Declutter Your Home in Record Time with the 10-10 Method

Now is the time of year when everyone’s going on about new decluttering techniques, but I pride myself on being an organized person all year long. Living in a small space and being pretty type A about my surroundings means that I do a good job of staying on top of what comes into my apartment and determining whether or not it’s serving me.

That said, nobody’s perfect when it comes to home organization, and there are always a few pesky spots within my apartment that I find myself neglecting. So when I heard about the 10-10 method, which involves spending 10 minutes getting rid of 10 things from a room or cluttered spot in your home, I decided to focus on decluttering my three problem areas: the bathroom, the pantry, and my sock drawer (random, I know—but it was important!).

Over the course of a couple of days, I was able to make major progress in these three areas in just 30 minutes total. Below, I’ll walk you through what exactly I did and the impact it made, if you’re looking for a little extra motivation to tackle your own problem spots at home.

10 Minutes in the Bathroom

I’m pretty passionate about skincare (and sometimes get to try new products as part of my job), so I have a substantial supply of lotions and potions in my bathroom, which is quite small already. I’ve made use of my built-in medicine cabinet and some storage drawers to keep everything sorted by category, which makes getting ready easier on a day-to-day basis.

However, I’d noticed recently that the drawer that houses my travel-sized toiletries as well as my sunscreen bottles was close to bursting. Having just read recently about how quickly sunscreen goes bad, I decided that it was time to sort through my collection and check their expiration dates as part of this challenge.

To my surprise, most of the sunscreen I had on hand was already expired. I ended up tossing about half of the bottles I had on hand, which was of course a bummer (certain brands of sunscreen can be pricy!) but was of course the most practical decision—there’s no point in wearing sunscreen that has gone bad and won’t fully protect you from UV rays.

This exercise taught me that 1) I should stop “stocking up” on sunscreen and instead solely buy one or two bottles max at a time, and 2) I should probably wear more sunscreen so that I’m not tossing multiple unopened expired bottles during a clean-out!

10 Minutes in the Pantry

Next up, I spent 10 minutes on my pantry. When I say “pantry” here, I’m being pretty generous. My apartment kitchen is quite small, and there’s really just one large cabinet that I use to store all of my dried goods—cans of soup, boxes of pasta, jars of honey, oatmeal packets, and the like.

In the lead-up to the holiday season, I wasn’t very diligent about cooking dinner at home and found myself barely opening this cabinet at all. However, now that parties and work gatherings have died down a bit for the winter, I plan to whip up more healthy meals from scratch and use up some of the ingredients that I already have on hand.

I wanted to establish a clear sense of what I’d need to replenish at the grocery store, so I took everything out of my cabinet and checked the expiration dates. I was shocked to find that about half of my canned goods (soups, beans, corn, etc.) were expired, as were a few of my jams and other spreads.

I parted ways with some of these but plan to be more mindful about working through what I already have before picking up a new-to-me honey or pasta sauce at the store simply because it catches my eye. I can now see exactly what I have in stock, so to speak, and I’ve already thought of some new-to-me recipes to whip up in the coming weeks.

10 Minutes in the Sock Drawer

Over the past year, I’ve started to invest in socks that I really like to wear (welcome to your 30s!) and have prioritized purchasing those over cheaper socks that aren’t as comfortable and don’t hold up all that well over time.

My sock drawer was stuffed to the brim, and I decided that it was time to clean it out and donate all of the so-so socks I’d accumulated and hold onto only my favorite pairs (I love anything Bombas!). I spent 10 minutes grouping like with like and getting rid of any straggler socks that didn’t have a mate, as well as those I no longer intend to wear, which came out to about 5 pairs in total.

I can now open and close my sock drawer with so much more ease. And don’t worry: I still have plenty of pairs on hand in the event I feel like putting off doing my laundry.

All in all, completing the 10-10 challenge was super worthwhile. Addressing three areas of the home that I’d pretty much forgotten about was satisfying and didn’t take up much of my time at all. Even if you just aim for getting rid of 10 things but don’t actually hit that goal, you’ve still made a ton of progress.

Whether you tackle your linen closet, bookshelf, bin of outerwear, you name it, there are so many ways that you can apply this method to your own decluttering projects—you can thank me later!