5 Ways to Prevent Clutter from Taking Over Your Whole Home
Apartment Therapy’s Decluttering Cure is a free two-week decluttering program that’ll help you achieve a tidier home. Sign up here and get all 14 assignments delivered to your inbox.
Frequently decluttering your home is a great way to keep your place looking clean and organized. But it’s not a complete fix for future problems. For that, you’ll need to look at your current organizational systems and see how you can improve them to stop clutter before it starts.
Here’s how to prevent clutter from taking over your home.
Day 11: Do One Thing to Prevent Clutter
For today’s assignment, we’ll be doing just one thing to help prevent clutter. (Future you will be so thankful!)
Here are some ideas to get you started, and feel free to do as many as you want now or save them for later!
Cancel or stop subscriptions, mailed statements, and catalogs.
Cancel anything you no longer use or read, like a streaming service, physical magazine, or digital newspaper subscription. As for any catalogs you receive frequently but never look through, it’s time to finally put a stop to them. You can find a number on the back of most catalogs to call and request that you be taken off the list.
Take things a step further and get your address removed from certain mailing lists. The Federal Trade Commission recommends using the website www.optoutprescreen.com to prevent letters for up to five years or permanently. Additionally, make the switch from mailed statements to paperless statements to further cut down on any mail clutter.
Set up a home landing strip to stop clutter at the door.
Prevent clutter from piling up at your entryway by establishing an organizing system, like a home landing strip, aka a command center.
Components of a home landing strip can include a surface, like a table, to hold items as they come and go; a container or bowl to hold wallets, keys, and other things; and a wastebasket to gather trash, to name a few.
Think before you print.
Do you really need a physical copy of a bill you paid online? Or a receipt of purchase? Consider whether something needs to be printed or can be kept digitally instead.
And if you are keeping something digitally, refer back to our digital clutter assignment to help keep those files organized, too.
Declutter regularly.
Along with following our annual Decluttering Cure, try to incorporate “declutter dates” into your calendar so you are regularly editing your home.
It can also be helpful to implement a decluttering rule that speak to you. For instance, the one-in, one-out rule — or the more intense one-in, three-out rule — can prevent clutter because you’ll always take something away before you can bring something into your home.
Set up a permanent “donate” outbox.
Speaking of decluttering regularly, you should set up a permanent donation box or bag somewhere in your closet.
As you fill it up, make a commitment to empty it out once a month, every three months, or every six months, depending on how full it gets.
More Ways to Participate in the Decluttering Cure:
- Sign up for email updates.
- Visit the 2026 Decluttering Cure page and catch up on assignments.
- Download the Decluttering Cure calendar.
- Check off that you’ve completed this task and track your overall Decluttering Cure progress here!
- See all the winners from our 2026 Organization Awards to get your home organized.
The Cure Program is a tradition here at Apartment Therapy — it happens every January, April, and September. Click here to learn more about the year-round program and when to sign up.