Dream Home: Declutter Like a Nordic Mom

You don't need hours of diligent maintenance to achieve a mess-free home. Scandi-style, just prioritize space over stuff. Here's how try it!

Jul 29, 2025

“Where’s…all the stuff?” asks almost everyone who steps inside our home. “How is your home so mess-free?” This is, honestly, how.

Every time I return to our home in Westport, Connecticut from Finland, swapping a much, much smaller rental apartment with very little of our own stuff into a much, much bigger home with all of our stuff, I promise myself I’ll not do this. Yet, living in a space where I have very little to organize, has felt so soothing that I simply can’t help myself wanting more of the same. So I do it—again.

I see a pile of random stuff and try to quickly sort it, realizing that have the stuff doesn’t even have a place. I then determine that I either have no idea what the thing is even for, and that no one will likely miss it, and that it’s not worth my time to figure out a place for it. I take out an empty box destined for the recycling center—and drop it in there. But then I see another pile, and the same thing happens. A few hours later, box is overflowing and I start piling things onto my husband’s truck. A day or two later, the piles are gone, and I text my husband (it’s better to text than to voice this out loud, it’s more nonchalant this way):

“Hey, honey, your truck is pretty full of things we no longer needed—could you stop by the recycling center to drop it off?”

As I go to Finland about twice a year, this happens at about the same frequency, with some monthly upkeep in between. Why would I do this?

I know this sounds like I have OCD, but I really think it’s because I’m Finnish. Like most Nordics, I’m allergic to clutter. I simply feel like I can’t live a quality life in a house that’s cluttered. Instead, I want our spaces to be hygge, functional, practical and easy and quick to manage. My favorite element about Scandinavian design is space. Uncluttered space makes the home feel calmer amidst wild kids and makes it easier to enjoy life’s little things. It’s all comes back to the Nordic lifestyle principle of less is more.

How to declutter like a Nordic mom?

If you too would like a non-cluttered home, there’s really just one way to achieve it: it’s not about organizing it better, or cleaning more efficiently—even though those too play a part. If your home keeps getting cluttered or it’s not easy to quickly get it to baseline each evening, you simply have too much stuff.

I promise you, I have tried—everything. I think my last ditch effort to keep our home organized was to collect everyone’s stuff that was always all over the house into a black plastic bag and store them in the pantry until someone came to claim them. They never did.

So, this made me feel fine about moving to my final, radical plan in order to protect my wellbeing and mental sanity, and I simply started recycling everything possible that wasn’t in active use, or in seasonal use. Oh and how I love our home now! It’s literally the dreamiest home of all my home dreams, so dreamy in fact that I hadn’t even known to dream of a home like that. Every day, when I look around our beautiful spaces, I feel so wildly grateful that it is our home.

Why declutter like a Nordic mom?

What’s best, my own Nordic wellbeing is not by any means the only thing complete and frequent decluttering has achieved. It’s doing so much more for our family:

My kids play so much more independently
My kids get way more creative and innovative
My kids complain so much less that there’s nothing to do or that they are bored
It’s easier and quicker for the kids to clean up after themselves—so they do it more
My husband can find way more things he loses independently
It’s easy to find whatever one needs, because everything has a place
The house stays cleaner because there are no dust bunnies collecting under piles
You don’t need to do big cleanups before guests—the home looks just as good for you too, on the daily
You feel calmer, more focused and just better in your own home
You have more bandwidth for other important things

What if you get push-back?

A word of warning: other members of your family might not be as ready to get rid of stuff as you are. So there’s one more mom wellbeing principle I should add: if you are the one who constantly keeps your home organized, you are also the one who decides what stays & what goes—you don’t negotiate.

It’s pretty easy to tell if something is in active use, or needs to be stored as a memory you’ll cherish decades from now. If you are hesitant, put it in a trash bag for a few months. If no one remembers to miss it, it’s not that important. Also, remember how, when you have finally collected old playroom toys to take to Goodwill into a box by the door, your kids suddenly feel like every single one of them is their most favorite toy they can’t possibly part with? I suggest you do decluttering when you are home alone.

And what if you can’t decide—especially when it comes to kids’ art and school work? I learned this hack from my mom, who is also Finnish. Only save original work. An art piece where someone told you what to do or one of the dozens of classroom Valentines? Those can go. The most unique piece of the year your child independently created? Think of yourself as a museum curator and save that—I have one see-through folder per child, per year, in labeled see-through boxes (one per child) in our storage, where those special memories go.

How to get started?

If you too would love a non-cluttered home to improve life quality in your home, it’s time to get rid of the stuff. I would do this one room at a time, starting with the space that drives you most crazy. I personally like to start from the kids’s rooms.

When you enter the room, think about the main purpose of that room: the room should only contain things that help you achieve that. (For example, my boys’s rooms are just for sleeping and reading, and doing art projects or homework or playing on their desks, and storing their clothes that are their current size, with the exception of a box for the next size up inherited from the older brother).
Grab a few boxes and collect everything that is not in active use or doesn’t below into that room.

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Sort the items into donations (such as Goodwill), recycling center items (I don’t like to pile up landfills by throwing it all into trash; our town has a recycling center where you can take everything possible) and Facebook marketplace—if something has value, I list it quickly on my cell. If it doesn’t sell, it can go to the recycling center on the next trip. As for my own clothing that I choose not to keep, I ship it to ThredUp to be sold.
Organize what’s left: each thing should have its own place—don’t mix and match. This way it’s easy to keep things organized and find what you need.
Before you mark the room “done,” see if you can also lose a piece of furniture or an accessory—aim for creating a bright, airy spaces that feel open.

Here’s an idea of how clutter-free your kids’ play space, kitchen and living room areas can look like after:

Now, what does the monthly upkeep look like? Don’t let random stuff invade your home! As soon as it enters, like those huge bags of things from kids’ schools at the end of the year, sort them into treasure (5%) or trash (95%). I have see-through plastic envelopes for each kid, for each school year, so then a few keepsakes can be saved in those. Take catalogues from the mailbox straight into the recycling bin (how do I stop those?!). And the moment things start to pile up somewhere, and as soon as no one besides you is able to get the room back to baseline, you know what to do: get rid of stuff. Choose quality over quantity and always, less is more.

Would you ever try this? Or would this not fly in your home?

And anything you would add that keeps your home clutter-free and spacious? Drop a comment below!