Even I, a household advice writer, can admit decluttering isn’t always a party. Usually, it’s something we all slightly dread doing and very much put off, hence why the clutter builds up in the first place. So, if I can find a decluttering method that makes the whole process – dare I say – a little more fun, then I’m going to try it.
I saw the ‘just one song’ decluttering method floating around the internet as a light-hearted, musical way to get people into decluttering. The goal? To show that tackling your clutter doesn’t have to take all day – sometimes all it takes is one song.
So, if you have a couple of jobs you’ve been meaning to sort out, be it putting away the laundry, giving the shoe rack a quick rejig or, yes, combing through a particularly cluttered corner, get those speakers plugged in and those dancing feet ready.
What is the ‘just one song’ decluttering method?
This method is all about boosting dopamine and motivation, using music to raise the spirits and a time limit approach to make tasks seem more manageable. All it consists of is picking your song, picking your task and hitting play.
It’s a simple momentum trick: you tackle your task for the length of a single song; once it ends, you’re allowed to stop. The hope is that these cheerful restraints remove overwhelm and lower the mental barrier to starting. Simple as that!
How the ‘just one song’ decluttering method worked for me
This method, being such a quick one, of course won’t work for everything. Unless you're picking the particularly long Stairway To Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody, the average song time is somewhere between three to five minutes, so you won’t have enough time to complete any big jobs. Instead focus on micro-resets: quick jobs with big impacts, which, despite their simplicity, you’ve still been putting off.
For me, that involved reorganising little pockets of my bedroom on a Friday afternoon – quick easy tasks but they don’t exactly spark joy.
The first job I wanted to tackle was decluttering my work bag and the song I went for was Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. It’s everywhere right now, thanks to the Hollywood film of the same name, and I felt it had the right levels of drama and romance to distract me from the crumpled-up cereal bars in my handbag. I hit play and the next four minutes and 29 seconds flew by. It felt like a race against myself, time and Kate Bush! I was pulling out rubbish at breakneck speeds, realising how many empty hand creams and crumpled receipts I’d been carrying around in the process. In less than five minutes, I was done – and energised.
Not only was my bag now ready for work on Monday (helping to alleviate those Sunday scaries), but I was motivated enough to tackle another one. Because the process is quick and fun, it has this almost additive quality. Seeing progress so quickly and easily, I naturally started looking around for what else I could do in such a short space of time, which is when my eyes landed on my shoe rack.
A slightly more demanding task, I needed something upbeat and high tempo for this one, as I knew it would involve a lot of pulling and shoving – squeezing in my boots and digging out the pumps that had been wedged behind the rack for goodness knows how long. Girls & Boys by Blur was my pick and, boy, was it a good one. I found myself dancing and bobbing along as I slotted pairs neatly beside each other at speed. I highly recommend singing along as you go, for added fun and absent-mindedness. Although, I have to admit, with just four minutes and 20 seconds, I probably could’ve done with a rewind so I wasn’t so rushed in my organising, but I did have fun nonetheless.
Spurred on by the motivation of seeing tasks accomplished so quickly, I then looked to my skincare collection. I have a problem with stockpiling and trying products I really don’t need to, but that’s an issue for another article frankly.
I have a big basket of products I’ve been meaning to declutter, chucking my expired or empty products and passing on the items that just didn’t work for me. After looking at my extensive collection, Rein Me In by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean seemed almost too fitting. I wailed away to the beautiful lyrics while I formed my piles of ‘keep’ and ‘go’. The song ended as I pulled out the last two products and, while it wasn’t enough time to put them all back in place, the point of this method is simply to get you going – to motivate you to start the task and stop procrastinating. Once you’re doing it, grooving to the music, you actually forget about the time restraints at this point and simply finish the task at hand without thinking – even if it does technically take more than ‘just one song’.
My verdict
Overall, this is a good bit of fun. I loved the process of assigning songs to fit different tasks and found the time limit a competitive and motivating challenge. I got to see real results in a very short space of time, which is always a win in my books, and, yes, I did have fun doing it. Moving to the rhythms and singing along distracts you from the seemingly mundane reality of what you’re doing – consider the mood well and truly boosted.
The only caveat is it can be tricky to get it all done in such a short space of time. So, my advice would be to pick both the song and the task wisely. And remember: it’s more about starting you off in a fun, playful way than solving all your problems. Give it a try and be sure to groove along as you go.
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