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For many generations, the advent of spring has meant saying goodbye to winter by doing a deep, thorough clean of their homes. Over the chilly season, when hunkering down, it’s not surprising that we overlook certain household tasks, and ignoring clutter would certainly fall into the category. A springtime cleanup is an opportune time to tackle the buildup.

Over time clutter can become almost invisible or just part of the furniture. How it gets to that point comes down to simply having too many things and no system in place for storing or organizing them, says author Laura Wittmann, a self-described organizing junkie.

“It all comes down to systems and stuff in general,” Wittmann explains. “Often, we just have a stuff problem, and it becomes clutter because we don’t have specific spots to put it. It just piles and clutter attracts clutter. Before you know it, all your surfaces are covered — your counters, dresser tops, any surface is fair game. It just seems to collect and before you know it, you can’t find anything you need to access because it’s buried.”

In her book Clutter rehab: 101 tips & tricks to declutter your home and organize your space, Wittmann offers simple, easy-to-implement methods to claw back the clutter that can overwhelm a living space. The easiest one to put into action, she says, is creating a “donation station” — a name which describes its specific function. Wittmann, uses this method herself and has placed a laundry basket in her linen closet where she just tosses items in when she notices that they’re no longer functional for her home.

“We all have things in our kitchen cupboards that we don’t love or need,” she notes. “In our head we’re thinking ‘I’ll have to get rid of that at some point,’ but that never comes. Just grab it and put it in the donation station right away. It’s the easiest way just having it there rather than grabbing a bag and walking around the house aimlessly.”

For Wittmann, having an organized home is all about functionality and efficiency — not making it Instagram-ready. If you get there, that’s great, she says, but don’t get caught up in colour-blocking your books or finding the trendiest storage container. Her house, where she uses mostly dollar store finds to keep items sorted, demonstrates that creating an efficient home doesn’t need to be costly. Most importantly it’s not as complicated as people envision it to be, nor does it need to be done on a large scale. She suggests taking a drawer and dumping it out and sorting through it, even while watching TV. Remove, sort and purge is the mantra she goes by.

She recommends looking for “like” items in the kitchen as a way to see what is being used and what can be purged.

“I noticed in kitchens people don’t have like with like,” she says. “They’ll have cups over here in another cupboard. I’ll suggest let’s just tackle cups. Remove all your cups and put them together… It’s way easier to purge at that point.”

To clear kitchen counters, she suggests putting everything in a box and only bringing things back as needed. Often people don’t return all the items finding that they’ve “fallen in love with the empty space.”

In Clutter Rehab, Wittmann offers an easy-to-follow approach that can be remembered with the acronym PROCESS: plan, remove, organize, evaluate, solve and simplify. The first three being the most important to achieve. The book’s information is presented in short bites, the entirety of the advice is easily digestible, and the reader can adapt it to their own needs.

“It’s a very easy read,” Wittmann says. “You don’t have to read it from cover to cover. Because it’s written as 101 tricks and tips for decluttering, you can pick and choose. There’s a list of them all and you can just jump in where you feel comfortable. It doesn’t have to be ‘do this first, do this second’ kind of thing.”

Out of all her tips for creating a more functional home, Wittmann urges people to foremost set up their house for the way that they live. “It doesn’t have to work for anyone else but you or anyone else that lives with that family. That’s all that matters.”

Though she shuttered her longtime popular blog the Organizing Junkie a few years ago and no longer works as a professional organizer due to a chronic illness, Wittmann is still in contact with readers via her Instagram account @orgjunkie. Most of her current content is in the IG stories format rather than posts.

Clutter rehab: 101 tips & tricks to declutter your home and organize your space

By Laura Wittmann | Ulysses Press, April 14, 2026, 128 pages, $19.99

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