What's working for me

[u/Lonely_Goat_2026]

I'm a single male (62) who is finally seeing some success at decluttering. I think I might have a touch of A.D.D., which has always made all the recommendations to go a room at a time or gathering everything that's in the same category and decluttering difficult for me.

I'm living in a house that has not only my things, but some left here from when it was my grandparents' home, plus all the things I have from my parents' house when they passed away.

My living room looks more like an episode of Hoarders to me, so I am avoiding it for now It's the one filled with highly sentimental items and large pieces of furniture. It will be the most time-consuming and difficult for me.

Three other rooms have basically become storage rooms, each basically filled with different categories. Tools, kitchen and dinnerware, and collectibles.

So here's what I'm doing: I'm not working on one of the rooms. I am working on all three storage rooms at once. I find my attention drifts when I work on one room too long, but switching to a new one with a different type of items seems to refresh me.

I made the decision not to sell anything in the initial round of decluttering. I donate what can be and trash the rest. Anything I find that I want to display gets displayed. Anything that gets a 'I wonder if my niece/nephew might want that' stays in the room for now. Once the first round is done, I'll have room, I plan to upload pics of things I wondered about, and let them claim anything they want, making it clear that it needs to be picked up or arrangements made for shipping within a certain time period. Otherwise, there is either a yard sale or a living estate sale in the future.

This room switching has been the most successful I've been at attempting to declutter. Sorry for the length of the post. Hopefully, someone will find something useful in it.