Leave Clutter Behind in 2025: A Guide to Prepping Your Home for the New Year
New Year’s is when many people make promises to themselves to keep throughout the year. It can be as simple as giving up an unhealthy habit, all the way up to changing your entire lifestyle. Families are more often setting goals to get their homes in tip-top shape and to maintain that cleanliness.
However, another notable aspect of New Year’s resolutions is that many people break them. Here are some cleanliness habits you can try in the new year and, most importantly, how you can stick to them and leave clutter behind once and for all.
The new year has a way of making everything feel possible—but clutter has a way of stealing that momentum fast. If you want to start 2025 feeling lighter, calmer, and more in control, the key is to declutter before the new year with intention. Rather than attempting a full-home overhaul, focusing on a few high-impact areas can reset your space and your mindset without overwhelming your schedule.
Many people look forward to the new year because it presents endless possibilities. If you’re excited to get a fresh start, enter January with a clean house. Decluttering your living space can revitalize your home and your spirit, depending on where you focus your efforts. Learn what should get your attention to make the biggest impact with the least amount of work.
Benefits of Starting the Year With Less Mess
Spending your Saturday afternoon cleaning may not sound exciting, but it could help your mental health. Repeated exposure to mess increases the adverse mental health effects and continues in waves as long as the clutter remains. You may feel less stressed when your home is consistently cleaner.
You’ll also start the new year with a sense of accomplishment. Everything else that you want to tackle, like your resolutions or upcoming milestones, may seem more possible if you feel energized from your decluttering project.
Things to Declutter Around Your Home to Leave Clutter Behind
Start organizing your living space with intention. If you focus on some commonly messy areas, you could feel the positive effects of decluttering overnight.
1. Your Sock Drawer
Sock drawers can contain lots of forgotten belongings. You might have pairs of lost underwear that accidentally made their way beneath everything else. Lone socks with missing partners will linger unused until you discard them.
While it may seem like an unimportant task, it’s a perfect place to get the ball rolling. You can feel a quick sense of accomplishment to motivate you to continue decluttering.
2. The Pantry Shelves
Even if you use your pantry daily, there are likely dried goods that have expired without your knowledge. If you have kids, they may be guilty of taking the last snack but leaving the empty box on the shelf.
Take an afternoon to pull everything out and line up your pantry items on the kitchen counter. Toss anything that’s expired or stale. If you have any items that are still good but you don’t plan to use, take them to your local food pantry.
3. Your Makeup Bag
The bottom of your makeup bag collects dust, powder and anything that leaks out of your favorite products. It can get surprisingly gross down there, so it may be time to do a deep clean. Get rid of dried out products or items you never use. Makeup can expire, so be sure to throw away anything that may be a few years old.
You can put the bag in the washing machine or rinse your preferred container in the sink. This also removes lingering bacteria that could get on your brushes and reduces the visual clutter you see every day.
4. Stacks of Paper
Even if you have digitized most of your processes, you can still end up with an excess of paper over the course of the year. Sit down with everything and sort paper in the following categories:
Shred and/or recycle. These are things you won’t ever need again.
- Unwanted flyers and coupons
- Junk mail
- Old homework from kids
- Paperwork no longer needed (documents from old jobs, for example)
Digitize then toss. These would be documents you may need to have ready, in case of financial or legal processes, but can be saved online and printed if needed.
- Pay stubs
- Tax documents
- Bank statements
- Bills or utility account information
Store in a safe. Think documents that you need to have original, paper copies.
- Birth certificates
- Social security cards
- Other legal documents
5. Unwanted Holiday Gifts
The winter holidays may be fun, but they likely leave you with a few gifts you don’t like. Whether it’s something you’ll never use or an item that’s not your style, consider donating your unwanted gifts. You’ll free up extra space in your house and make someone’s day by dropping things off at a donation center.
6. Your Spice Rack
When you’re not up for a big pantry cleaning session, look closely at your spice rack. People don’t often know that their spices have gone bad because the dried goods don’t grow mold or smell foul. Check the expiration date on every bottle and discard anything unsafe to eat. You should start the new year with fresh and flavorful herbs.
7. Your Home Office
Anyone who works from home should clean their office space before the new year arrives. Even if you work from your dining room table, you’ve likely accumulated trash while doing your job.
Old papers, discarded sticky notes and snack wrappers around your laptop don’t have to be there forever. Spend a few minutes collecting the things you don’t need so there’s less clutter where you spend time every day.
8. Books You Didn’t Enjoy
Anyone who loves books knows that eventually you’ll collect a pile that you didn’t necessarily enjoy. Maybe you have some novels that you never finished or series that didn’t impress you when you reached the last page. It’s time to send them to a donation center.
Your local library may also accept unwanted novels, so call during their business hours. Remember, you don’t have to keep bad books in your home because you spent money on them or got them as presents.
9. The Garage
For many people, the garage becomes a graveyard of things you stow away and forget about: the roller blades you haven’t used in years, the tricycle your child grew out of or the broken microwave you forgot to throw away. It’s finally time to say goodbye.
If things are in good condition, consider donating or giving them to a friend who could make better use of it. For old appliances or large, damaged furniture, look up how to dispose of them properly in your area.
10. Chipped Nonstick Pans and Cookware
Inspect your pots and pans before making your next meal. Many kitchen products contain a group of chemicals called PFAS because they make products slip and slide. When chips appear, those chemicals are more likely to leach into your food.
Replacing them with cookware free of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances will support your health and refresh your cooking supplies. In the process, ask yourself if you regularly use all of them. You may realize you have more pots than you actually need, which can clear up some space in your cabinets.
Give Yourself a Clean Slate
Decluttering your home before New Year’s can make you feel unstoppable. You’ll finally take care of all the little things that have been causing you stress. Use the decluttering opportunity as a confidence booster so you can tackle whatever the new year has in store with a positive mindset.
Decluttering doesn’t have to be extreme to be effective. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s creating breathing room before a new chapter begins. When you declutter before the new year, you reduce stress, save time, and set yourself up for habits that actually stick. Clearing out what no longer serves you now makes space for everything you want to build in the year ahead.
