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Decluttering an entire house in one go is the quickest route to a half-empty box in the hallway and a sinking feeling in your stomach. The trick is to stop thinking about the whole house and start thinking about one room — then one drawer, one shelf, one surface. A room-by-room approach keeps the task small enough to finish, and finishing is what gives you the momentum to carry on tomorrow.

Set aside 45 minutes to an hour per session, put your phone on silent, and gather three bags or boxes: one for keeping, one for donating or selling, and one for the bin. Everything else is detail.

Before You Start: Set the Ground Rules

A few simple rules make every room easier. Decide them now, so you are not negotiating with yourself halfway through a wardrobe.

• One room at a time. Do not drift into the loft because you found a box marked "spare".
• Touch it once. When something comes out of a cupboard, it goes into a keep, donate or bin pile. No "maybe later" stacks.
• Ask the honest question. Not "might I need this?" but "have I used this in the last year?" If the answer is no, it can go.
• Empty, then decide. Take everything out of a drawer or shelf before you put anything back. It is far easier to judge a pile than a packed space.
• Stop at the timer. Tired decisions are bad decisions, and a messy room left overnight is discouraging.

Start with the Hallway and Landing

The hallway is where clutter lands first: shoes, bags, post, school letters, umbrellas. It is also the smallest space, which makes it the perfect warm-up.

Clear the floor completely. Sort shoes by who wears them and how often — anything outgrown or worn through goes. Give each person one basket or one shelf for their everyday bag and coat. Deal with the post pile standing up: open, bin the envelopes, action anything urgent, and file the rest. A small tray or a wall file does more for calm than any amount of tidying later.

On the landing, look at what has been "put up there for now". If it has been there for months, it belongs in a proper home or out of the house.

The Kitchen: Work Surfaces First

Kitchens collect duplicates and gadgets. Start with the surfaces, because clear worktops change how the whole room feels.

Take everything off the worktop and put back only what you use daily: kettle, toaster, perhaps a knife block. The bread maker, the juicer and the sandwich press can go into a cupboard — or out of the house if they have not been used since you moved in.

Then work through one cupboard at a time:

• Match every plastic container to its lid and recycle the orphans.
• Keep the crockery you actually use; donate the rest.
• Check dates on spices, herbs and baking supplies — dried herbs lose their punch after a year or two.
• Keep one set of everyday utensils and one set for guests, not four of everything.

Finish with the fridge. A wipe-down and a clear-out of old jars takes ten minutes and makes cooking the rest of the week noticeably pleasanter.

The Living Room: Paper, Cables and "Someday" Items

Living rooms hold the sentimental clutter: magazines we will read eventually, craft projects, orphaned chargers, DVDs nobody owns a player for.

Begin with paper. Old magazines, catalogues and leaflets go straight into recycling. Keep only current documents in one clearly labelled box or folder. If your paperwork is genuinely important — warranties, insurance, tax — give it a single home and put it there every time.

Cables are the hidden culprit. Keep the ones you can identify and label them with a bit of masking tape. Everything unidentified goes, unless you can name the device within five seconds.

For sentimental items, set a limit. One box per person for childhood keepsakes is plenty. Choose the pieces that genuinely bring back a memory and photograph anything you love but cannot store.

Bedrooms and Wardrobes

Clothes are emotionally loaded, so make it practical and quick. Take everything out of the wardrobe and put it on the bed.

• Anything that does not fit, has not been worn for a year, or needs a repair you have avoided for months goes into the donate bag.
• Turn every remaining hanger the wrong way round, and flip it back as you wear each item. In six months you will know exactly what you never reach for.
• Store out-of-season clothing in one labelled box per person, not scattered across three cupboards.
• Under the bed is for storage, not for hiding. Use shallow boxes and check them twice a year.

Children's rooms work best when they help. Give them a bin bag each for broken toys and a box for donations, and let them choose what stays. Fewer toys, visible and reachable, means more play and less tidying up.

Bathroom, Loft and Keeping It That Way

The bathroom is quick: bin anything past its expiry, including sun cream and medications, and keep only the toiletries you use. One basket each for everyday products stops the shelf becoming a jumble.

For the loft, garage or under-stairs cupboard, go in with a specific question — "am I keeping this, and where does it live?" — rather than a vague sort. Group things by category: Christmas, camping, tools, paperwork. Label every box on the side you can read from the doorway.

Then protect the work you have done. Follow the one-in, one-out rule for clothes, books and kitchen items. Spend ten minutes each evening returning things to their homes — a five-minute reset before bed does more for a calm house than a monthly deep clean. And remember that decluttering is not a test. If a room takes two weekends instead of one, that is fine. A home that is a little emptier, a little easier to clean and a little kinder to live in is worth the wait.