Your 5-Step Plan to Declutter Your Chicago Home (Without the Overwhelm)

Feeling overwhelmed by clutter and cleaning in your Chicago home or apartment? You’re not alone. Between work, family, and the hustle of city life, finding the time and energy to declutter can feel impossible. But what if you had a simple, stress-free plan to reclaim your space? Whether you need a quick refresh or a major overhaul, these expert tips will help you tackle the mess. And remember, if the task feels too big, professional home cleaning is just a click away.

Decluttering often sparks a wave of stress. Where do you even start? As a cleaning expert who started a company back in 2006, I’ve seen it all. This five-step plan is designed for the rest of us—the busy people who get overwhelmed but still want a clean, peaceful space. Let’s break it down into manageable pieces.

Step 1: Identify Your “Most Important Area” (MIA)

The thought of cleaning your entire place can be paralyzing. Instead, reel in that stress and ask yourself: what is the single most important area that needs my attention right now? In my world, we call this your MIA.

For me, it’s my office. After a renovation, I stuffed books and supplies into drawers and haven’t looked back. That’s my target. Your MIA might be the kitchen counter, the entryway closet, or that guest room that’s become a storage unit. The key is to focus on one spot first and ignore the rest for now. Your MIAs will change, but having one starting point creates a clear path forward. Not sure where to begin? Sometimes, getting deep cleaning help for that one overwhelming room can provide the momentum you need.

Step 2: Schedule It. Seriously.

You’ve picked your MIA—great! But good intentions won’t clear the clutter. You know the saying: what gets scheduled gets done. I time-block everything in my phone, especially tasks I’d rather avoid, like decluttering.

Block out 15, 20, or 30 minutes in your calendar. Treat it like a doctor’s appointment. If you miss it, reschedule it immediately. Often, once you start, you’ll get into a “zone” and want to keep going. Give yourself a little buffer time. If your schedule is packed from dawn till dusk, that’s when a reliable cleaning service near me can handle the scheduling for you.

Why Scheduling Works

It makes the task real and non-negotiable. Instead of a vague “I should clean someday,” it becomes “I am cleaning from 10-10:30 AM on Saturday.” This simple shift is powerful for busy Chicagoans.

Step 3: Visualize Your Perfect Space (The Fun Part!)

This is my favorite step because it requires the least physical work. The goal is to see your room as it is, then clearly imagine what you want it to become.

• Use Inspiration: Browse Pinterest or Instagram for organized spaces that feel good to you.
• Get Technical: Create a simple “planagram”—like stores use—to map out where everything should go on shelves or in cupboards.
• See the Gap: Visualization helps you spot items that don’t belong. If it doesn’t fit the vision for your serene, functional space, it’s likely clutter.

Want a picture-perfect result but short on time? A Chicago cleaning company like ours can help bring that vision to life.

Step 4: The Quick & Emotionless Decision Round

Here’s the stumbling block. Now you must question every item in your MIA. You have to be fast and, as I jokingly say, a little like a psychopath—no emotion allowed.

Guilt over money spent or sentimental attachment (I’m looking at you, Aunt Gladys’s gift) makes us hold onto things we don’t need. Ask yourself quickly:

• Do I need this?
• Do I love this?
• Does it serve a purpose here?

If it’s useful and beautiful, keep it. If it’s useful but ugly, find a way to hide it. The goal is a room that is both inspiring and functional, where you can find what you need without digging. If the sheer volume of stuff is the problem, it might be time to book an appointment with pros who can help you sort and organize.

Step 5: Take Action & Dispose With Purpose

The hard decisions are made. Now, execute. Be prepared for emotional roadblocks, but push through.

For each item you’re parting with, decide its fate immediately:

• Sell it online if it has value.
• Donate it so it finds a new home.
• Recycle or trash it responsibly if it’s truly spent.

Always consider the highest and best use for an item to keep it out of a landfill. Let this process make you more mindful about what you bring home in the future. Ask: “Where will this live? Will I have to declutter it in six months?”

My personal struggle? Greeting cards. They’re expensive, sentimental, and I have a box of them. My solution is to keep only the ones with truly special sentiments and let the rest go. What’s your clutter kryptonite?

You’ve Got This, Chicago!

Decluttering doesn’t have to be a monumental, stressful event. With this plan, you can tackle any space, one step at a time. Save these steps for your next project. And remember, maintaining a clean home is an ongoing process. For those weeks when life gets too busy, fast cleaning services can be your secret weapon to reset your space quickly.

Whether you tackle it yourself or decide to get your space cleaned by professionals, the goal is the same: a home that feels calm, clean, and uniquely yours.

If you’re watching this video, it’s probably because decluttering has crossed your mind lately. And I know the feeling. As soon as it crosses your mind, overwhelm sets in. In this video, I want to help empower you and make you feel ready to tackle that decluttering project. I’m going to give you my five-step plan for decluttering for the rest of us. For the people that get overwhelmed, for the people that just don’t know where to start. If that resonates with you, keep watching. And by the way, if you’re new here, my name is Melissa Maker. Welcome to the Clean MySpace channel. I’m an accidental cleaning expert, which means I hate cleaning, but I love finding the most efficient and effective ways to get the job done right the first time. So, if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel so you can get more videos just like this. And you can also check out my sister company called Makers Clean, where I sell premium microfiber cleaning tools and so much more. These are research and expert-backed products designed by me to help cut your cleaning time in half. By the way, I also have a cleaning company that I started in 2006, so trust me, I know what I’m talking about here. And give this video a thumbs up for having a plan. The thing I experience and I know so many people experience when it comes to decluttering or the thought of decluttering is this visceral gut reaction of stress and overwhelm because it feels like where do I start? Oh my gosh, this is going to take me forever. And what I have found that works for me is to really reel that in and say, okay, what is the most important area that I need to tackle? Can I tackle that one first? And I feel like once we spend time and determine what our most important areas are or in clean my space lingo what we call MIAS you know most important areas um it really gives us a a path or a road that we can take to decluttering. So we can say I don’t have to do it all at once rather uh my bedroom is really important but my dining room I don’t care about so much. So once you kind of have this carved out, then you have a starting point and you can sort of work your way down your list of most important areas and totally not worry about areas that don’t matter to you, at least not now. Of course, your MIAs will change from time to time. So when I think about my current MIA or most important area to declutter, it’s my office. And I’ll tell you why. I renovated my office space. And in order to get some of this renovation done, I had to tuck things away. Books, office stuff, like all kinds of items just went into this one built-in unit that I have. And honestly, I haven’t opened those drawers in a long time cuz I just have not wanted to look. So, for me, if I’m really honest, that is my MIA. And that is where I need to focus my efforts. And that brings me to a common question, which is, what is your most important area? the one area that really stresses you out, the one area that you know you need to declutter and perhaps you’ve been avoiding. So, let me know what that space is for you in the comments down below. Once you’ve made the decision that you’re going to declutter an area, that’s great, but when is it going to happen? And this brings us back to the famous adage, what gets scheduled gets done. The way that I do this is I time block things in my phone so I know if I have to get anything done, whether it’s make a phone call or go to a bank or pick something up, I put it in my phone. And I do the exact same thing when it comes to these cleaning or decluttering tasks that I don’t necessarily care to do. But if they’re in my calendar, they do get done. And if for whatever reason I can’t get to it that particular day, I can at least shift it to another day. So it’s there, it’s present, and I know it has to be dealt with. So if you’re scheduling uh things in or if you’re struggling with scheduling things in, just even put 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes in your calendar to at least get started. What I’ve also noticed has happened for me in the past is when I’ve scheduled something in for say 30 minutes, I really get into it and I’m doing well and I’m really into whatever I’m listening to and I’m just in a zone and then I’m not going to disrupt myself. So, schedule something in and maybe give yourself a little bit of a buffer just in case you really do get into that zone. If I had to pick like the most fun thing in this five-step plan, I would say this is it. And it’s all about visualizing what you want your space to look like. The reason I think this is fun is because really it requires the least amount of work and I’m lazy so this one’s good for me. But really the goal of this particular step is for you to see your room as it is in all of its glory. Uh and then imagine what you want it to look like. So whether you can see that in your mind’s eye, whether you have to go online or Instagram or Pinterest and just see pictures of organized spaces that feel good to you that you sort of want to use as an inspirational cue. Or even if you want to take it a step further, go real technical and create some sort of a planagram like the way a retail store is planned. So you kind of know here I want this, here I want this, I only want this stuff on this shelf or this stuff in this cupboard. The more specific you can get, the easier it’s going to be for you to know what your space needs to look like by the time you’re done. And I actually think a planagram is a great way to go because it shows you exactly how much space you have available for certain things and where those things need to go, what the home is for the items that you have. It will also help you further declutter because if for whatever reason you find you have a few random items, you might realize that once you’ve put your planagram together or once you’ve visualized your space, those items don’t actually make sense in this room anymore. And that can be a very helpful step when it comes to parting ways with items that we don’t need anymore. This is the stumbling block. So, I just want to make sure that you are mentally and emotionally prepared for what we’re about to do. And this comes down to being able to effectively question the items that you have in your space. So you’ve picked your MIA, you’ve blocked out the time, you’ve visualized your space, and now we’ve got to get down to action. You actually have to look at the items and decide, do I need this? Do I love this? Do I want this? Does it make sense in my space anymore? Was it here for a reason, a season, a lifetime? You got to go through all of that stuff. And you have to be lightning fast. I always say kind of jokingly kind of not that you have to be like a psychopath when you do this. No emotion because emotion makes us hold on to things. If we feel guilty that we spent too much money on something and we don’t want to get rid of it or because Aunt Glattus gave it to us for our wedding and what would she think if we got rid of it. We just we can’t have these emotions. Emotions are what make us hold on to things we don’t need. So ask yourself the right questions. Ask them quickly. Remove your emotions and make your decisions. If it serves a purpose in your space and it looks beautiful and it makes you feel good, hang on to it. If it serves a purpose in your space and it’s ugly, keep it, but at least hide it. The goal here is we want our rooms to look beautiful and inspiring, but also be useful and purposeful at the same time. And spaces where we don’t have to dig through a million things to find what we actually need. Most of the hard work is done, but the final step is to take action. Now, keep in mind, you got to be good to yourself. There are going to be some emotional roadblocks that come up. You might really battle it out in your mind, like, I need this. I’m going to keep it. Or, I just can’t get rid of this one particular thing. There’s some sort of emotional draw to it, but really, really press yourself to get over that hump and make the decision. And then once you’ve made the decision, figure out what you’re going to do to move on from it. Are you going to sell it online? Are you going to donate it? Does it just belong in the garbage? Figure out what you have to do to safely and effectively dispose of that item. And always keep in mind what the highest and best use for that item is. Do your very best to keep it out of the landfill. And let this be a reminder to you that when you do accept things into your new home, whether it’s a gift or something that you’ve purchased or a free sample, whatever the case may be, be really mindful about it. Where is it going to go? Does it fit into my planagram? Will I have to get rid of this in 6 months? This has really helped me be very much more mature when it comes to my buying decisions and things I’m willing to accept. Even as someone in a influencer position, we get emails a lot about, oh, does Melissa want this thing? Oh, can I send you this? And we say no to so much of it because at the end of the day, it’s just clutter that builds up in my home, even though it’s cool and it’s free and I’ll have to get rid of it eventually. And now, my admission, the thing that I really struggle with, it’s an emotional item, it’s a sentimental item, greeting cards. First of all, I think the whole world of greeting cards is utterly ridiculous. They are so expensive and then you always forget the card when you’re buying a gift. But then when you get the card and someone writes a beautiful sentiment in it, you’re like, “Oh, I should keep this to commemorate my 37th birthday.” And then you have a stack of cards. I’m saying you, but I’m really talking about me. And that’s one of the things that I have trouble with. Like someone spent seven, eight bucks on this card. It’s pretty. They wrote a nice thing in there. What do I do with it? I can’t just throw down in the garbage. And so now I have a box of cards from like 30 onward that I’m trying to figure out what to do with. So the way that I’m going to be tackling this, cuz of course this box of cards is in my office. I’m going to go through them. I’m not going to worry about what they look like, okay? But I’m going to look at the sentiment. If it’s something really special or if it marked a really special occasion, I’ll keep it. Otherwise, I have to just move on from them because they’re not serving any real purpose in my life and they’re taking up space. So, now you have your plan of action. You know where to start. And my hope is that you feel less overwhelmed and that this decluttering project, however big or small it is, feels like something you can manage. And save this video. You can come back to it whenever you need that motivation or inspiration. I got you. If you like the work that we do here at Clean My Space, we’re a really small team. And you can support us by becoming a member. And if you want expert cleaning tips and product recommendations sent to your inbox every week, you can subscribe to our newsletter called The Dirty Dish. Trust me, it’s a really good one. Now, if you feel like you want to make some other changes in your cleaning life, I’ve got a video right here called 10 Life-Changing Cleaning Habits that you can check out. These made a huge difference for me and my hope is that they’ll make a huge difference for you as well. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean My Space channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.