Nothing helps keep a hot summer home cooler than summer cleaning. You might feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that you have to sort, clean and organize, but with a few simple tips, you’ll have your house clutter-free in no time!

  1. Start With Basic Cleaning

If you don’t already have a cleaning schedule, start one. Regularly cleaning everything in your home will help you realize which things you use and which things you don’t. Once you realize how much work it is to dust all of your knick-knacks or collections, you can start to consider finally letting them go or finding a better way to store them.

  1. Set Up Keep, Trash and Store Boxes

When it’s time to purge your items, go room by room with three boxes. Label one “keep,” one “trash,” one “store” and one “donate.” Ask yourself if an item is useful, beautiful, valuable or sentimental to you. If it is none of these things, put it in the “trash” or “donate” box. If it is valuable or sentimental, but you don’t regularly use it, consider self storage.

  1. Get an Organization System

Once you’ve decided what to keep, put everything back in an orderly fashion. Consider extra shelving, boxes, hangers and bags to ensure that each object has a particular place where it belongs. If you can’t find enough discrete places for all of your things, consider moving more items into the “storage” box. You can always find more self storage facilities for these items.

  1. Don’t Forget To Organize Your Storage Unit

Take the time to organize your self storage unit. Clearly label boxes and stack them so that heavier boxes are on the bottom and there is a walkway in the center of the unit. You want to be able to access every box with minimal shifting. Don’t try to cram everything into the smallest unit self storage offers: You might save money, but you’ll never get anything out again.

  1. How To Stay Organized

Once you’re done, you’ll face the hardest part of organization: maintaining that organization. If you’ve truly given every item in your home its own space, this will be easier, but other family members might not be very accommodating. Do your best to put items away after they’ve been used, and use your regular cleaning schedule as a chance to straighten up the house. If you find yourself lagging behind, inspire yourself with some pristine rooms. Martha Stewart has a gallery of organized rooms that you can look at when you want to motivate yourself to keep it up.

Organizing your house doesn’t have to be a chore. Start small, and go room by room: You don’t have to clean your entire house at once. Once you’ve divided items into their keep, trash, store and donate boxes, don’t let them sit: Drop off the “donate” box immediately. If you already have a storage unit, take the “store” box items there right away. You’ll find that once these boxes are gone, your home will already be more manageable and clutter-free. And with some initial effort, it’ll be easy to keep it that way.

Jared Friedman always tries to keep cool in the summertime. As a marketer for Westy, Jared enjoys helping people free up space in their home by designing custom storage solutions for those looking to be organized.