Curious if anyone else does this as Youtube seems to be a major trigger for me. The cycle is so familiar at this point; new item is released, a bunch of reviews flood my feed, I convince myself I need it and all of a sudden I'm planning my purchase. I obviously need the latest and greatest.

Rather than spiraling down more and more reviews for that item, I may watch one from a source I trust then I pull up old reviews for the item I'd be "upgrading" and it rekindles my interest and love for that item and remind me why I bought it in the first place. Reminds me that most improvements, if they are improvements at all, are marginal at best year over year.

If after a week or two, the upgrade feels significant and worth the upgrade price then I'll start the process again.

i completed the challenge! more than 500 items have been decluttered. i will probably keep decluttering in the following days to throw away anything i might have missed, but i already feel so much better, house feels cleaner and emptier (good thing) it's also really easy to locate my things and put them away because everything has a place and i put 1000% the effort to make sure that things had their place in the path of least resistance (or the path with less friction) i actually like being in my home now, so i highly recommend doing it!

all items have been either trashed or gifted to friends and family

I had success last year so I’m doing it again this year - now is a great time to declutter costumes for Halloween. I realized my daughter will pick her own costumes from now on and I don’t need to save group or kid costumes for “some day” which is years away. I posted in my fb mom group for kid/family group costumes and buy nothing for dog costumes. All got taken right away. Early September is a great time for people starting to think about Halloween, before they buy something!

Failure is part of life. Share your decluttering challenges and failures here. Examples include:

• Emotional clutter
• Not enough time
• Getting overwhelmed
• Routing (recycling, donating, trash...)

If you're just venting, or don't want advice, please let us know in your comment.

This is a low-stress place to share challenges and failures for those who might not want to create a new discussion.

I’ve been struggling with how to get rid of some things that are too good to be trashed, but not accepted by my local donation center.

Case in point, a fully functional handheld vacuum. The local donation center and vacuum repair store wouldn’t take it. But it was out of my home 15 minutes after posting it to the Buy Nothing group.

It feels so good being able to give decluttered things another life, while also avoiding the lines at the donation center!

I really like decluttering YouTube but a lot of the channels have gotten on my nerves because they have ads in their videos. It's kind of weird seeing them doing an ad to buy something when their videos are about getting rid of stuff and I just find ads really annoying. It's totally fine if they want to do that, but I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions on good channels without this. I know there is Midwest Magic Cleaning but am not sure who else there is

Outside of our kids tool boxes I cannot recall ever purchasing a hammer so how did we end up with ELEVEN??? Someone much have been sneaking them in or they bred. Anyways off to the thrift store they go.

I think I’m addicted to the feeling of decluttering! I started with my closet and have been slowly working my way through my apartment. I feel physically lighter as I go through every spot and ditch the expired products or clothing that I no longer like. Even though I’ve decluttered a good bit there’s still so much to go, but I’m excited to keep the momentum going tomorrow 🧹🧽

It's a public holiday weekend in the UK. It's raining down a storm. The family are all away. Heave ho-ing to it, eating microwave chicken korma and whacking all the unsentimental kids clothes online. I'm actually running out of used packaging for sending it back out into the universe its so scary!

Will indulge myself with at least one episode of Pride n Prejudice cos THAT is what bank holidays are for.

Anyone else at it today?

Share your wins here - big or small. What did you declutter this week? Examples include:

• Digital Clutter: emails, digital photos, digital music or video collection...
• Storage: cupboards and closets, drawers, storage boxes...
• Toys: ether for your child, or your own that you've been hanging on to.
• Spaces: kitchens, workshops, hobby rooms, storage lockers...
• Routing: sending items to where they need to go, like donation centres, trash, or recycling

This is a low-stress place to share wins for those who might not want to create a new discussion.

i wanted to do the 31 days, 500 things decluttering challenge, where you throw away 1 thing the first of the month, 2 the second and so on, but i was on a roll for the first two days so i decided to catch up with the days because keeping decluttering six things a day wasn't really engaging. so i figured that on day three i was gonna skip to day 26 the next day, cannot wait to declutter things tomorrow.

i found out that 40-50 things a day is the perfect amount of things to declutter. enough to make a difference but not enough to give you decision fatigue or get you extremely tired.

anyways, good decluttering to all of you! i will update when i complete the challenge!

I rarely buy shoes and when I do it’s to replace ones I’ve worn out, so I didn’t think I had shoes I could part with. However we’re having a yard sale in two days so I figured I might as well go through my shoes just in case. I found 5 pairs that could go, 3 of which I didn’t even remember I owned.

I’ve been living in a decent sized bedroom for the last 3 years, which has been great overall. I get to have a mini living room area with a couch and TV, a queen sized bed, and there’s room for my two cats to hang out comfortably. However, as I’m preparing to move to a new apartment with a smaller bedroom I realized I accumulated so much furniture in there simply because I had the space for it, and because a lot of it was free. For example, I had a second desk that was really nice that I found for free outside. I had a vision of turning that second desk into an art area. Instead, it sat mostly unused for a while before it became a place for me to dump stuff onto when I got home.

I also have this wooden bookcase from my childhood bedroom that is really nice quality, but is also very heavy. I’ve dragged this thing around through several moves, but I finally decided it’s being given away rather than going with me this time. The reason is that I successfully declutterred a lot of my books that I accepted I wasn’t going to read again, so all the empty slots on the bookshelf just turned into yet another space to accumulate junk. The more I thought about it the more I realized there is likely enough space to display my books between the display shelf on my dresser and an organizer on the desk I actually use.

I thought that because I had a large bedroom the best way to use it was to fill it with more furniture, but in hindsight I would have preferred to have more room to walk around. I’ve been wanting to start doing yoga at home but never did, partly because I would have had to move big pieces of furniture around in order to have room. At my new apartment my room is big enough to fit the things I actually need without feeling claustrophobic, but small enough to make me consider what items I truly need, and what I was just holding onto in hopes that eventually I would need whatever it was.

Since so many of these items I got for free off the curb or local Facebook groups, if I truly did need them at some point I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to obtain a new one for free or cheap secondhand, without it taking up space for years in my apartment. I’m also considering implementing a rule when getting items from my local buy nothing group that I have to give away an item for every new item I receive, that way I’m not just accumulating stuff that I have no space to store. Even though moving is very stressful, I’m glad it gave me the motivation to get rid of items that were really just junk.

My email is totally out of control. Can anyone recommend a method or software to help me with it? I'm honestly considering just getting a new email address at this point. The thought of going through it is overwhelming. Thanks!

Hello guys,

I am coming back with my decluttering journey for my craft room.

Thanks to your advices in my last post ( https://www.reddit.com/r/declutter/s/jRnFpMaelh ) , I have now succeded to fit all my fabrics and yarn in their intended shelves.

What really worked for me is thinking about * What end product can I make with this fabric/ yarn and does this product looks fun/ enjoyable to make and to have?*

So I got rid of:

- beautiful yarn that i did not like to crochet because of texture ( goodbye sparkly ✨ yarn that are rough to the skin).

- lots of magnificent colorful piece of fabric but not in my color palette/ wardrobe ( i sew 80% of the time garments for myself : goodbye yellows and oranges , you make me look like I am sick 🤢), i did keep a few to sew gifts for others .

- lots of lesser quality yarns that I bought in the beginning when I started to learn crochet and knitting. Now if I make something, I want it to last as long as possible, and I realized I will always ( and can afford to) choose a better quality yarn . I have one particular brand that I realized I loved to use .

- there were some skeins of yarn that were given to me. I did not realize that they were in a bad state ( surely moth ) until I opened the bag! Straight to trash bag🗑️!

I had three bags to donate at the end. Took them directly to Oxfam and I delightfully realized that they were already people interested to buy yarns , and it made me so happy 😁

I now feel lighter because I can walk in the room , and use easily my folding table! I still have some work to do to how to organize yarns and fabrics ( transparent bins? Rectangular baskets? ) because it looks messy in my shelves and declutter other categories ( leatherworking tools, ...), but yarns/ fabrics were the most difficult for me to declutter and the biggest pile in terme of space. I think I will take a well earned pause to enjoy my room to make something before continuing on my decluttering journey. 🤩

Bought a large ocean themed children’s hamper at a thrift store. It has become my decluttering godsend. When I want to get rid of something, I throw it into “Davy Jones’ Locker”. Davy Jones’ Locker is a pirate word for sending someone or something to the bottom of the sea. It’s where you go when you walk the plank! The ridiculousness of this mindset has made it so easy for me to declutter. It delights me to yell “Send her to the Briny Deep!” in a silly pirate accent as I toss an unwanted item into the bin.

“Back in the day” I would send cards in the post. Birthdays, new babies, thank yous.

Now I have a large box of cards. I know I can go to the store and get one but for some reason I can’t seem to let these go.

It’s the “what if I need it?” Mentality

I think I might just keep a couple then I try to decide which ones then all of them seem so nice.

Hopefully just posting this will be enough kick in the butt for me to just send them all to the thrift store!

Also falling into the whole “sunk cost” thing.

So silly not to be able to lets these go. I’ll report back when I get over myself and get it done.

Edited to update: I took 3 boxes to the thrift store! This year will be the last year for physical Christmas cards and next year there will be e-cards! Thanks for the great ideas and support- 3 large bags were dropped off which included the boxes of cards.

Less is lighter!

If you’re stuck deciding whether something works in a room, try leaving for 5–10 minutes and coming back with your mind on something else.

Try to not analyse or overthink it, the point is just look at the room and notice your immediate knee-jerk reaction. If you walk back in and think “ugh, I hate that” or “this looks so cluttered/childish”, trust that feeling.

Especially for purely decorative things, you don’t need a logical reason to keep something. If you don’t like how it feels in your space, that can be reason enough. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is really just your own eyes after a break! :)

I have gotten rid of about 20 soft toys and 30 little trinkets this way! It may not work for everyone, nor is it groundbreaking. (I'm sure that I'm not the first person to say this)

But I haven't seen it mentioned on here before, and I just thought that I'd mention it, as it's the main method that I use and that perosnally works for me.

Plus it's so simple and easy, even if you're completely on your own, you can do it. And in again, my personal experience, it just helps speed things up a ton.

While decluttering my closet I counted way too many towels, all in different colors, that we’ve acquired over the years. Made me wonder why so many colors and why so many. Many of these were purchased on impulse at discount stores. Perhaps if I had been intentional and bought an entire set, I would not be wondering what to do with them now. Makes you think of the value of buying less and being intentional.

One of the many ways I’ve seen recommended to decide if something is worth keeping, is to ask if the item got dog poop on it, would you clean it or throw it away? Well….

I was walking my dog this morning and happened to be wearing my favorite pair of running shoes. She was in the middle of doing her thing and tried to chase after another dog passing by. She took off mid-poop! She was leashed so she didn’t actually go more than a few feet, but she wrapped the leash around my legs, almost toppling me 🤣 and flung poop everywhere. Some of it landed right on my shoes and slid down the side of one of them 😳.

So I guess I really like my shoes because I got home and immediately cleaned them off, and even took a magic eraser to them. That question is now answered 🤣.

• Buying a thing is not a commitment to own it forever.

• If you feel shame for owning a thing you're not using, toss it. Problem solved.

• Sometimes buying a thing is the fun part, and you can declutter it immediately without losing out on any dopamine.

• Remember when you were standing in the thrift store aisle and decided to redesign all your habits around an item you didn't know existed 5 minutes earlier? That guy can't be trusted to make plans.

It's time to tackle the garage. I used to declutter it every year, but some health issues have caused it to be left undone for a few years now. I'm feeling really overwhelmed.

I'm open to all your best tips & tricks. Encouragement is also appreciated!

Edit: I think the first helpful tip is thinking about what I want to keep. I do know what I want to keep, but there's a bunch of stuff I don't know if I want to get rid of. Perspective change seems helpful :)

Keep the tips coming! I've still got a couple days until I can tackle this.

Kind of embarrassing to ask, but I'm at a loss.

My husband and I both work full-time and have 3 young kids. There is constantly stuff everywhere in our house. I would love to have the kind of home where if someone wanted to come over unexpectedly, it wouldn't send me into a panic.

I know part of it is the kids and part of it is my husband's ADHD. But I think the biggest part of it is my hesitancy to throw things away. I don't shop a ton, but I have a hard time getting rid of things. My parents grew up super poor and we didn't get rid of things because we might need them in the future.

And now we're at the age where our parents are offloading their belongings into our home. I feel like I'm drowning in stuff.

Any tips/tricks/mantras/philosophies to keeping a clean home or giving me peace about decluttering would be much appreciated.

That title was a lot but basically what it says. I am postpartum with my second and kinda hate the way I look, I’m also on leave from work and won’t be going back for another 4-6 months so money is tight. I’ve done the big purges and got rid of all the big stuff (like the 15 year old paid off shorts I loved but will never fit into and even if I did I’m not in college anymore hahaha) but now I still have too many clothes in my drawers/closet for my liking and I do t know what to do about them. Here’s basically the ones I am stuck on

1) clothes that fit, I kinda like, I will wear but might have too many of - eg long sleeve black tshirts. So these are things I feel comfortable in but I have like 10 of them. I do wear them but only because then I delay doing laundry hahaha and i definitely have ones I like better because I’m on a budget and feel like I can’t replace them easily

2) clothes that I don’t love but again don’t have the funds to replace so I feel guilty and feel like I should keep them - like old sweaters that I’d wear around the house but probably not out because they might be stained or old pjs etc.

3) clothes that don’t fit me right now but aren’t unattainable for me to fit into in the next 2ish months because I did fit into them pre baby and I am starting to focus on that a bit more but it’s almost been months and I haven’t been doing it.

I honestly don’t know why I feel so stuck about it. I know I’d encourage others to just hold on to what’s fits and what they love but I just can’t for some reason. Anyone’s been in the same predicament and figured out a good way through that doesn’t drive them nuts. Any help is great :)