Im a professional organiser - 30 day challenge to clear your house & two kitchen areas people ALW

IS the mess in your home stacking up?

New book Change Your Space by decluttering queen Dilly Carter will show you how to clear, reorganise and fall back in love with your rooms.

Dilly, 41, who is also a presenter on BBC’s Sort Your Life Out, says: “Decluttering will not only give you an orderly living space, but it will also lead to an improvement in the way your home functions day to day – and it will help you clear your mind.”

In an exclusive extract from the book, Dilly shares her 30-day challenge, where you remove items from your home, from one item on day one to 30 on day 30.

DAY 1: You will remove one object from your home. Look for a large item that will make a big impact.

Is there a kid’s wardrobe that has been outgrown or an unused occasional chair that’s become a dumping ground for clothes?

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DAY 2: Remove two items. While the numbers are low, look for big items to remove. What do you have that you no longer need? Is there an outgrown pushchair that can be donated or an unused bike that can be sold?

DAY 3: Look through your kitchen cupboards to find appliances you never use. Perhaps you have a pasta machine, bread maker, deep-fat fryer or slow cooker that never sees the light of day.

DAY 4: Look at your hallway. Winter coats take up a lot of room, but do you have coats hanging up that you no longer wear?

DAY 5: Look at your outside space, if you have some. You should consider lofts, garages and sheds during this challenge. Do you have a trampoline you could sell?

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DAY 6: Time to remove six items. Imagine every room as a blank canvas. What would you change if you could?

DAY 7: Go through your Tupperware. Make sure every bottom has a top that matches. Store them, with lids on, inside each other. Then consider what you can reduce.

DAY 8: Have you been through your shoes recently? Are there any you are not going to wear again that you can donate to charity or sell? The goal is to remove eight things from your house today.

DAY 9: It is time to tackle your underwear drawer. Consider how it makes you feel when you wear the items (if you wear them). What can you recycle at a textile bank?

DAY 10: The ten items don’t all need to come from the same category. You can remove an amalgamation of things.

DAY 11: Look through all your mugs. You don’t need 20. Get rid of some.

DAY 12: Today, can you get rid of 12 pieces of cutlery or cooking utensils from your kitchen?

DAY 13: It is time to admit that some of your children’s toys need to be removed, either by donating to a toy bank or to a charity shop.

DAY 14: If you have children, look at their baby clothes. It is tempting to keep everything, but you don’t need to keep multiples. The first onesie might be enough.

DAY 15: Pause a moment to take it in and realise exactly what it is you have donated, what still needs to be sold and what you have kept — and then remove 15 items.

DAY 16: Go through ornaments and knick-knacks. Look over the objects you have on display and see whether you can edit out less meaningful items.

DAY 17: Look at your clothes and consider what you own, compared to what you wear. The less you have, the easier your laundry loads will be and the less time you will spend washing, ironing, folding and putting away.

DAY 18: Go through your make-up bags and bathroom cabinets. Do you have anything that has expired? Are there jars you used once and never went back to?

Always use up what you have before you buy something new and keep your products as streamlined as possible.

DAY 19: Look through your books. What have you read that you won’t go back to, what books did you buy that you will never end up reading? What could you share with a friend? What could you donate?

DAY 20: Paperwork somehow builds up. File everything you can into relevant folders and check through old documents to see if you can shred or recycle them.

DAY 21: Today, you are removing 21 items. You need to look at all this stuff and absorb how much you have removed from your life.

Thinking about things you bought you did not need will help ensure you don’t have to repeat this process so intensely next time.

DAY 22: It is as important to declutter your digital storage as it is your physical space. What can you delete from your inbox? What mailers can you unsubscribe from?

DAY 23: Do you still have piles of DVDs, even though you are signed up to Netflix? Go through your DVDs — there are companies that will buy them from you.

DAY 24: In the same way we can stream films, every song you could possibly want to listen to will be available on Spotify, iTunes or Apple Music. Clear out those CDs.

DAY 25: As you reach these higher numbers, it can feel overwhelming. By now, you will have realised that half the bits in your home are things you don’t actually need and the other half are things that you don’t actually like.

DAY 26: Today, you could look through memory boxes. Our attachment to certain objects changes over time, so it is important to keep returning to these areas and seeing what you can remove.

DAY 27: I often joke that people sometimes panic and end up taking 30 plastic bags to the recycling point. However, if you have been storing cardboard boxes “just in case”, they are very valid items to remove.

DAY 28: Is it time to go through your kitchen cupboards and remove foodstuffs? What is out of date? What do you have duplicates of? What can you donate to a food bank to make your shelves feel empty, clear and calm?

DAY 29: Look at seasonal items. Get up in the loft and go through your Easter decorations, Christmas baubles and Halloween novelties. What will you never use again? Get rid of those.

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DAY 30: Have a final check through all your rooms to see what you can remove today. Once you have found 30 final items, you have completed the challenge.

• This is an edited extract by Natasha Harding from Change Your Space: Reclaim Your Home, Your Time And Your Mind by Dilly Carter (Wellbeck Balance, £16.99), out tomorrow.

6 RULES

EVERY time you approach a space or room to tidy or declutter, I want you to go through each of these steps in order.

If you stick to them, tidying and decluttering will soon become second nature.

ASSESS: What do you need to change/ what would you like to change?

CLEAR: Always clear the space entirely.

GROUP: Put items together that need to be together.

CATEGORISE: Allocate items to the right place (for example, garage items in the garage).

STORAGE: Choose the correct type of storage for each group of items.

LABEL: Make sure you know what is where.

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