15 Steps To Detox Your Home

I always like to start really small and impactful so we’re going to begin by letting in natural light. Open up the blinds and windows! Don’t try to do a full space detox in the dark like you’re in a cave. You won’t be inspired if you feel like a bat 🙂 Having light can help lift your energy and your mental state.

Bacteria love to grow and dark, dank spaces. So the more natural light that you can let shine through, the healthier your space is going to feel. Not everybody has large windows, but even turning on some lights can make your home feel more awake.

A healthy home needs fresh air. I know this can be challenging, especially during winter if you’re someplace where it’s freezing. You can always opt for some air purifiers or have fans to get some circulation happening. Otherwise, if you can leave the windows open for 30 minutes to an hour, it makes a big difference in the freshness and vivaciousness of a room.

It’s very demotivating to feel like you’re breathing in stale air, where you can see little dust particles floating around. It can feel unhealthy, even standing and breathing in that space. I recommend that you get those two steps rolling before you even start diving into the rest of the detox.

The next step is going to be to detox your home of junk (and I mean actual trash). Things that are broken, cracked, or not needed or usable. This could be fast food sauce packets or things that got shoved to the back of a cabinet. You can walk around with a trash bag and just grab things and throw them in there as you go around. 

You’ll start to see a lot of progress just by getting the trash out. A lot of people start focusing on higher-level organization and decluttering plans when they haven’t covered the basics yet. 

You might find that you have sticky things or grime or layers of dust in some places. So get a rag and your favorite cleaning solution and just start wiping. A lot of the things that need to be detoxed are in the kitchen. So that can be an impactful place to start. If you come across a lot of grossness, just put on some rubber gloves and go at it!

If you have to put your mind somewhere else to go through it, do it! Don’t let this step take too much out of you or make you lose steam.

Next, we’re going to make a run-through of the space and look for excess. We’re not worried about reaching or achieving minimalist standards here. But if you see a lot of redundancy, now is the time to get rid of those things. 

So if you have three different fryers and you’re only using the newest one, get rid of the rest. While we often get new appliances or gadgets, we don’t as often go through the process of getting rid of the old versions. Maybe it feels wasteful or we don’t take the time to do it. 

But during the detox is the time, to be honest about whether we’re going to use those double items. A lot of times we start to trick ourselves into believing that there’s some valid reason that we hold on to things. When in reality, we’re not actually using them.

Holding on to all those duplicates comes from a mindset of lack. You start thinking, “What if I need it or if it becomes useful in the future?” A lot of people have this lack of trust in themselves to really make decisions that seem permanent. You don’t need to keep a bunch of pickle jars lying around just in case you might need them someday. A healthy home comes from a healthy mindset 🙂

Let’s go ahead and set the gifts that were not a good fit off to the side. If they were given to you years ago, now’s a great time to declutter them.

If they were recently given to you and you feel like you should hold onto it for a little bit, that’s fine. Maybe find a place to put them on display for a set period of time, and separate them from your daily use items. If you’re not actually going to be using the thing, it’s a good idea to mentally and visually separate them from the rest of your stuff. 

If you’re in the kitchen, now’s a good time to think about the food that you’re collecting. Maybe you’re looking to detox your life as a whole this year and the potato chips and candy don’t align with that goal. Now could be a good time to get rid of them to create a space that puts health and wellness front and center. 

What you see is what you grab. That’s where your environment becomes really helpful to achieving your goals! It’s also a good time to scan through the refrigerator and pantry looking for any kind of expired products or stuff you know you won’t use again.

Cloth items can feel really expansive and take up a lot of space. If you’re in the bedroom, take stock of your sheets, laundry, towels, and linens. If you’re in the kitchen, this could be the hand towels and washrags. 

See which stacks of linens are looking a little more mountainous that you could easily grab and get rid of. Even take a look at the floor at your rugs. Are they necessary or duplicates? Do they smell musty? Are they collecting dust? I have a post that can help you do a deep dive into decluttering your wardrobe when you’re ready for that 🙂

Now that we’ve taken care of a lot of the big hitters in the room, I want us to look at the decor specifically, gaudy decor. And I know that everybody has different tastes. Some people might be into vintage or eclectic styles, but it’s worth scanning through these items. Check to see if there are any items that a just a little too flamboyant or that don’t match your style.

When you’re detoxing your space, you’re trying to create a space that feels fresh, soothing, and comfortable. Having things that really feel uncomfortable, like the chairs you sit on, can make your space feel less accommodating. Being uncomfortable can be all-encompassing and can impact your mood.

A great way to detox your space is to take a look at your furniture. Now, this is not to say that you need to have minimalist style furniture but just evaluate for excess or where furniture has been shoved into space. Be honest about the actual value of the furniture that maybe you’re holding onto. Furniture often seems to be such a high-value item, but that’s not always the case.

The last of the ‘decluttering and removal’ ways to detox your home is getting rid of energy blocks. These are anything that prevents the flow of your space. They prevent the light, air, visibility, or attention flow of your home.

Emotional energy blocks bring you down every time you come across them. Or things that make you feel distracted and discombobulated. They might not fall into any of the categories we’ve talked about already, but they can really bring the mood of your space down.

Smells can make such a big difference in your space, but you have to make sure that you’re going about it the right way. A lot of the cheaper room sprays are just chock-full of chemicals that will either mask bad smells temporarily or mix into another not-so-great smell. And we don’t want that either 🙂 

So stick to good quality candles or essential oils. Bringing in good smells is a great way to feel like your space is detoxed and has some kind of a tangible change.

Having 20 different types of cleaning supplies, all crammed and shoved underneath your cabinet isn’t just overwhelming, but it’s also less healthy. Even if you’re not going all-natural and organic, having fewer supplies can help you detox your home.

If you reach into your cabinet for one spray bottle that you know you can use for multiple surfaces, that’s gonna feel a lot nicer and streamlined than having a bunch of different solutions that essentially all do the same thing.