The time has come to sell your house and move on to the next chapter in life. Which means you have to get ready to show your home in order to entice potential buyers. And depending on how long you’ve lived there, it’s probably not clutter free after all those years building memories. But before you start making trips to the dump, we here at Lighter Side compiled some simple and creative ways to quickly declutter your home so you can make the best impression when those buyers come a knockin’.

1. Simplify things by choosing one room at a time to work with.

2. Keeping your rugs minimized to one or two stylish rugs can help keep the floor from looking too busy or haphazard.

3. Ottomans are fantastic for storing items, such as books, where they are easily accessible yet out of sight.

4. Get those cables in line with appropriate use of zip ties, cable organizers, and a good hiding spot, such as the back part of the underside of a desk.

5. Ladies, we all know how proud your hubby is for his 64 inch wide screen with satellite service, Blu-Ray DVD player, surround sound, and holographic projection (okay, maybe he’s still waiting on that one). However, having all of those remotes on the table, couch, and/or wherever you hid them on that last romantic night can be a bit chaotic.

You can set aside a specific place to put the remotes with velcro, or find a specific container to place them in. Perhaps a stylish bowl, or small ornate box will do the trick. Besides, it’s easier to find them and hide them on the next wine and dine eve.

6. Shower hooks are far more space efficient for hanging purses, and other various items.

7. Speaking of clothes hangers, see if you can whittle down the number in your closet to 30 or less. Fold what you can and hide them away in drawers.

8. A home has a way of accruing about a billion small items that you just can’t bring yourself to toss. With small boxes and some labels, you can keep them from cluttering your house, while still having them within easy access.

9. Fold your sheets and place them into their matching pillow cases. This is a genius way to keep bedding organized, and easy to work with.

10. It’s amazing how many books and magazines people can store that they either don’t read, or have read a billion times and could recite by heart. If you don’t actually need them, donate or sell them off to help create some extra breathing room.

11. Each time you clean the house, throw away at least five non-essential items.

12. The underside of desks have a lot of space for carefully organized items that can be stored away.

13. Making the bed is not only an obvious way to improve the look and feel of your room, but it helps any clutter look more out of place so you want to clean it as well.

14. When packing your things, label some boxes as give away and trash.

Whatever you need to give away, put it where you can’t forget, such as the seat of your car. Whatever goes in trash, toss it out before you retire for the eve. Now breathe a sigh of relief.

15. Here’s a trick that Oprah helped popularize. Have all hangers start out facing one direction.

When you wear something flip the hanger position. By the end of the month, if the hanger is still in the original position, you didn’t wear that item. You can either toss or store away whatever you didn’t wear.

16. Simply dealing with mail immediately (especially trashing the junk mail) prevents a headache later when it’s time to handle bills. Plus, it makes the mail area look much nicer.

17. A simple way to keep your life decluttered is to donate or sell a clothing item, when you buy a new one. Besides, this can help you keep up with current fashion trends.

18. Since we all know that cleaning the surfaces of the house is such an important part of preparing it for showing, get yourself a versatile bucket caddy for making the job so much easier.