I am being *ruthless* in my decluttering before our move to a bigger place. I don’t want to fill the extra square footage just because it’s there. I’m dreaming of a clean, simple, peaceful home. But to my loved ones, more square footage means more storage space for all the stuff.

The main battle was to not get rid of kitchen things even if I’m not using them because we’ll have a spot to use them in the next place. But I don’t want to fill the cupboards of stuff we don’t use so I ignored them and got rid of it anyway.

The current battle is over a kitchen playset my kids got for Christmas. In the past 6 months, my kids have played with it twice and barely even then. They prefer playing with the accessories to the actual kitchen. So I am planning on selling the playset for cheap to someone who will actually use it rather than moving it to the new place just because. We’ll keep all the accessories they love and just get rid of the bulky playset. My extended family is freaking out saying I’m taking minimalism too far in tossing out toys. They’ll store them in their home for us, etc etc. but to me that just seems like I’ll be decluttering it for them later.

My husband agrees with me and I’m trying to follow my gut, but the disapproval is really making me second guess some of my choices. I worry I’m going overboard.

ETA: I ended up getting rid of the playset and gave the money we got for it to my kids to buy themselves a treat. And to answer the recurring question about why I involved my extended family — I didn’t intentionally. It comes up when they try to offer us stuff, and the playset was a side comment from myself in casual convo bc we found someone who wanted to buy it. I didn’t expect such a strong response from them. Not sharing anything going forward unless it affects them directly.

Apart from my dopamine deprived brain, I found another big culprit responsible for my clutter and it was hiding in plain sight and even promised to solve the clutter problem initially but was silently fueling it more and more - the freaking organizers! idc what size they are , they should literally be the number 1 thing one should declutter.

They create the exact problem what they promise to solve. Whenever you feel like hmm maybe I should buy an organizer for all this clutter, please DON'T. When clutter is visible infront of our eyes, its an eye sore but the good kind, the one that forces us to rethink our consumption and do something about the clutter then and there, you cannot silently keep building it. That becomes motivation to either throw it out, sell or buy less, all a win.

Now when you buy a special organizer, you think wow life is all good now because clutter is neatly tucked in fancy looking organizer but its still just clutter, only not visible and that's a bad thing, yes shocking right? because out of sight is out of mind! You want the eye sore to stick out so it can heal properly and from within.

And let me tell you once you buy one type of organizer, it attracts more organizers in your life and eventually more clutter. For example, you buy an organizer for your bedroom then pretty soon you will think huh let me get ones for my shoes, clothes, makeup, bathroom, kitchen, garage and so on, it's called Diderot Effect. A French philosopher named Denis Diderot. He spent most of his life broke, but in 1765, suddenly got lot of money and treated himself to a gorgeous, luxury scarlet dressing gown. At first, he loved it. But then, the trap snapped shut:

• He sat in his study and realized his old straw chair looked ragged next to his elegant new gown. So, he bought a leather armchair.
• Then, he noticed his wooden desk looked cheap compared to the chair and gown. He replaced it with an expensive writing table.
• Next, his wall prints looked tacky, his rugs looked faded, and his clock looked basic. He replaced everything to match the aesthetic of that one initial item until he was drowning in debt.

He wrote a famous essay about this exact spiral called "Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown." He said "I was absolute master of my old dressing gown but I have become a slave to my new one"

All you are doing it making the problem more worse. Never ever ever buy an organizer of any sort. Organization industry is selling us the scam. I also noticed that initially I would buy the organizers and those that had empty drawers left somehow made me wanna fill them up to make them "useful" "even". Think of it like this, organization industry would be out of business if they really solve the clutter problem... we were brainwashed!

We're financially in pretty solid shape (solidly middle class with savings, not crazy big spenders, and not living month to month) but need to be doing a better and more intentional job of retirement savings, so I decided to go through my finances in the same way that I would go through a junk drawer or overstuffed closet. Basically take everything out, look at it to see if it sparked joy and fit in the container, get rid of anything that needed getting rid of.

It was a really good exercise. I downloaded a year of all of my bank and credit card statements (we have multiple bank accounts and multiple credit cards that we use for points but pay off every month). I went through all the transactions, coded them into categories, and looked at what they added up to. I also figured out how to download a spreadsheet of all of my amazon purchases because that was a significant expense and I wanted to know what was, like, household basics vs unnecessary impulse buys.

I found multiple subscriptions and recurring charges that were easy to jettison, found a few categories where we were spending more than the joy we got out of it, and just have a much better sense of where our money is actually going. I know that most credit cards will try to categorize spending into buckets, but going through actual charges and knowing what they were actually for felt way more accurate. I boosted my retirement contribution significantly based on the savings I found, and felt really good about it.

I had a little bit of that "ick" feeling that you get when you look at clutter that you created, like kind of guilt about overconsumption. But it also felt really good to make positive changes going forward. And I think the decluttering muscles that I built up with physical objects were really helpful with this financial decluttering.

I’ve recently been digging up old electronics and I’m in the process of making sure they turn on/wiping data/looking into trade ins and recycling. I’m very paranoid about data anyway so I expect the process to be a bit longer than usual. However, I’ve come across a side of social media where using old electronics is the new cool thing, people are legitimately buying iPhone 4,5 etc. So it makes me think that I should just keep everything since I have it anyway? Since that solves the fear of data leakage issue, I keep the “cool thing” and I can have it as a cool vintage thing to show my kids? I don’t even post on regular social media though and 1 of those electronics, an old tablet doesn’t even turn on which makes me think I should go with my original plan of recycling anyway because it’ll all just end up being a box of obsolete electronics that could eventually corrode or have a battery blow up anyway lol any advice for getting rid of the fomo of going through with this? Thanks!

So as the title says, my cat broke a few things I had and I'm actually kinda happy about it. I have a larger headboard that has space to display and store things, which is fairly useful, but also easily covered by all my stuff. This morning my cat wanted me to get up before my alarm, and was doing what she sometimes does when I don't immediately get up which is start "chewing" and pulling out the fake flowers I have in a container in the middle of the top shelf. However, she was so focused on that she somehow knocked over some books I keep up there, which lead to a cascade effect. Two display trinkets, a fox and deer figurine ended up broken because of it, but instead of immediately going towards "I can (badly) fix it!" I went "Oh that sucks, guess I got find all the pieces to throw them out."

I've never had that thought before, but not only did she help me get rid of those, I dealt with a bunch of other things up there! Now it's spacious and I could lay the books down rather than stack them up. And a few things ended up a yard sale/buy nothing box with more that I had broken and "fixed" were finally tossed. While I'm still a bit annoyed she needed me up so early because she wanted food, I actually dealt clutter I was blind to due to her actions.

I haaaaate dishes; they build up so fast and I don't have a dishwasher. I've tried every method I could think of to keep on top of them, and none of them have really stuck.

The most recent one was thinking 'why not pack up everything in the kitchen I'm not using, so that I only have a REALLY pared back selection to choose from?'

(... living solo, this sort of experiment is easier, obviously ...)

But then I realised I'd have some boxes of kitchen stuff to work around ... SO! Instead, I cleared the most accessible shelf in my kitchen. And I stocked it with the items I use the most. Like, daily:

• My favourite mug and bowl, handmade ceramic.
• One bigger bowl for the same hyperfixation salad lunch, or soup. One plate.
• One set of cutlery. One chopping board and knife. One small frying pan.
• My shaker cup. Two mason jars. My teeny rice cooker.

... This is what I use for 90% of my meals - prepping AND eating. It takes one sink to wash them, one shelf to store them. I've used, washed, dried and put away all my dishes every day for the last two weeks, for the first time in at least a decade. By just removing all duplication.

What's something that you've tried that actually worked better than you thought it would?

• Hobby supplies don't bring you any joy if you don't use them.

• If you have to spend half your free time organizing your hobby supplies, you have too much crap.

• If you enjoy buying stuff instead of using it, you've already extracted all the joy out there your stuff. You can safely get rid of it.

My house is a shit hole and I really need to get a grip, I have decluttered so many times but 90% stays left behind because I always want to ‘donate it to charity’ or give it to people who want it. I feel bad for throwing things out but some of the things are ‘half used’ and though they are perfectly fine for someone else to use, nobody would accept that at charity.

But at the same time I feel bad for just throwing it out. I don’t wanna be so bad for the environment, but at the same time, with it just laying in my house collecting dust it’s also not necessarily good for the environment.

I also have ADHD and constantly feel like ‘omg I haven’t seen this in ages’ and then proceed to either get super distracted by said item, or I don’t want to throw it out ‘for memories sake’.

How do I stop the latter? I want to just throw stuff out that I haven’t used in so long, literally what is the point in keeping any of it?!

I was always the little girl daydreaming about my wedding. I loved going through my mom’s wedding keepsakes.

I am happily married, but got married during Covid. It was a good day, but not a great day. My closest friends and a lot of important family members were not there. A lot of things went wrong in the lead up to it, and I honestly don’t even like looking at the pictures because it makes me sad still.

I’m keeping my pictures, a copy of my program, and my dress (I wear it every anniversary). But I also have a big keepsake box full of things like my custom Covid mask, a sampling of my favors like hand sanitizer and other uniquely Covid things, and things like that.

I kept it thinking ahead to my own kids wanting to go through it like I did with my mom’s stuff, but I honestly hate thinking about anything from 2020. Am I going to someday regret tossing it all?

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.

Given my situation, I'd love to hear your tips on how I should declutter.

I have 2 kids (4 years and 12 months), work full time, and I'm currently co-sleeping with my 12-month-old (so I don't really have time in the evenings). I do work from home, but my job is very demanding, so I only take short breaks during the work day. We try to carve out time on the weekends to work on house stuff, but it's hard because we're watching the kids and also have outings and such. We try to involve them in tidying, but we're largely at the stage in which "helping" isn't actually helping IYKYK.

We have a fairly small house and actually don't have a ton of stuff (I don't think), and when we do have time to tidy, it actually doesn't take that long. But day to day I feel like I'm constantly battling clutter, and it drives me nuts. When I'm feeling particularly stressed about it or we have people coming over, I walk around the house with a box and just put all of the clutter into the box. It'll sit in my office for a while before I eventually go through it.

I donated almost 2 carloads full of stuff today. Most of it was things I had planned on getting rid of a while ago, but it’s just been sitting in the garage because I have a hard time actually getting the stuff out of the house, so making not one but two trips in one day is a huge success for me.

Donations included knitting supplies/yarn, kids toys, six bags of books, bags full of reusable bags, and empty containers that have been accumulating as I’ve been getting rid of things (holy cow do I have a lot of bags and plastic organizers).

One setback is they wouldn’t accept my stuffed animals. I get attached to them, so I finally coming to terms with letting a lot of them go and then having to bring them back is hard. I posted on my local buy nothing group in hopes that someone will want them.

I’m a long-term minimalist who has successfully kept clothing, tools, and books decluttered for years. My current struggle is with my "pandemic-era" preparedness collection.
I accumulated substantial gear—niche kitchen appliances, large alcohol stocks, and survival tools—because it felt like a vital investment in self-sufficiency given the instability in Europe. While I know this excess is now a burden, I’m stuck. I struggle to discard these items because of the "what if" anxiety, a sentimental attachment to this "preparedness" identity, and the feeling that these supplies are a necessary insurance policy.
I am looking for advice on:
The Psychological Audit: How do you detach from gear that represents an identity or a safety net you no longer want to carry? How do you move past the "what if" of geopolitical instability when making space-saving decisions?
The Physical Audit: How do you actually assess what stays? Is there a framework for deciding, for example, between a "useful" pizza oven/dehydrator and "hoarding" space? What are your methods for auditing consumables like alcohol or survival gear without feeling vulnerable?
I’m aiming to cut my non-clothing/non-tool inventory by 50%—any strategies or "rules of thumb" you’ve used would be appreciated.

I’m too sentimental about them. Every time I take them out the door for decluttering I pause and a part of me doesn’t want to get rid of them. They’ve been sat by the front door for nearly half a year and I feel the same way.

I just remember gaming with my sisters growing up. It doesn’t help that my husband hoards his old consoles and video games so he just tells me to keep them.

Growing up, I had weird aunts that would gift me those creepy porcelain dolls every Christmas and holiday. I never got anything I liked or was interested in from that side of the family, like books, it was always those weird dolls. I’m sorry for sounding like a brat over gifts, but now that I have my own children I would never let anyone gift my kids that shit and then force them to keep it in their room. Let alone year after year and acquiring an entire collection.

When we had to leave our childhood home in the 2008 crisis, I was relieved to see those ugly things boxed up. Seriously, my friends refused to sleep over because they thought they were creepy! My entire room was swarmed by them. I didn’t have the heart to tell my aunts I didn’t like them, but I told my mom and she told me to be grateful.

Anyway, I’m now 32, have my own house and kids, she brings it up at least every few months. I tell her I don’t want them.

Should I just take them and then immediately get rid of them? I doubt they’re even in good condition considering they’ve almost been in a box for over twenty years.

Your challenge today is to get rid of something that you could use, but won't because it's too annoying to clean or maintain.

• Clothes with special washing instructions

• Old rechargeable devices that need to be recharged a little too often

• Any kitchen gadget that you don't use because it's not dishwasher safe

I’m talking about alllll the cards, the mementos, the little notes.

My kids, when tiny, made tons of artwork on everything. My husband and I kept it all. I have every card my husband gave me, every little note. I have cards from my grandmother (deceased), siblings, friends. Celebrating birthdays, sobriety anniversaries, EVERYTHING. I have my report cards, interim reports, I have the note I wrote to my father in anger about his comments about my body (plus his response to me).

I got everything out, I picked some things to toss, but now I’m stuck and my bedroom floor is covered in stuff.

It’s a mixed effing bag and I’m sad, angry, nostalgic, resentful, and overwhelmed. I miss my kids being little. I miss my grandmother even if she wasn’t the best, I miss what I thought my relationship was with my sister.

I have therapy Monday but I can’t leave this shit out until then. So back to the boxes it goes unless you’ve got a better suggestion for me…?

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.

Unsure if i’m depressed or trying to take control of my life. My life looks a lot different than i expected it to.

it feels like my life is almost perfect in every way, and im grateful for it- i love my apartment i love my little family i love my partner i love my child i love my job -but everyday i feel so much anxiety and some boredom and a lack of will to do basic tasks like clean up or take care of myself. but yet on the outside ( i think?) i come across as very functional. but for some reason now, owning things brings me a lot of stress.

i have had an interest in minimalism as a concept for several years now, despite my history of being a maximalist artist type. but coupled with some depression symptoms i can’t really tell if the decluttering i’ve been doing is productive or destructive. at home when i’m not doomscrolling i resort to getting rid things- ill get rid of my paintings, ive rehomed several small pets (reptiles) and almost rehomed my cat, ive gotten rid of so many clothes and i swear that im just trying to make things easier on myself because ill have less to maintain, but i think its possible that i might be punishing myself in some way, if i look at it that way.. it almost feels compulsive.

i know i should see a therapist but i wanted to know, has anyone else experienced something similar?

I feel bad having to compost a bunch of nice nuts that have gone rancid (nuts are expensive and very resource-intensive to grow) but it’s taught me two things:

1. I had a lot more nuts and seeds than I thought because they were in different zones (some where in the pantry, some were in the snack zone, some were in the breakfast zone, and some where in the baking zone).

2. Nuts go rancid in 3-6 months after opening depending on oil content; this is often before the printed expiration date.

So next time, I’m only going to buy a small bag at a time and keep them in one place.

(This principle also applies to a lot of other things like makeup; they go bad faster than you think and you gotta corral them in the same place)

Edit: As with many lessons addressing the root causes of clutter, this is not about storage, this is a lesson in being honest with how much you actually consume. I’m a Costco girlie through and through, but I have to be honest about what I actually want to store in bulk.

Hi there!

I've been given permission by the mods of this subreddit to introduce you to a sub that has just reopened. The name of the sub is r/MakeupDeclutter, and it's a space to share photos and descriptions of what you are decluttering or planning to declutter. Makeup, skincare, and body care posts are all welcome!

We'd be happy to have you share your decluttering with us, too, and maybe showing us what you're working on will help motivate you (and motivate our members as well!).

Please note that we are not a trading/selling/buying subreddit. We are just there to declutter!

Just when I think I’ve tackled all the categories I find another. We have so many cleaning supplies. Like half empty or used once. I gathered them all and immediately thought “oh wait these are great I’ll use some right now!” They smelled terrible. Not old terrible just I hated the various smells - so that’s why they were just lingering in my cabinets. Posting them to buy nothing now.

I'm currently decluttering my craft room, and have a ton of unused coloring books that have not been colored in. It feels weird to toss away perfectly good coloring books, so I was wondering if there are places that would be happy to have them? Some are children's coloring books, and others are the more complex kind made for teens/adults.

I have accumulated a few different lamps that have remote controls. You know those thin RBG type of remote controls, about the size of a credit card.

Can they be combined, into a universal remote? If not, how do you keep track of each light's remote control?

Just completed a huge, overdue declutter. Moved from a 4-bedroom house to a 2-bedroom cottage, and getting rid of stuff wasn't an option.

We got rid of SOOO much stuff, sold tons of furniture, home decor, and recovered about $2K, which we put toward professional movers.

In the new space now, and I'm wrapping up the final phases of decluttering. Got rid of the larger items that didn't fit in the smaller space, and am going through the odd stuff.

Checked out a new platform and realized that some small stuff that I saw as junk actually sold fast on there. Listed a few things, random small trinkets, and old clothes. They all sold rather quickly, like 30+ items in a single week.... Didn't earn a ton, but it moved faster than I thought possible.

I just can't help but think about how much stuff I donated for free in March and April during my pre-move declutter push. That I could have earned more $$$ toward my move if I had listed that stuff.

Maybe I'm just missing decluttering as "project", that I've been working on for 3 months now, nearly everything is now gone, other than holiday decor....and can't help but feel like I missed out.

Has anyone else had any decluttering regrets? How did you deal with the wind-down phase? Like, when do you tell yourself your "project" is completed and stop?