Weekly Quick Tips

Keep it or Toss it?

Whether you’re decluttering an entire room, a closet, or just a drawer, you’ll face the inevitable question ‘should I keep it, or should I toss it’ over, and over (and over!) again. Here’s some perspective from the pros (that’s us!) on helping you decide.

Toss it if:

•  You have twice as many as you need. Take inventory of your duplicate items. If you own enough spatulas and coffee mugs to open a small diner, it’s time to shed a few.
• You don’t know what it is. Really. UPO’s (unidentified plastic objects) get 30 days in our homes. If they’re still a mystery one month later, dump them. (stop laughing….we find them in every home, without question!)
• Your gut says to lose it. Don’t second guess your instincts. A lot of people worry they’ll have regrets, that ‘one day they’ll need that exact thing.’ We can tell you that 99% of the time, you won’t.
• It’s not worth repairing. Search for similar items on Ebay; if your item’s current value is less than the cost of repairing it (hello broken printer from 2004….), then toss it and replace it. Otherwise, give yourself a deadline. If you don’t get around to fixing it within 3 months, you can probably let go of it.

Keep it if:

• It’s sentimental ‘gold’. The more memorabilia you have, the less emotionally valuable each individual item becomes. Instead of keeping every card that your now deceased aunt ever sent you, pick the one that captures her spirit the best.
• It fits your life today. Your possessions should support who you are right now, not the person you were 10 years ago, or 10 pounds ago…
• You’ll find a place for it. Putting it back in a box is just predisposal. Any item worth keeping is worth creating a space for.
• You’d buy it again. It’s tough to be objective about your own belongings. So ask yourself, ‘What would I do if I saw this in a store?’

We know, most people don’t find decluttering fun…. but, you can start small with easy to manage stuff that cumulatively can have a BIG impact! Like … picking things up off the floor, removing and discarding unmatched things, like single socks, taking out the garbage and recycling, returning borrowed items, piling everything in need of repair in one place, removing even one item from your wardrobe that you haven’t worn in the last six months or that’s the wrong size, clearing the top of any horizontal surface, stacking all your reading material in the same place, tossing out expired coupons, recycling empty bags, tossing anything associated with a bad memory (WHY keep that leg cast from an accident?!), removing new purchases from bags as soon as you come home, removing one big item, like the treadmill you’ve been meaning to part with, the crib your teenager has outgrown, or that broken chair……

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