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Even when you’re dizzy with excitement over a new home, the prospect of moving everything you own is still daunting.

It’s inevitable that over the years you’ll have managed to accumulate a lot more than you need to keep, and it seems to have a way of concealing itself in even the cleanest-looking homes just waiting for the opportunity to derail your plans.

If you’ve got a lot of clutter in your house, you should plan to get rid of it with plenty of time to spare before you move.

This is for two reasons: you don’t want to clutter up your new home, and it wastes a lot more time and money to take it with you.

But if you’re having trouble even figuring out how you’re going to do it, follow a few simple tips to help you get your home mean and clean in time for moving day.

Plan your new home

One of the best tricks to decluttering your life is to envision what you want in your new home. If you take the time to plan the layout of your new home, writing down what you want to keep and where it’s going to fit, it helps you to commit when it comes time to say goodbye to the things you no longer need.

When you find yourself face to face with something hard to part with, it’s easier to move on without it when you can remind yourself of the dream layout of your new home—it’s not as hard to give something up when you have a vision for something better.

Planning your new home also helps you to avoid logistical problems down the track. If you have large, unusually shaped items or furniture that your new space simply can’t accommodate, it’s better to have dealt with them in advance rather than have another problem to solve when you get to your new home.

Brisbane residents will know how diverse the housing types are throughout the city, and how much it can affect the storage and layout in your property—so always plan ahead.

And when you’re making your plan, be accountable for it. Show it to your family or housemates, so there’s someone to help you follow through with your decisions when it comes time to make the break.

Get ruthless

There’s no way around it: if you really want to declutter your home, you have to get ruthless.

You’ll no doubt come across good quality items among the mess, or items with sentimental value that don’t have a useful purpose anymore. Many of them will have been on the chopping block before, only to be saved in a last minute reprieve when the drive to the charity shop seemed like too much effort.

One of the main areas this will happen is in the wardrobe: you might have already heard the rule that if you haven’t worn it in a year, you don’t need it.

The same goes for all other good-quality items you’re not using—they’re taking up valuable space in your life, while someone else could be enjoying them.

Make the trip to the charity shop, take some photos and sell them on Ebay, or hand them over to the covetous friend who’s been eyeing them off or years, and never look back.

You probably haven’t thought about them for years, and you probably never will again. If you don’t think you can trust yourself to be ruthless enough to really declutter, enlist the help of someone who can.

Having a buddy to help you will make your decision-making load lighter, and it’ll also help you finish the job sooner.

Don’t put it off

If you keep putting off your decluttering, it’ll be moving day before you know it, and your new home will end up suffering the same problem.

Start early by making a good plan for the transition and stick to it: separate it into smaller tasks, allocate a day for each one, and follow your schedule religiously.

You’ll probably find it’ll get easier as you go along, and you’ll be more motivated as you see and feel the weight of your home getting lighter. But even when you’ve finished all the hard yards, you have to follow through: dispose of your unwanted items as soon as you can, to avoid them sneaking their way into your new home.

If all the items you’ve cleared out of your house are in the boot of your car while you drive round for the next few weeks, they’re in a prime position to be moved into your new property and back to taking up your valuable space.

Part of your plan must include how, where and when you’re going to offload your unwanted items, whether you’re selling, donating, recycling, dumping, or storing. If your trip to the tip is already scheduled in your diary, it’s harder to avoid, and you’re more likely to succeed in achieving the freedom of wide open space in your new home.

Start packing

One of the more overlooked ways to ensure you don’t transport clutter with you to your new house is to start packing early. Commit to only packing what you really want to keep, sealing each box thoroughly as you go to avoid sneaky items from creeping back in.

When you’ve packed everything you’re taking, you’ll know that everything that’s left is marked for disposal, and it’ll be easier to say no to taking it because it hasn’t been prepared for the removalists.

If you’re still having trouble after trying all these things, consider enlisting the help of interstate removalists.

Brisbane residents heading to new states—particularly metropolitan areas—will often be downsizing their homes, and they’ll find comfort in the expertise of professional removalists.