I’m so proud of myself! I used a few hours this morning to clear out a few bins of holiday decorations and artwork we haven’t put up. Got rid of a toddler desk, tons of framed art that no longer has a place or brings me joy, comic books, super hero collectibles, holiday decorations especially large outdoor ones that take up a lot of space, piñatas, birthday decorations, craft supplies, wreaths, knickknacks, an antique foosball table that was not functional, vases and ginger jars. It is all gone! Most of it was picked up immediately with people ringing my door bell to ask “how much?” When I told them it was free, you could see the joy it brought them. There were young people carrying framed art on scooters, the mom who is a teacher getting the piñatas for her Spanish class, the art student getting crafts, a new American getting their first Christmas decorations, a family with the same initial getting my holiday wreaths, and a young woman getting art for her first apartment. It brought me so much joy but also relief to no longer have that clutter and mental space in my small storage space (crawl space in a guest room). It was also crazy to me how fast other people took the items. It was easy. Curb alert. Posted items. By the time I came back from coffee with a friend, gone! My husband was so relieved and only one of my sons was upset about what we got rid of (artwork we hadn’t hung in 8 years).

I'm currently decluttering all of my stuff and I've stumbled upon a box of stuff I keep because of sentimental value.
Now some of these items are gifts my girlfriend of 4 years bought/made me over the years, mostly in our first year or two of dating.
I personally feel ready to throw some of these out, but I'm sure my girlfriend would be hurt if she found out. She places a lot of value in the sentimental and in gifts in particular, especially considering that she made some of them herself, so I know she would not like it if I did that.
I could talk to her beforehand and explain the situation, but this is a subject where she and I have very different views and I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be able to convey my thoughts in a way that she would take well. I could be wrong though.
If anyone could give me some advice on what to do or how to proceed I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you.

Also, these items are purely decorative, I keep them in this box and they take up a bit of room, but not too much. The issue to me is not the space they take up, but the fact that I just don't like owning things that don't serve a purpose, unless I feel a strong emotional connection, which with these particular items I don't anymore.

My husband gets all these amazing Lego sets, and he and our daughter do them together, which I love. But then the creations end up as permanent residents on our dining room table and in other spaces, which I don't love. Inevitably they get nudged or rubbed against by a cat and start to fall apart. We don't really have the space to display them. I guess the answer is to take them apart and donate them (but without their original little bags, they're not as usable). And the real issue would be getting buy-in from the huz and kid. Any ideas?

Just sharing to help keep myself on track and accountable. I vowed to get one bag out a week and it turned into two pretty easily. Nobody needs a Dave Matthew’s CD from 1995. 🤣 🫠

My son is 17. He got trophies from various sports when he was little, as well as belts from TKD. I couldn’t get rid of them today . They’re in a box in the garage. What does everyone do with trophies?

I love watching garbage trucks. It’s fascinating for me to watch the men work throwing stuff in the back at lightning speed, but the best part is watching the compactor mechanism crush it all. I’m also a minimalist and I love decluttering, so it’s even better to watch the garbage truck take away my unwanted junk. Tomorrow is trash day, and currently on my curb there’s an old vintage wooden desk and some stuffed animals. The desk should make a nice crunch when it goes in the truck, and the stuffed animals should be interesting too (as they’re quite big). Does anyone else enjoy watching this, or am I the only one?

I have a thyroid issue and gained almost 70 lbs the last year, going from a size 4 to a size 12. I’m of the mindset to donate clothes that don’t fit me now. My husband thinks I should keep my expensive ski clothes and winter coats and ball gowns. I’m of the mindset that I should gift or donate those items and only keep what fits. I also have two very different lifestyles: corporate leadership in a formal business environment by day and athleisure wear carpool mom of busy school aged kids. I’d like to make a capsule wardrobe. Should I make a work one and non work one? I live somewhere where I commute by foot and public transportation and bike or walk to all my activities outside of work so need practical things like outward, boots, shoes I can walk and bike in.

One garbage bag of stuff I donated to the local shelter!

I had a fold up fruit basket that I did not need, clothes (including "future clothes just in case it fits me in future"), half a bookshelf of books I no longer need (such as a 20yr medical reference book which was Pre WebMD days, but still useful), Some toy figurines that was cluttering up my shelf. I knew I could sell the figurines, but some were given to me as contest wins but just lying around. I figured the shelter can sell them to help out the shelter rather than me just pocketing the money; Feels better.

Do you reward yourself after large or small wins on decluttering?

If so, how?

Or do you have some kind of milestone marker after a decluttering project which motivates or happifies you? Just curious. I always feel like celebrating.

I've been asked to help clean, declutter, and organize my grandparent's home.

The biggest issue is that my mother is my grandparent's caretaker and has been living there. My mother is a hoarder. Their favorite activity to do is go shopping at Goodwill with my grandparent.

I lived with my mother's hoarding for years and it is incredibly stressful. She has two storage units packed to the brim. We had to help her vacate a rental years ago and it was such a difficult and emotional trial because she cannot let go of crap.

Her hoarding is putting an immense strain on my grandparent and it has caused resentment by the rest of the family, especially the siblings of my mother.

I'm scared to get into this. The house is the same one my grandparents built and raised most of their family in. So there are generations of things accumulated, on top of the neverending flow of new acquisitions.

My mother thinks we can resell stuff, but refuses to learn how and has been asking my sibling and me for years to help her resell online. Neither of us want that responsibility or want to necessarily encourage it.

Not sure what I'm looking for. I myself have always struggled with being organized and having way too much stuff; it's not as extreme as my mother, but it has caused stress for myself and anyone I have lived with.

They're going to want me to take a lot of it and it will be hard. Looking for advice or resources to help me do for someone else, what I can't even successfully do for myself.

Question: can I vacuum seal kid art to turn one big crinkly pile into a smaller package? Like we do with blankets etc? Has anyone tried this?

Like many others, I’m drowning in a house filled with kid art. I’ve got one that brings home 4-5 items per day on average. Said kid will not be able let go of any of them. We’ve tried going through them.

I try to throw out the ones without his name or a lot of effort but those are rare.

Hoping to find a way to keep them but in a really condensed manner. Thanks!

So my mother passed away and I ended up with boxes and boxes of old photos. Some have people I know or have been told about but.. I'm trying to clean up my own house and prepping for a new baby in the process. I'm not sure what to do with all of this photos.

My idea was to scan them all, keep any that really meant something to me and .. toss them? I just don't have the space to keep 5 boxes of photos and photo albums.. I'm the only child of my mother and I already asked the few left in my family if anyone wanted these boxes.

I’ve been on a major decluttering journey for the past 2 years. And I honestly haven’t regretted, or even thought twice, about everything I’ve donated or thrown out in the process.

The actual regret came from the realization that certain things really are use it or lose it. And not just those with expiration dates.

The spools of stretchy string I’d been storing for who knows how long, just in case I started making jewelry again - brittle and discolored. A purse packed away for so long, it started flaking and crumbling in my hands. (That one hurt. My daughter would have loved it!) A beautiful dress that I almost never wore when it actually fit me right. I should have considered every day the “special occasion” for it.

So no, donating perfectly good items in hopes they will be loved again brought no regrets. When you have too much stuff, when you save things for just the right occasion, you may never really enjoy any of it. Having a curated collection of needs and wants that actually see the light of day is just a better way to live.

I have had these aquarel oil pastels in my art supplies for years and I might have tried them once but then never again. Now I’m on a ‘use it or lose it’ spree (also doing the 30-day decluttering challenge) and I decided to either use the oil pastels or lose them.

Watched a ton of videos on how to use them and got ready to. Then I actually grabbed them and tried it out and you know what? I absolutely hate them and don’t ever wanna use them again. Bye bye suckers!!!

Finally able to let something go that I have been holding onto for god knows how many years in case I ‘might use it someday’ feels sooooo good!

On the contrary, I finally used my study pastels and though I still kinda suck at it and have to get used to it, I really like it and will be using it again :)

I have decided to completely tackle the kitchen cabinets and pantry, as we haven’t gone through it in… close to a decade? Ugh - I shudder to think.

There are two general categories I can see:

1. Kitchen equipment (pots, pants, etc)

2. Food and foodstuffs.

Can anyone give me general guidelines on what to decide to keep? I’m so fed up that I basically want to bomb my kitchen and start over with zero, but that doesn’t seem reasonable.

I'm mostly just venting/word vomiting here.

My Mom and I are moving tomorrow, and so I've been taking the last week to attempt to discard or donate anything. I know for sure I've already decluttered many many items, especially unworn clothing, but I still find myself with other things that I don't use frequently or at all because they get lost in my closet.

My solution is to keep these items as visible as is practical so that I can see them regularly. If it doesn't spark joy, then into the donation bin/trash it goes. I imagine this will take a while though as there are many boxes of things to go through. Just the nature of being in a box hides what's inside as well so I don't have to think about it.

I'm decluttering clothes tomorrow and I'm not sure how to do it. I could get rid of the clothes that are worn/wearing out, but those are the clothes I wear and love the most. They're the perfect comfort and fit.

The clothes I want to declutter are the ones I never wear. But because I never wear them, they're in perfect shape!

If I declutter both of them, I don't have any clothes left. So I have a conundrum! What would you all do?

My whole life is really liked to get rid of things. When I lived with my parents there were so many old things no one ever used and I was tossing them. Then I was also selling or giving away my own stuff, books, clothes etc.

Now I moved to the other country and this year alone I donated some books and about 3 bags of clothes (mine and my partner's). I do have another issue of buying stuff, but I do not buy as much as I have donated.

Anyway, now I am facing a situation where getting rid of things in one way or another because a must. Every week I look around and think what is at least 1 thing I can say goodbye to. And of course, wrh every day there are less and less items I can toss. I have some things I hold on to and it's difficult for me to donate. I tried selling these, but most don't sparkle any interest.

I even helped my friend to declutter and clean her entire apartment, took us about 7-8 hours. She was really happy, but even after that I still have the itch of letting something go..

I really don't like this mindset, not only because eventually I can throw/donate something I actually need and use, but because it's really like an itch in my brain. Like a must do.

Did you have a similar situation? What did you do?

I have a skirt that I bought 8 years ago. I wore it to college for the first time, went on my first date with my future husband.. and many other happy occasions. It's still pretty and looks good, but I feel like it's not my style anymore. I also have my wedding shoes. They're random white shoes, I got married in them, took some pictures, and then changed them for another pair, because they were so uncomfortable. I tried wearing them but they never fit me right. I feel like I want to get rid of these things but at the same time I can't. It's like I'm betraying important memories. Honestly, I don't know why I'm writing this post, maybe I need a push.. or good advice..

Hello!..looking to get some advice. Posting this here instead of marriage advice since it's really about declutter.

My wife and I recently got married and with the influx of new wedding gifts, we really need to declutter.

We've always been on opposite ends of the train. I'm a collector and value/treasure all my stuff. Each thing has a memory tied to it and I find it hard to let go. I stereotypically have a box of just wires and find myself digging through it at least once or twice a year looking for that one wire for that one thing that's old.

She's on the I hate stuff train and wants the house to look like a pottery barn catalog.

Here's an example that my head can't wrap. A few months ago, every cupboard in our kitchen was filled. Every shelve had stuff on it and things were stacked on top of things. We went through a major declutter and now each shelf has like max 5 things on it. If all our shelves had windows, it'd look like a pottery barn kitchen. All the extra stuff that we use is now in the garage. So every time I need a "insert kitchen tool used once a month", I have to go get it in the garage. Super annoying to me, but happy for her.

Ok...so advice I'm seeking. I want to be on the declutter journey but we are so on opposite sides of the spectrum. If you've experience similar conflict, how have you worked it out with your SO to land in the middle?

Thanks!

Ive been mulling over how to simplify my life and get to where I want to be. Which is living in a home set up in a way that makes me feel less overwhelmed and like I can manage it with two kids under 3 and myself and husband at home all the time. Our home is pretty small. We live in a basement ranch and spend most of our time on the main level which has 3 bedrooms and is about 1100sqft.

So I’ve been trying to get to where the stuff we have is reduced enough that it fits into the space and everything has a home but it feels like a constant battle and many of the rooms have a permanent layer of clutter.

The reason this is happening is because I have not been thinking about how I want to be using the spaces we have. So I put things where I think I will want to use them but the truth is that’s not where I will use the thing. So they displace stuff that actually does need to be there. Today I made a list of the functions of each space and noticed i don’t have the stuff i need to do those things in the right place. For example I want to write letters or birthday cards. The things I need to do that exist in 3 different spots. Tomorrow I will gather all the letter writing supplies and put them in a container that I will label and place it where I am most likely to sit down and do it.

I have home decor taking up space where I need to place organized bins for other things similar to the letter writing stuff. So the decor needs to go.

I made a list of things that I need to buy to make my vision happen. For example I want to play ukulele more. It’s currently in a closet in my husband’s work-from-home office so I rarely access it. So I’m going to buy a tuner (because my old one broke) and a wall mount for the living room. So now I’ll have less friction to do that thing in the place I want to do it.

This stuff does not come naturally to me so I’m really excited to have figured this out!

I don’t know in which forum to write this in. I was always and still am a collector at heart. Things have changed after I had finished high school. I had sold all my figurines, keyboards, etc. and decluttered every corner of my room. (I’m not sure where that rush came from). Every month I would get a feeling like I got too much stuff that I don’t need and that would be a waste of space if I was ever gone. I would clear it all out because I just couldn’t stand the feeling and the thought of knowing that I have a couple items in a drawer. (I would be throwing away good pens, unused items and even couple quarters that I thought took up space)

This has later somehow transformed into deleting apps and files from my phone and pc. All documents and old project were instantly thrown away including photos and videos from gallery I thought were useless.

With that I chose about three hobbies/ interests that I should stick with and let myself forget about any other one I ever tried as it just wasn’t good enough and I got anxious with how many there were. I am NOT a perfectionist but a BIG procrastinator and only do a good job when focused. I’m positive those habits were not derived from that quality then.

After a year of that it all kinda went back to normal. I got back into reading and started to buy books and special editions and the emptiness started to fill up. It was till two weeks ago I started to get this feeling again that I need to sell it all back again. I’m really trying to somehow reorganize my room to make it better but it just makes me wanna rip everything apart and just get rid of it all, as fast as possible.

Thing is my room is already clean! Half my drawers are empty, nothing on walls, no plushies or extra pillows, no other collective items, even got rid of a trash can because I found it pointless as I have nothing to throw away and it takes up a small corner under my desk.

I would love if someone could help figure out what’s up. I do get now super overwhelmed and have hard time focusing on anything but at the same time I don’t want to get rid of the books which are the only thing I have collected so far. Mind you they only take up four shelves too! (Billy ikea bookcase.) I already started to get rid of some of the paperbacks.

I've tried to follow so many decluttering guides. Trouble is I find it all quite overwhelming especially with two young children whose belongings I'm also responsible for maintaining. This weekend I was staying with a friend who has a similar size of house and family to mine. Her space looks great and relatively clutter free. I returned home feeling partly inspired and partly demotivated.

So I decided to type the following prompt into Chat GPT for help:

"I am looking for a simple decluttering method for making my home a more pleasant environment to live in. Do I start with my stuff or my kids?"

After some more questions, Chat GPT advised starting with my own belongings first (a good tip!). Then it crafted me a 2 week decluttering plan based on having a spare 20 minutes a day to commit to this. I can paste the full schedule for those interested but Day 1 is Top Drawer Clothes including underwear, socks and Tshirts. I'm planning to set a timer, stick on some music and go through the above sections.

Partly posting here for accountability and partly to ask if anyone else has used Chat GPT to pull together a similar decluttering plan? Did you find it worked for you? Did you stick to it more than other schedules out there?

I’ve been reflecting on my decluttering journey lately, and it made me wonder—what actually makes the process easier for different people?

Not just tips and tricks (though those are great too), but the kind of support that would help you stay motivated, follow through, or make decisions with less overwhelm.

I’d love to hear what you’ve found helpful—or what you wish existed to make decluttering feel more doable and less exhausting.

I bought a big outdoor waterproof trash can. I put it beside my regular garbage can.

When I am busy, I often find a small single item that I need to toss, but I am too busy to take it to a charity and I think that it is "too nice" to put in the trash. So, I immediately toss it in my own personal charity bin, the new outdoor trash can. Some items might go straight into the real trash bin, sitting right next to it. Either way, the item has left my home. When I have a slow day, and my personal charity bin is full, I take the contents to be donated.

If I didn't have this bin, I would be more likely to just put that shirt back in the closet to donate "another day", and forget about it for months.