork among both disciplines. The one-in-one-out rule keeps possessions manageable and makes weekly cleaning efficient. Nightly wipes of surfaces will take five minutes instead of becoming whole chores that you dread doing and/or avoid, if you're not blocked by a cluttered counter/surface.

Digital spaces follow similar tenets to physical spaces. Decluttering in a digital environment means deleting unnecessary files and reorganizing folders to make it easier to find information. At the same time, cleaning refers to virus scans, cleaning software, updates, and application management. Either way, a decluttered or cleaned space becomes a usable digital environment to be efficient when done correctly.

Read the full article: 10 Best Decluttering Tips for Your Home