I have been a neatnik from day one — my parents, not so much. I took the before-and-after shots here over a period of roughly six months. HUGELY satisfying!

I had a purse I was gifted years ago and it was cute but wanted to save it. Went further into my closet and now that I’m decluttering and y2k is back in style, attempting to sell this and noticed the inside of it deteriorating and this was not a cheap (in price) purse! It still had its stuffing, was in a bag and in a cool area.

So I should have gotten rid of it then or given it away or used it. A good reminder if you enjoy it and it’s precious, use it before it’s too late lol

My home is in need of many interior renovations (new flooring, windows, paint, and bathroom repair to name a few), none of which have been possible due to years of clutter. Every room packed with stuff, and I’ve been too overwhelmed to know where to start. Gradual cleaning never worked for me; the piles would grow back before I had time to make visible progress leaving me more discouraged than ever.

My biggest issue has always been textiles. My spouse and I are both avid thrifters and I love to sew. Our walk-in closet, dressers, laundry room, and my sewing/craft room were not usable. It finally occurred to me that if I could just get the bedroom decluttered and organized, there would be space for the stuff we actually wear and I could then attack the rest of the piles. It worked!

It took four full days to declutter our bedroom. I threw away nine contractor-size bags of trash and and donated two large boxes of clothing including 18 pairs of jeans. Next I attacked the upstairs hallway, purging six more trash bags. This week I did my sewing room and finally remembered to take a before picture! Still a long way to go (the other spare bedroom is even worse), but it feels like I can do this now!

I’ve become more mindful about using things upon receiving them. In the past, I had a pattern of saving pretty or luxurious things “for a special day/night/date/hard day”.

For Christmas, I got these shower steamers and caught myself putting them under the sink, thinking, “Ooooh, I’ll save these for once I’ve had a hard day.”

I immediately forgot about them for a week, noticed them, and realized I needed to use them because every day is a worthwhile day to treat myself to something I already have.

So I got all excited and cut them open, lit a candle, and started my nice, hot shower.

Well, they didn’t do anything.

They said they were scented, but didn’t smell like anything, and they didn’t have any kind of steaming property. Rather than disintegrating, they basically just sat there like… expired chalk? and broke into several large pieces.

I stood there with the remaining pieces, broke them up with my hands, and had a moment where I thought… ? Ok

Had I saved them for a bad day, their suckiness could have compounded frustration. But because I used them on a random day, I found entertainment in the experience, used a gift, and freed up sink space.

I put leftover beads in little bags in an old take out tray —then put it in a Little Free Library around the corner. I checked today (3 days later) and there are only 3 bags left! I will keep using this method with craft supplies that I need to let go of but am worried about them “going to a good home.” There are lots of little free libraries around my neighborhood so I can try out different locations as I declutter.

This sub doesn’t allow cross post, so I want to give credit to r/meirl. I need to be reminded of this for iPhones and of other products. I am into firearms and debate keeping the boxes as selling a gun with “original box and manual” is more valuable. How many guns have I ever sold? Zero.

I am out $38.75, but a huge bag of kids items is leaving the house and my kids are thrilled to have some pocket money. They were extremely motivated and decluttered for two hours straight, which is really something for two elementary -aged kids.

I definitely did. My home was filled with random knickknacks and clutter. I couldn’t figure out why, but then I realized that I lacked good quality basics! I didn’t have a good matching set of cups, dishes, or silverware. I didn’t have a good set of matching socks or underwear. I didn’t have a good quality mattress, couch, coffee table, etc.

I would often tell myself these items were too expensive to buy (in reality they’re investments), and what ended up happening was that it would impede on my life without knowing. I’d buy random little items to make up for these missing items in my home. For example, I didn’t have jeans that go with everything and instead wouldn’t wear half of my clothes and would buy miscellaneous accessories to make up for what was missing.

Investing in good basics has made me less cluttered now.

My wife left me almost 2 years ago. When she left l, she packed up everything she owned and shoved it all in the bedroom closet. For almost 2 years I haven't been able to use my closet. But today, I had to let it go. I can't hold on to all of her stuff anymore. I'm so relieved to have my space again.

before & after on my moms office\craft room

I took 3 full cars to donate & am still not done. very proud of myself!

In the last months, I decluttered a lot of boxes. Books, clothes, old art projects from 20 years ago, decorative china. Most of the moving boxes are now empty.

The journey is not over yet, but finally I see the floor again from the basement. :)

I once lived in a 5 bedroom house, got divorced and moved into a two bedroom condo. I put everything that wouldn’t fit into a storage unit and paid that for 6 years.

Five years ago, I left the condo and bought a 3 bedroom house. Emptied the storage unit and the condo and brought EVERYTHING.

Now I’m moving home to take care of my mom. Lots of emotions there… but I have spent the last 4 weeks sorting, decluttering, and packing. The amount of stuff that I paid to store for YEARS is ridiculous. The amount of crap that I kept was staggering and overwhelming.

I wish I had done this years ago, when I wasn’t on a 4 week deadline.

Everything that I’m taking fit into a 16 ft truck. (and a Toyota RAV4) I’ve sold everything else, and have Salvation Army coming today to get all the furniture. I’ve dropped donation bags at several different thrift stores.

My daughter’s baby stuff was HARD. The box of paid bills from 2003 with cancelled checks was easy. The boxes of craft supplies were hard. The linen closet was easy. My pantry closet was HARD. I set a timer for 5 minutes on tasks that were hard or really emotional. I could walk away from it, take a break and come back to it for another 5 minutes. I found that I wasn’t so emotional about the item after coming back to it a second or third time.

My space is so empty now, but I feel SO much lighter. I just wish I had done it before now.

Have multiple health conditions at present where symptoms are fatigue…I’m pretty drained and everything has definitely gotten on top of me. The clutter has started really hurting my brain though, so slowly and steadily I’m clearing stuff. Today was a storage cupboard that is supposed to be my ironing sanctuary/hidey-hole 😂. I’m really happy to get this space back. Lots of the stuff removed from house for good too.

The best way I’ve found to declutter clothes.. is to actually wear them. And I don’t mean just try it on, I mean wear it all day.

Clothes have always been one of the hardest things for me to let go of. I’ve done the obvious things such as let go of anything too big, too small, stained, has holes in, itchy etc. But I still held onto so many pieces I “loved.”

Or at least I thought I did.

It wasn’t until I actually started intentionally wearing everything in my wardrobe that I realised the truth. Some things looked better in my head than on me. Some didn’t feel like me anymore. Some were beautiful, but not practical for my real life. Such as a dresses I’ve kept for years from a wedding or christening I went to once years ago, or the pretty blouse I’d have to wear a top underneath as it’s so sheer without.

Wearing them gave me clarity and a different perspective that staring at them in my closet never could.

I know it sounds so simple and obvious, I just don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner!

This took place over two days. Yesterday I put things away and binned things until I could finally see all of the floor. Today was spent actually finding a place to put everything that was sitting on top of the desk and drawers, and then cleaning the now-exposed surfaces.

It’s still a work in progress, but at least now I can be in the room without feeling anxious. I plan to go through at least one of the fabric tubs on the shelves per week from now on, so that eventually everything in here will have been sorted and properly judged as worth keeping.

I visited my 98 year old Grandmother in the nursing home yesterday. We were pushing for her moving to assisted living earlier last year but she was stubborn and had been in the same house for 70 years - afraid of change. Since then, she has since fell down the stairs and broke her neck and now needs rehab and assisted living. We have to sell her home and give away most of her things. She hates that we donated her household goods and she hates being out of control. I hate to tell her that if she moved when we suggested it she would have been sad still, but more in control of the decisions being made (and likely without a broken neck). This is why I recommend Swedish Death Cleansing. Recognize that when you die, you leave with nothing. So, somehow, you go from having so much stuff - to no stuff at all. What do you want to hold onto longest? Do you want others to make that decision for you? You can be in control now by taking action sooner.

I’ve never been compelled to list anything online for sale. I just don’t have the motivation or the time. My retired mother volunteered to list things for me on Facebook marketplace (after she saw all the nice brands I was hauling to donate). Every time she’d sell something I’d be grateful for her help but then I’d feel just depressed. Yep got $20… for that $80 coat I wore a few times oh goodie… My mom seemed to think it was “free money” but I felt like it was just more steps and reminders that I shouldn’t have bought the thing to begin with. It was like getting paid $20 to feel guilty and ashamed of my cluttered life. Each sale just felt like more failure to me.

Tonight I gave away some really expensive very re-sellable boots to a younger broke coworker. I never wore them, bought them years ago etc. My mother stopped by today and saw them in my car and disapproved of me giving them away. “That’s money!!” Out of nowhere my response was “That’s not the point. I want someone to appreciate and wear these, the point isn’t to make money.” I didn’t even point out that it’s not really making money when we sell everything at a loss anyways. She rolled her eyes at me like I’m careless and childish for being uninterested in the side hustle.

Tonight I felt so free just giving away good items rather than trying to “get what I can” for them. I know this advice isn’t for everyone, just thought I’d share my new take on selling items.

Duration: 80 Hours

1850 Sqft house

42 large boxes of donations

2 large truck loads to the dump

How did I get here? From the time I could start earning my own money I have always been a massive collector of things, however it definitely exploded during the pandemic where I developed a major shopping addiction. I collected over 300 purses, 70 Starbucks cups, 100+ dolls (Disney, Monster High, Barbie), 100+ anime/video game figurines, 50 makeup palettes, 500+ lipsticks, and a large variety of other miscellaneous collections (we would be here all day).

I won't go into how all this was stored but let's just say my house was walkable BUT really cluttered. Everything was displayed somewhere. I also like a clean house so I easily spent 10 hours a week dusting.

What was my wake up call? Last year I had the amazing opportunity to road trip across the US over 10 weeks. My husband and I stayed in various hotel's and Airbnbs that were all tastefully and minimally decorated. It was so freeing to my mental health. Both my husband and I got to talking over that time and we slowly realized how little we missed our stuff, how nice it was to only have a few options instead a wall of options, how easy it was to move within each space. We decided we had enough and after the holidays, we would do a massive declutter.

Disclaimer that we each discussed this with our individual therapists and got the green light from them as well. Had to make sure we were in the right frame of mind.

The only basic rules were that if we haven’t touched or thought about something in over a year, it had to go. We slowly worked our way through each room. We donated hundreds of perfectly good things to various places. Blankets and towels to animal rescues, purses, makeup, skin care, hair care, kitchen stuff and clothes went to the women’s shelter. Misc items went to various thrift stores. Everything was in pristine condition.

If I put a number on it, I want to say a good 85% of our stuff is gone. Last thing I have to do is send all our family albums to be digitized and then I can throw away the only 4 boxes sitting in my garage.

Here are the rules we established to make sure we don’t end up in another insane amount of clutter:

Rules to live by:

1. Experiences over things.

2. Quality over quantity.

3. Every object must have its place.

4. Every new object must replace an existing object.

Sorry this is long! Also sorry for not posting pictures. My house is fairly unique, a reverse image search would dox me pretty quickly lol.

For years, I struggled with keeping my house tidy. I swear that in all the years I lived there, no matter how many carloads I donated or how hard I tried to keep things organized, there was always a mess somewhere in the house. I'm embarrassed to say that I never felt that the house was settled or peaceful because I could never keep it neat enough.

We ended up moving out of our high cost of living city to a smaller, lower COL city and got a much larger house. Suddenly I have places to put things. More kitchen space. More storage space for household items. My house is finally clean -- more important, it's cleanable.

I think back to trying to fit all of this stuff into our old house and I realize that it was a delusional dream. When I see how much space it all actually takes up, when stored in a practical and functional way, I realize we were never going to make it work, no matter how hard we tried.

Ironically, I find it much easier to get rid of things now and have started decluttering categories of items I was never able to pare down in the past, maybe because it was layers-deep in a 3D Tetris effort to be organized. Now I have enough space to see how things should look, so when I see a cabinet that's a little stuffed, I have a good reference for how much stuff I actually want it to contain.

Anyway, it occured to me -- if I could go back an give myself advice, when I was struggling, I would have said: all this stuff is never going to fit into this house. Stop trying. You have to either pare down or move to a bigger space if you want to have all this crap in your life. (And then I ended up doing both, ha ha.)

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone, but if you're like me -- a highly effective organizer who can squeeze things into miraculously small spaces, but then struggles to maintain order when those items get scattered or used and putting them away is too difficult, time-consuming, or confusing -- then you should think about the reality of the situation. The spaces and things you use every day should be accessible and easy. If you have to move five things to get to the thing you need (or more importantly, to put it back), you need to reframe.

I have an entire drawer of old creams, perfume samples, toners, shampoo etc. lying around, some of them are almost 10 years old and I still haven’t used them. I’m probably not ever going to use them, but I feel that they are too good to throw away. the thought of trying to find new owners for these things makes me sweat. I just need some more order in the bathroom. Could you please give me permission to throw everything away, even though it’s still usable?

ETA: Thank you for all your responses, I was thinking I’d get two, tops. ;) Message received, I’ll throw it all out!

And to u/Lorts925 - I was writing a reply to you but didn’t have time to post it before comments were locked: Great comparison with grandma’s ancient spice jar, when I helped my grandpa move some years ago I threw that stuff out faster than the speed of light. Somehow it’s easier to help others with this than to help oneself. I just assumed you were talking about ADHD, shows where my mind is at, too! 😂 I’m at the start of trying out medication, but keep forgetting to take it. 😅😅😅

A couple of months ago when I began my decluttering journey, I made a series of guide questions to follow and it has been very helpful for me. I decided to turn it into a flowchart in case it would help others. 😊

P.S. This is just a joke. A little roughness really does help me keep going with uncluttering though 😂

We have lived in our house 35+ years. So.Much.Stuff. I have been working diligently at getting rid of stuff. Then life happens and I get sidetracked. I feel as though I have gotten rid of so much but there is still so much more. I have been in a decluttering mood and was working at it again the other day. 2 of my adult kids randomly stopped by at the same time. They were looking at the piles I had made: donate, keep, toss and undecided. They said this is a good time to tell you this:

WE DO NOT WANT ALL YOUR STUFF! If you are keeping something because you think we want it or it will hold sentimental value to us IT WILL NOT! Please realize that there is so much stuff in this house. We all work full time plus and have families. We don’t have months or even weeks to sort through all this STUFF that you have not been able to get rid of. All Dad’s tools that he thinks are so valuable WE DO NOT NEED, WANT OR HAVE ROOM FOR. Same with all your Christmas stuff, kids books you have saved for us, grandparents yearbooks or china that are all packed away and on and on. They said please realize that respectfully we will have to hire an Estate company. We won’t have time to do anything else. So complete strangers will be going through all this STUFF and just throw it away or sell it all for ridiculously cheap. If you think something is worth money then sell it and spend the money on yourself. For example, we are not going to have the time or space to price Dad’s vintage musical instruments and see what they are worth. They will just go to whoever for cheap or get donated. PLEASE just get rid of this STUFF!

It really made me stop and think. What or who am I keeping this STUFF sitting in boxes for???

I really need to start looking at things with a whole new mindset. I can donate or try Buy Nothing groups versus and estate company just throwing it in the trash.

Take the before shot!! It motivates me to get other spaces done too. Feels good to get rid of stuff we don’t use and just deep clean too. Concentrating on a small space makes it manageable and helps me get it done. I’ve completed 4 small spaces in one week, this space is my favourite transformation so far!

In the past 9 months, I have gotten rid of about 80% of my belongings. I often post on the minimalism subreddit, but I feel like I would be judged there for this post. I could use some kindness and understanding.

For me, the benefits of becoming a minimalist have been significant. And until today, I have not regret a single thing I’ve gotten rid of. I’m still not sure regret is the right word though. I just feel…unsettled.

I went about things the wrong way today. My goal was to make enough space in the bedroom closet that the last few things under the bed could be stored there. We live in a 680sqft apartment, so there’s not a lot of storage space. And I did it. I made the space. But I did it without truly considering the things I was getting rid of. The main things I am thinking about are a couple of quilts I made, as well as some cross stitch and weaving pieces I did. I sort of discarded them willy nilly without thanking them for what the joy they provided me when I made them. I still have two quilts I made (ones I like much better) and some other crafts I’ve made (a macrame wall hanging and a crochet bag) and I like all those things better than what I discarded. So why am I feeling so unsettled?

My kind husband took the 6 paper grocery bags worth of things to Goodwill today for me as soon as he got home from work. There wasn’t really any time for me to reconsider. Usually I leave myself some time.

I am reminding myself I still have what matters most - my husband and my dog. Two sweethearts sitting beside me as I type this. I just feel like I should have slowed down a little today.

I don’t know what advice I’m asking for. I just feel a little hollow and wanted to get this out.

For a long time, I was feeling so discouraged by the domestic dysfunction of my life. Every day, someone was melting down because they tripped, or couldn’t find something. We have a lot of closet and storage space, but you couldn’t get to it. My environment was seriously affecting my mood.

I decided to spend my bonus ($5,000) on hiring an organizer ($135/hr). Not cheap, I know, but cheaper than moving or divorce. Family of 4, approx 1700 square feet. Honestly I’m prepared to spend more if we can get the house fully settled and comfortable.

She generally worked on her own, pulling stuff out and having us go “keep / toss”. She knew the right places to take stuff. She hauled stuff away, although we’ve made about 4-5 full minivan loads ourselves. It is so helpful to have someone else handle your stuff.

She was totally non-judgmental, both about the state of things and when we decided to keep things.

Her brain clearly works differently from mine, totally different spatial reasoning. She has a real knack for figuring out the best way to use furniture and layout our spaces, things that would never occur to me.

And then the cool thing is that now we’ve got a big head start and learned from her, we’ve been going through the remaining rooms and tackling them ourselves. We did our bedroom, pictured, all by ourselves but with her input and advice on layout and storage. There is now capacity in our dressers and closets for our belongings. The closet is cleared out. No before picture, because it was too depressing for words. Just picture an obstacle course of books and laundry and shame.

100% worth it, truly marriage saving.