Decluttering vs Organizing: What Should You Do First?

In this post:

Decluttering and organizing are two very different activities!

Often “decluttering” and “organizing” are used interchangeably. But they’re actually two different actions that require two different types of decisions. Decluttering asks “should this stay in my home?” Organizing asks “if it stays, where should it live?” Spoiler: you to declutter before you organize…but there’s a caveat…read the post for what makes this easy!

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If you’re trying to get your house under control, should you declutter first or organize first? 

The quick answer is you declutter first. But I don’t mean declutter your entire house or even an entire room before you start organizing. 

That’s the kind of advice that can make an already overwhelmed person feel like giving up and saying, “Okay, forget it. I’ll just live with the mess.”

Decluttering and organizing require two different decisions. And those decisions need to happen in the right order.  

Decluttering and Organizing Are Not the Same Thing

→ Decluttering asks, should this stay?

• Do I love it?
• Do I use it?
• Do I need it?
• Is it worth keeping? 

→ Organizing asks, if it stays, where should it live?

• How should it be stored?
• Where do people look for it?
• How easy does it need to be accessible?
• Who uses it?
• What location makes sense for putting it away as well? 

Decluttering decides WHAT stays. Organizing decides WHERE what stays lives. That’s why the order you do them matters. 

Why Decluttering Needs to Happen First

Imagine you have a kitchen cabinet packed with food storage containers and cans and packages and all those things that a normal pantry has in it. 

Imagine you go out and you buy some beautiful organizers that you saw somewhere online and you thought that would make things so great. 

You bring those organizers home and then you sort of decant your foods and you realize that as you put things back in the cabinet it’s still really, really full. 

And maybe there’s a bunch of stuff in there that your family actually doesn’t eat anymore or is expired, but you’ve made it look pretty, but really it’s not organized. 

You just spent time and money organizing things that you probably won’t or shouldn’t even keep. 

If you organize before you declutter, all you’ve done is try to organize your clutter. And now you’ve created organization systems around the wrong things.  

Organization Cannot Solve a Capacity Problem

Sometimes the problem isn’t poor organization. There is simply more stuff than the space can comfortably support. 

You can fold better, you can stack better, you can buy bins and add shelves. You can use every square inch possible. But organization cannot create capacity that isn’t there. 

If the amount you’re keeping exceeds what a space or your house will reasonably hold,  organizing alone won’t solve that problem. 

I’m going to do an entire episode, blog post, and video about this because I think that’s a problem that we too often try to solve with organization. So watch for that later. 

But “Declutter First” Gets Misunderstood

Someone hears “you have to declutter first” and thinks, oh, I have to declutter my whole kitchen, or I need to declutter my whole house before I can organize it.

No! That’s where we’ve taken a useful principle and turned it into another overwhelming project. 

Listen, I used to teach this too. I used to teach to pull everything out, make a big pile and sort through it like that. 

But over the years, I’ve realized that that is too overwhelming for me. That is too overwhelming for a lot of moms, my students, all of that. 

And a lot of times as moms, we’re going to get interrupted while we’re in the middle of something. And we’ve just created this big headache and this big mess that is worse than when you started.

So the decisions need to happen in order. The whole house doesn’t need to be done all at once, a whole room doesn’t need to be done all at once. 

Reduce the Scope

Instead of decluttering the whole kitchen → organize the whole kitchen…think about one cabinet or even smaller, one shelf, one drawer, one section of the counter at a time.

Make the physical scope small enough that you can actually finish the decisions. 

First decide what belongs, then decide where and how what remains should live. 

This is not some random tiny task advice. You’re deliberately reducing the physical scope so you can:

• think clearly
• make and finish decisions
• avoid exploding the whole room, and 
• actually complete something

You don’t need to declutter everything first. You just need to declutter the things you’re going to organize first/next. 

Don’t Pull Everything Out Just Because Someone Told You To

Classic organizing advice is to take everything out. 

Like I said, I’ve taught that in the past before too. It can work, but only if you’re not already overwhelmed, on time or likely to get interrupted, which let’s face it as moms that happens all the time. 

By pulling everything out, you’ve just potentially turned a messy cabinet into a mess covering the entire kitchen. 

So contain the project, work through a manageable area. Make the decluttering decisions, then organize what’s staying. 

Organizing is NOT Just Putting What’s Left into Bins

Once you’ve decluttered, don’t immediately think, okay, what containers can I go and buy? 

You need to decide: 

• Where should things actually live? 
• Where are they used? 
• Who’s going to use them? 
• Where do people naturally reach for them? 
• How easily do they need to be accessible? 
• Is the location logical? 
• And is it easy to put things back, easy to put things away? 

Organizing isn’t about finding somewhere your stuff fits. It’s about finding the right homes for the things you’ve chosen to keep. 

You May Not Get Organization Right the First Time

And that’s okay! 

You declutter, you choose homes, set things up, and then you live with it. Maybe you discover something is in the wrong location. 

• Maybe it’s too hard to put away. 
• Maybe your family doesn’t look for it or put it away where you’ve assigned it a home. 
• Maybe something keeps landing somewhere else. 

Those are clues that your organization isn’t quite working with your real life.

Real life gets to tell you whether your organizing decisions will work or not. 

Your Next Step

So what if you’re looking around your whole home and you don’t know which problem needs your attention first? 

• Maybe you need to declutter. Maybe you have too much stuff for the container that is your home or your kitchen or whatever it is you’re looking at. 
• Maybe the amount of stuff that you have is fine, but the organization doesn’t work for your real life. 
• Maybe both of those are okay, but you need habits to keep things from falling apart when real life happens. 

That’s exactly why I created the Messy Home Diagnostic quiz. 

It helps to identify whether your biggest issue is clutter, organization, or habits. It gives you a clear place to start. 

So, should I declutter or organize first? 

You declutter first. 

But that means make the keep-or-let-go decisions before you make the where-and-how-to-store-it decisions. 

It does not mean decluttering your entire home and then someday, six months from now, you may begin organizing. 

Work in a manageable area.  Decide what stays. Then move on to the next manageable area. The decisions need to happen in order…but the entire house doesn’t need to be done all at once.