Have you recently looked at your home and realized that it's become more cluttered than you remember? Are you planning to declutter and clean out your house as soon as possible? It's not unusual for a house to slowly fill up with furniture, knick-knacks, and other assorted items that you don't actually have room for. By the time you realize this, decluttering means a bit more than simply reorganizing everything. In order to tackle your house and make it look less cluttered and more inviting, here are some tips to get you started:

Sort rooms by importance: Before you ever lift a finger, go around your home and make a list of the most problematic areas. If your garage is full of stuff and you'd like to be able to park your car inside, you might start there. On the other hand, if your clothing closets are full to bursting, you might want to tackle those first. When you start with the worst area first, be prepared to temporarily clutter up other areas of your home while you work on getting a handle on everything. But by ranking things in order of importance, you can help to give yourself a feeling of accomplishment as you declutter each section rather than looking at the house as a whole and thinking it still looks full of stuff.

Rent a small dumpster: In the process of clearing out your house, you'll almost invariably find lots of older stuff that is damaged or useless. While some of this stuff may be able to fit in your regular trash cans, smaller roll off dumpsters are going to be more useful. When using your weekly trash cans, you'll only be able to fit a few extra items at a time in them. As a result, the decluttering process can drag on for weeks. With roll off dumpsters, you can get rid of everything all at once. The sooner the junk is out of your home, the sooner you'll have more room to put the items that you want to keep.

Establish a donation bin: In addition to using roll off dumpsters to toss your trash into, get a large plastic storage bin to use for donatable items. Clothes that will never be worn again, but are still in good condition, books that don't get read, and gently used kitchen appliances can all go into this bin. If you're like most people, the reason why your home is cluttered is that you hate to throw away things that are still in good condition. By donating some stuff to charity, you'll be keeping some things out of the trash while helping people who need it.