This is How Long It Takes to Declutter an Apartment

After living in my two college apartments, I learned that the time it takes to declutter the living space depends on how much stuff you have and how big or small your place is. 

If every room in your apartment is cluttered, then it could take 6 hours to organize everything again. It could take 15-30 minutes if you only have one room to take care of. This can vary depending on how thorough you are. 

Even though this is usually how long it takes, there are a couple of ways to speed up the process.

It Takes 6 Hours Or More To Declutter The Entire Place

Organizing your entire apartment can take six hours at the very least if every room is cluttered. At the very most, it can take weeks. It’s not just about cleaning up—figuring out where everything goes can slow you down, especially if you’ve forgotten where certain items belong or recently bought new things, making storage tricky. If you’re only tackling a few rooms, expect about 30 minutes per room for thorough organization. A quicker, guest-ready tidy-up might take 15 minutes per room, but it won’t be as neat or categorized.

To speed up the process, try focusing on one room at a time and break it down by categories (clothes, papers, toiletries). Using drawer dividers or storage bins can help keep things more organized long-term. The longer you let clutter build up, the more overwhelming it can feel, but starting small and staying consistent will make it more manageable over time.

How To Speed Up The Process

One of the things that slows the decluttering process down tremendously is our own mind. We think meticulously about where everything should go and how to make it look neat. Here’s what you should do instead, just start picking stuff up and putting it somewhere. You can make adjustments as you go, but don’t sit there and ponder where everything should be. Just keep moving.

You can also speed up the process by calling on extra hands. If you have any roommates, ask them to help clean up the home that you share. If you have any friends/family nearby, ask them to help you cut your decluttering time in half. 

How To Prevent It In The First Place

While you’re taking the time to declutter your apartment, you’ll be wishing that it was never an issue to begin with. Want to know how to prevent this next time? Put everything away after you’re done with it. Additionally, find a home for every new item that you buy and gift that you receive.

If they can’t already fit in your home, get rid of something that you already have. If that sounds outrageous to you, return the new thing that you bought, give the gift back, or find another way to take it out of your home. When it comes to clutter like dishes, either hand wash them after you’ve eaten or put them in the dishwasher. 

You might actually have just the right amount of space to fit your things, you just don’t know how. When it comes to organization, there is plenty of room for creativity. For example, you can save a lot of drawer space by rolling up your clothes instead of folding them traditionally. You can also fit more stuff in your closet if you put them in containers and stack them on top of one another. 

Also, don’t forget to buy some storage racks to put in your kitchen cupboards to fit more food inside. Check out my post called “11 Tips to Organize an Apartment With No Storage Space” for more creative ways to declutter.

Common Causes of Clutter

Roommates

We can’t forget that, if you don’t live alone, then the piles of clutter around your apartment aren’t entirely your fault. However, everyone who helped build the piles of clutter should assist in organizing them again. It can be frustrating if you’re doing everything you can to stay neat but your roommates leave their messes behind. Try having a conversation with them about this issue. Here is an article to help you talk with them about it.

Pets

Sometimes you have to take a different approach to communicating with a messy roommate. Especially if they aren’t even human. Pets that like to knock stuff over, use any and everything as a chew toy, turn a pile of papers into confetti, etc. are hard to handle. However, if you don’t want to be stuck cleaning up after them all the time, you need to get them trained. You could do this yourself or you could hire a service to do it for you. If you’re doing it on your own, I suggest Googling “how to train my (animal) to stop being messy”.

Sometimes, You Just Have Too Much Stuff

If you’ve spent hours and maybe even days organizing your apartment and it still looks cluttered, then this is a wake up call. If you hope to one day see it tidy and spacious, then you need to get rid of the extra belongings. You have several options: donate, sell, give as a gift, throw away or ask a friend to keep it at their place.

Other Types Of Clutter

Maybe you don’t even realize that you’re living in clutter. you might just think that your apartment doesn’t have enough room to fit everything. Well, to help you identify if what you’re looking at is indeed clutter, ask yourself a few questions. Do you have stuff that you don’t need, but won’t get rid of?

Are there tons of things lying around that you forgot to put away? Do you have unopened items lying around? Do some of your belongings have no particular shelf, cupboard or drawer to call home? Do you have some clothes lying around that should be in the closet or the hamper? Here are 11 different types of clutter to help you figure out why your apartment looks disorganized.