The best part is these things take less than sixty minutes to do!

Let’s be honest.  Selling a home is a big undertaking.  You have to stage your home, keep it clean, be prepared to leave for showings and deal with buying your new home.  Even if you aren’t planning to list your home in Locust Grove until the spring, there are plenty of tasks you can complete now to make your life a little easier when that for sale sign goes in the front yard.  The best part: these tasks take less than an hour.

Clear the linen closet

Grab an empty box.  Then go through each shelf of your linen closet.  Pull out any worn or damaged towels or sheets that you don’t use and toss them in the box.  Then go through anything else that you keep in the closet and determine if it is an item to donate, discard, or keep.

Use the towels and sheets that you placed in the box to help pack fragile items during your move from your home in Locust Grove.

Pantry Raid

Go through the pantry and pull out anything that is nearing an expiration date.  Put these items on your counter and plan meals around them.  While you are in the pantry combine like ingredients like the three open boxes of pasta to save more space. If you are feeling motivated, then here are some more kitchen items to tackle.

Children’s Closets

Children outgrow clothing quickly.  Take a few minutes to go through your child’s closet and pull out anything that is too small.  Pack it away for hand me downs or pass the items on to someone.  On another day, tackle the dresser.

Office Supplies

Do you have a collection of free pens and pencils that you have amassed over the years?  Do you ask yourself how your child has so many crayons?  Go through the office supplies at your home in Locust Grove and toss dried up writing utensils and donate art supplies you are not using to local schools or senior centers.

Spice Drawer

We all have a bottle of a long lost spice in the back of the spice drawer or cabinet that expired several years ago.  Take a few minutes to go through all your spices and discard the ones that are expired.  While they may not make you ill, spices long past their best by dates have lost flavor.

Bookshelves

Books are heavy.  By going through your bookshelf in your Locust Grove home and weeding out the ones that you wouldn’t read again you are saving yourself from lugging them to your new home. Consider donating them to a library that sells used books.

Bathroom cabinets

Have your bathroom cabinets become a space for long forgotten about free samples and expired medicine?  Clean out your cabinets and toss anything that is past its prime.  Remember to go through your medicines too and properly dispose of them.

Food Storage Containers

Why is it there are always ten containers and twenty lids?  Take a few minutes to match up each of your containers with a lid and recycle the rest.

Clothing

While you may not be able to declutter all of your clothing in an hour, you might be able to tackle a group of items.  For example, go through three dresser drawers today and do three more tomorrow.  Look through your t-shirts one day and jeans the next.  By breaking it down into smaller increments you might feel less overwhelmed with the task.

Coat Closet

Go through the closet and donate any winter gear that your family isn’t using or has outgrown.  Remove anything that really shouldn’t be in the closet.  Go through the shoes too.

Decluttering these spaces now will have your future self full of thanks. Maybe the momentum that you built doing these tasks for an hour a day helps to continue your declutter process so you will have a lot less work to do when it’s time to put your Locust Grove home on the market.