Pick a room to work in. You don’t have to limit yourself to just one room, but working in one room at a time (two, at most) will give you visible results sooner.

Select a row in the checklist below to work on. When you’ve completed the row, check it off.

Example 1 The checklist says to declutter the top of a table, and you have one nightstand. As soon as the nightstand top is decluttered, check off that row. If you have two nightstands, declutter them at different times (remember, work on bite-size pieces—NOT big areas). Check off the row when both nightstand tops are decluttered. Example 2 The checklist says to declutter one foot of clothes rod in the closet. After multiple sessions, you will have decluttered all the clothes rods in all the closets in the room so you can now check off that row.

When you declutter an area, REALLY deal with the clutter–throw it away, give it away, or put it away. If you just move things somewhere else, you’ll end up dealing with it later which is a sure-fire way to sabotage your success.