Declutter before Tết

Dọn nhà đón Tết, cleaning the house to welcome the new year, is the oldest decluttering tradition there is. The house is emptied, swept, repainted if it can be, and the things that belong to the old year leave with it. This is the guide for doing it once and well, with a storage plan for the things you are not ready to lose but do not want in the flat when the family arrives.

Updated September 2026

Why Tết cleaning is different from any other clean

Most decluttering advice assumes you are doing it for yourself, at your own pace. Tết cleaning is done for the household, on a deadline that the calendar sets, with guests arriving on the first morning who will see every corner. It is also the one clean where tradition is on your side: things that have not been used in the old year are supposed to go, altars are cleaned and rearranged, and buying new things for the house is expected. The problem is the same one every year. The flat has a fixed size, the family has grown or the children have gone, and there is a category of belongings that is neither rubbish nor in daily use: the second rice cooker, the winter quilts, the boxes from the last move, the exercise bike, the ancestral photographs that must be kept but not displayed, the children's things that a parent cannot throw away. Tradition says clear it out. It does not say where to put it. That gap is what a storage plan fills.

The five passes

1. Bin. One pass through every room with rubbish bags only. Broken, expired, mouldy, unrepaired for a year. Do not stop to consider anything; if it needs consideration, it is not for this pass.
2. Sell. Working appliances, furniture in good condition, phones and electronics, bicycles. Photograph them and list them the same day, because a listing that goes up in early January sells before Tết and one that goes up in the last week does not. Prices drop as Tết approaches and buyers leave for the provinces.
3. Give. Clothes in good condition, children's things outgrown, kitchenware doubled up. Charity collections and building groups run before Tết in most districts; ask your building management.
4. Keep. What lives in the flat and is used. Put it back cleaner and better placed than it was, which is the point of the exercise.
5. Store. What you are keeping but does not need to be in the flat: seasonal, sentimental, occasional, or awaiting a decision you cannot make on a deadline. This is the pass most people skip, and skipping it is why the flat is full again by March.

What people store before Tết

Add the column and you have your plan size. Under 12 box equivalents is a Small; up to 24 is a Medium; a Large holds 48, which is the contents of a spare room. Each item is photographed and coded at collection, so the box of photographs you send in January is the one you get back for the anniversary in August, found in the portal by name.

The calendar, from our side

The four weeks before Tết are the busiest of our year, for the same reason they are busy for painters and cleaners: everyone wants the same fortnight. Collections are booked from the form up to ninety days ahead, and the earliest slots go first. Book in December or the first days of January if you can. Standard notice is 2 days; a collection sooner than that carries a 400,000 VND rush fee, and in the final week before the holiday even that may not find a slot. The crew works the free zone, Districts 1 to 5, Binh Thanh, Phu Nhuan and Go Vap, without a trip fee; other districts add 150,000 VND to the collection, once. After Tết the pattern reverses: people who stored before the holiday ask for things back in March and April, which is a quiet time for deliveries and a good one to schedule a return.

Doing it with the family

Tết cleaning goes faster when the whole household has a role, and slower when every object needs a committee. The workable arrangement: one person owns each room, the five passes are done in order, and anything contested goes into the store pile rather than being argued over. A contested item in storage costs a fraction of a box a month and can be brought back or disposed of from the portal, by the person who wins the argument later. The altar and the ancestral things are the exception. They are handled by whoever the family says handles them, cleaned in place, and if any are stored, the air-conditioned section is the right one for paper and photographs.

After the holiday

The reason Tết cleaning does not last is that nothing changes about the flat, only about its contents, and contents grow back. A storage plan changes the flat: it gives it a spare room somewhere else. Keep the plan through the year and treat it as that room. When something new arrives and something old has no place, the old thing goes to the room. Many customers set the plan up before Tết and never close it, because the flat with a spare room is the flat they wanted all along.

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