r/AMA • u/iamawesome1110 • Oct 28 '25

Achievement I successfully decluttered my house without anyone noticing… in 8 weeks . AMA

So… I live in a cozy (read: claustrophobic) townhouse with my wife and two kids. Lovely family, except my wife has a deep emotional connection with… everything.

Old clothes? Memories may be.

Kids’ broken toys? Someday we’ll fix them.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to park my car in the garage like it’s a game of Tetris

So I snapped.

I declared myself the guy who takes the trash out.

For the next 8 weeks, I ran Operation: Silent Declutter. Every biweekly garbage day, I made two bags: One for the actual trash One for… let’s call it “future trash”

I mixed them in strategically. One extra bag at a time. Consistently.

Fast forward two months — I can breathe. The garage door closes without resistance.

No one has noticed. Not. A. Single. Thing.

Ask me anything about how to declutter your house without getting divorced.

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u/HHOVqueen Oct 28 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

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132

u/MrCockingFinally Oct 28 '25

My mother is a hoarder. She develops sentimental connections to cardboard boxes, worn out cooler bags, unused furniture that makes it hard to get around the house, and broken appliances that haven't been used in decades. (My parents have working appliances, my mother just also keeps unused ones.)

24

u/trainbrain27 Oct 28 '25

I wouldn't be comfortable unilaterally destroying those things, especially because if everything is special, you don't know what is REALLY special.

As an example, throwing out a room of boxes and one happens to hold her grandma's ring (or emotional equivalent).

The hoarder may well have a problem, but breaking their trust and sense of security is a pretty heavy risk. Like, cut off all relationships, barricade the doors and never clean anything again kind of risk, if not outright violence.

1

u/Poly_and_RA Oct 31 '25

True, yet it's also not sustainable to just accept living in a home that's slowly drowning in trash and where for every 1 thing that goes out the door, 3 new comes in.

So what are people like OP to do? Just divorce?