Sort Your Life Out star Dilly Carter shares top tips to give your home a spring clean – and the ‘rule of three’ you can apply all over the house

Sort Your Life Out Dilly Carter shared her top tips to give your home a spring clean ahead of the summer season. 

The home organising expert, 43, who stars on the BBC One show with Stacey Solomon, joined Christine Lampard on ITV’s Lorraine to give her tips on how to declutter and clean your home. 

Dilly revealed people tend to get overwhelmed with the thought of a spring clean but she claimed taking it room by room can help manage the workload in small chunks. 

The mother-of-one gave her three main hassle free tips for decluttering each room in your home.

She said: ‘I think the bedroom is a great place to start, sleep is one of our most important commodities, it’s what we need the most of and if our bedrooms are not a relaxing place or looked after then that is going to affect everything.’ 

 Bedroom

1. Vacuum mattress 

‘This gets neglected a lot, but it is so important. We have spent all winter in our beds with heavy duvets on and blankets all the dust builds up.

‘I would try do it once a month if you can because the dust builds up. Think of all the skin in the mattress, it is a bit gross.’

2. Rule of three for bedding 

‘How many of us have so much bedding? So I would like to say one on, one off, one spare. That is the guideline for how much you should have.

‘Obviously if you have kids at bed wetting stage then it would be great to have some more spare sets, but really a lot of us have 20 sets of spare bedding, ideally we would like to reduce that amount.

‘So go for the rule of three, it gives you a guideline and if you know you have double that then that’s OK, but quadruple – then maybe too much.’ 

3. Pack away winter duvet 

‘It’s that time that we don’t need those 10 togs. We can opt for something a bit lighter so pack them away, vacuum pack them, and then you have more space to put that spring duvet on.

‘Anything that you can pack away to save space is always going to be a good idea because the idea of decluttering is the create space in the house to make us feel lighter. ‘

Kitchen

1. Check dates  

‘Start from the left hand side and work your way around, make sure you put everything out, check the dates. Whenever we pull anything out of a cupboard we want to group it. Make sure all your tins are together, your pastas are together, snacks, breakfast items so then you can create zones when you put everything back.

2. Arrange the layout

‘You might have all your breakfast containers on one shelf, all your snacks on another, what we want is for the kitchen to flow. 

 3. Reuse containers

‘Using containers is so important, we get boxes through our doors all the time, we have old Quality Street tins and coffee jars to pack away pulses, grains and all of those things. Try and use what you have got.’ 

Bathroom

1. Create a calm space

‘We want a lovely bathroom that we can go in and escape and feel like we are just unwinding, we don’t want products all over the bathroom sides.’

2. Rule of five  

‘When it comes to cleaning products we have a lot of our products in the bathroom which is just not necessary, think about the essentials that we might need near our toilet, it’s probably just bleach.

‘We should only have five cleaning products in general. It might just be an antibacterial, bleach, Fairy Liquid. It might be a specialist cleaning product. But then that is it.’

3. Keep windowsill clear 

‘So many of us block our windowsills with products, we can’t see out so it’s nice to have light clear surfaces.’ 

Sitting room

1. Lay everything out 

‘We like to go in their to relax don’t we, that should be the place where we switch off and kick back at the end of the night.

‘But it’s usually the space were all the toys are and all the washing, there is all kinds of chaos  that goes on in the living room. Get everything out that is bothering you.’  

2. Group similar items

‘Group what you can, then reduce what you can, then put everything back. It might be that you don’t have enough storage, work out what you have in your front room and think what could look neater so when you do relax you are not looking at pile sof chaos.’   

3. Clear three things 

‘Often we can feel too overwhelmed thinking I need to declutter, get everything out of my house but start with something small three items, start with something small, bite size challenges.’