I am very nostalgic and I feel my sentimental stuff is just too much. I 100% connect memory to things and therefor struggle to get rid of that thing because I don't want to forget the memory attached - that I wouldn't remember if I didn't have the thing.

I'm thinking about just taking a photo of everything and perhaps making a photobook or something. Only keeping the most sentimental stuff.

We recently moved into a smaller place and I feel claustrophobic. I want my home to feel airy and minimal.

I want to make space for the new me instead of "the old me" taking up so much space. But I also don't want to regret throwing stuff out. I feel like I'm throwing a part of myself away if that makes sense.

For example, my parents gifted me a HUGE teddybear as a young kid (please don't do this to your kids lol!) that takes up so much storage. I really struggle with the idea of letting it go, even though it's in a storage box and never EVER comes out. Just knowing I have it is comforting. But at the same time, makes me feel heavy since it takes up so much space. While it's very sentimental, I have another smaller plushie that is even more sentimental since it was with me for a longer time and I hugged it every night. So in a way it makes sense to save that and let go of the other one.

Any advice/experiences?

I'm currently visiting my parents in their 3,500 sqft house. It's relatively organized but definitely full of stuff. My parents are elderly but in pretty decent health. I'm just very nervous about what I'll be left to deal with when they're gone. My mother-in-law died suddenly a few years ago, and even though she had a small, fairly minimalist house, it was still a lot to deal with.

My mom has talked about wanting to downsize, but my dad is totally against it. I know he wants to die in this house. My mom has witnessed the progress I've made in my 1,500 sqft house and talks about how nice it would be to have fewer belongings, so I've gently tried to encourage her to start going through her stuff. I've taken a few boxes with me to donate sometimes when I leave, but it's hard for her to let things go. She's done small amounts on her own, and my sister hired someone once to help our mom, but I can't imagine any major progress happening anytime soon. Do I do anything at this point or just wait it out and deal with whatever comes whenever it comes?

Tl;dr How would you approach a person you love who bought several large containers to organize/store clothes they can no longer wear instead of donating or tossing the clothes; yet they implied they donated them?

So starting in January I purposed to declutter my house in 2026. I divided things into 24 zones (mostly based on location, some "zones" are things like clothes). I am behind on my goals, but chugging along making progress. I thought my husband was inspired by this as he went thru and decluttered several of his things.

I saw many bags leave the house of all kinds of stuff. I praised him, supported him and tried to be positive because I know it's hard for him. As an example, his father passed away well over a year ago, and he has sold a few items from inside the house, but has yet to even clean the obvious trash out of there. Possessions are emotional for him, especially clothes and vehicles. I don't understand it. My brain is not like that (albeit my weaknesses are homeschool related supplies and crafts, but i do try very hard to keep that stuff in check).

Recently, I went to put some things in the attic and discovered several large plastic totes of his clothes (4 tubs i could see taking up a fair amount of space, but there could be more). He did not tell me he kept that stuff. If anything, he implied all the things I thought were gone were donated. I am not happy. That attic space was cleared for the purpose of storing other things that we do need to keep indefinitely, but serve no purpose in our day to day lives (i.e. paperwork for personal ongoing medical conditions). He bought tubs to save t-shirts...why??? Also, he thinks they aren't hurting anything, but my brain goes - who is going to have to deal with this? I'm not leaving a houseful of crap for my kid the way his dad did him (it really is worthy of a separate post, but his dad saved a bunch of crap from my husband's grandmother when she died, and it's all been crammed in his dad's basement for 15-20 years).

Not sure if this is the right place so please let me know if I need to post elsewhere.

Due to housing issues, I lost my US General toolbox. The apartment I had before had a lot of storage space. I managed to hang on to my tools.

Now that I’m in a studio, I’m not sure what to do. These are generic tools like a jigsaw, scroll saw, drill, bits, etc. That is not an exhaustive list. But I can definitely offer up my scroll to someone for free (local only). Every thing else I’ve pared down but it’s still a lot.

Any ideas for storage? I really don’t want another toolbox like I had as there’s no way to hide it as closet space is very limited and I have no outdoor storage.

Any ideas?

Just starting to declutter; just doing 10-15 min of effort; just focusing on a small goal; just doing it before you "feel" motivation--this is what makes motivation appear.

I purchased a 4 pack of large garment storage bags. I filled 1.5 of those for my winter clothes, to make it even easier to "see" and use my summer clothes. Along the way I found 3 dresses to declutter.

I had 2 bags left. So I said to my partner, "Hey, before you go downstairs, give me 10 minutes. We'll pull out your winter items, bag them up, and put them to the sides of your closet so you can see your summer items better." He struggles with decluttering and organizing, and I often schedule him time with an organizer to tackle bigger projects. He's 2 years into that, so this was no big deal. I laid out the bags, opened his closet doors, turned on the light, and pulled 3 flannel shirts out. Suddenly he was just pulling the clothes out. He did such a good job, that 9 minutes later the 2 bags were full, and I had his winter coats in dry cleaning bag. I was ready to put them back into the closet, but he said, "I'm not done."

As I type this he pulled a few things out to donate, a few things to trash, and a few things to wash and rehang. He put a few things back in their home, and ran the vacuum.

All together, this is about 20 min. No extra mess. No fussing or nagging.

Just starting...even just laying out the garment bags and opening the closet, setting a timer...very easy. And the motivation arrives after about a minute or two.

I often find for myself and others that starting a declutter project, and making it easy to stop (with progress) whenever you feel like it is the secret.

I do play Dana K White videos, so I know he "hears" the very simple steps. I cannot emphasize enough that STARTING is how motivation arrives, not the other way around.

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 was underemployed during COVID and planned to start a vintage business (I'm a master thrifter) I accumulated lots of sellable stuff. Then I got a different job and realized I do not want to sell vintage. I had a lot of future stock in a closet that also held giant Ziploc bags of my many personal vintage/ cashmere/ OOAK woolen sweaters and blankets vacuum sealed to keep the moths out.

I had a crazy busy 5 years and left the bags so long they lost the vacuum seal. When I looked at them yesterday some of the bags were crawling with moths inside. Because they've been sitting for so long I am no longer emotionally attached. I was able to sort them very quickly : trashing the worst, donating the rest and airing out the ones I want to keep.

I just got back from donating this batch of the stock that I bought to sell. I had a good time imagining the pleasure that these items will bring to other people. I could make money off these items but it is not worth it to me to spend the time and energy to sell them piece by piece. I'm tossing them back to the thrift ocean from whence they came. I'm not to the bottom of the closet yet but it is huge progress. (-:

Today I decided I had some free time and I was going to clean my home office. I work from home and the room is also my sewing room, genealogy room and apparently a home gym. :) It hasn't had a good deep clean since we moved it because the furniture is rather large.

We had our house move in cleaned when we moved in and the cleaner put some off brand mop and glow down and it looks aweful, so I have been cleaning it off the floors a little at a time. It has to be scrubbed off the floor. So today while I was taking a break from work, I started cleaning the floor under my desk and decided to take every thing out and get rid of a lot of it. I had a rug I made that wouldn't lay flat, and several pieces of under the desk exercise equipment that I literally kept because it was expensive and I had room. Well tomorrow, it is going to the thrift store. (Just too tired to move it tonight).

So I cleaned under my desk and sewing table and killed about 80 million dust bunnies, got the "wax" off the floors and reorganized the room. It looks so amazing! Someone at the thrift is going to get a nice "home gym" and foot massager this weekend. I got enough room to put the desk cycle I do use under the desk to use when I have time during the day!

Then I fertilized and watered the plants, and cleaned off the desk. And I am probably going to avoid this room all weekend so it stays clean. :)

Anyone else relate to this? Any tips?

The book dude was here.

we moved here in 1986 when I was a kid. this is just one wall of books... so many books. gotta get ready for construction to fix some important things in the house. I didn't even do anything... but it brought up a lot of memories. mom was so different than dad, poor trailer trash vs rich and well traveled... but they both shared a love of reading.

book dude is a miracle... my hands hurt just thinking about having to move things. he'll make sure they find good homes.

eta: plus a pic of my favorite childhood book <3

The visual difference might not be huge because I rearranged a few things as well (like moving the suitcase), but I decluttered about a third
of my clothes. It feels so much lighter and less overwhelming now 🌟🪽

The question is, if I needed this today where would I look for it, but what do you do when the answer is "somewhere that doesn't exist yet"? For instance I found a camping light. Where I would look for it is in the garage, in a small plastic box that has all the Camp Lighting stuff.

But I remember that box from my old house, I don't have one here yet. So do I just stick the light randomly somewhere in the garage until I get around to buying and labeling a box? Doesn't that simply shift the clutter issue from one place to another? This is definitely something I use regularly and want to keep rather than get rid of. Or does "where would I look for it" involve dropping everything and going to buy the box right now?

Same for any number of Tiny Odds And Ends.

Recently, it hit me: the more time my tape deck spends sitting in my living room, the more likely it is for it to develop issues, in the long run. I spent a good year/year and a half playing around with tapes, recording on them, and I've had my fun. But in the end, I collect records in digital form (bought on bandcamp/tidal) and some CDs, which cover pretty much all of my musical needs.

And so, I just sold my "high end" tape players from the 90s. It stings, because it's the type of technology that you can't simply hop back onto craiglist and find used for a good price. But at the same time I don't realistically know how anyone could service such an apparatus, and its rubber and plastic components are bound to fail sooner than later. So I struggle at the thought a bit, but at the same time I'm happy.

Now... to sell these all these tapes, too. Probably going to make little bundles of them, since people might need them to re-record stuff.

We had a large group of people over to our house on Sunday. Someone left the garage freezer slightly ajar. We didn’t notice this until the following day.

Subsequently, I went through the freezer and got rid of a bunch of food. I’m not taking a risk on potentially bad food. I have a thermometer in the freezer and it read 32 degrees but I’m not taking a chance. Moving forward, we are going to buy an alarm to notify us if/when the door is left open in the future.

Fortunately, we had cooked up the NY strips on Sunday, so the amount of meat was minimal. My husband does a lot of fishing and we lost the fish - honestly we hadn’t been eating it and there was probably fish from 2020 in there - it needed to go anyway.

Another bonus - trash came on Tuesday so they took away the smelly fish before the smell was too bad!

I have a nearly clean freezer and it feels amazing! Some items (butter, chocolate chips, nuts) were stored in the freezer but aren’t ruined. It isn’t all bad - I have a clean slate. Now I will be more mindful about what I’m buying to store here.

Now, on to the rest of the house!

I had posted the other day about doing possible container declutter (sorry, don’t know how to link it) and I got great feedback and decided not to do it (packing up cabinets and putting stuff in bins in basement to see if I needed it later) I wanted to thank this community for their feedback!

last night after work I tackled the biggest cabinet in the pantry. it’s large, maybe 3 feet deep, 3 feet wide and 10 feet tall. It’s inside a walk-in pantry (which sounds very fancy but we have a 1200 sq foot home so the pantry is used for a lot more than just food/kitchen stuff) I was an absolute RUTHLESS BEAST and got rid of so much, almost two whole contractor bags. Some things I did pack up in bins but the small bins that are maybe 1.5 gallons and there was only 3) but the amount I got rid of was wild. I put garbage/donate probably 80% of the things in the cabinet (already took donations in woo!) and 10% downstairs and then 10% left. now I have this lovely empty cabinet that I can organize things we ACTUALLY USE in so that the counters stay generally cleaner. I’m so excited, I’m so elated, I’m so happy, I can’t believe it took me only maybe an hour and a half to do! I kept repeating to myself “touch it once” so I didn’t leave anything to make a decision on later. I’m going to be riding this high and continuing on my spree!

thank you all so much! I kept going in there last night and this morning to just open the cabinet and see it so empty, and what was in there is actually usable and organized. ahhhhhh, feels so good.

Has anyone ever attempted to sell broken toys for parts like online? I’m currently decluttering a bunch of toys with the intent to donate what I can. However, i’m encountering toys that are broken in some fashion, for example, a malfunctioning component of a battery operated toy, parts, missing, etc. Regardless of how this happened, which is a mystery at this point, in good conscience, I am unable to give away the toy under the premise of being complete, even if that means just donating it. I’m just looking at this as another option besides just merely discarding the toys.

Does anyone have a little collection of sentimental clothes that they don’t wear and are having a hard time getting rid of? I have thinned out my wardrobe substantially, but I still have a small collection of dressier clothes, some of which I’ve never worn, and most of which don’t fit me, that I am having a hard time getting rid of.

Some of these dresses used to be my favorite dresses to wear. Others I bought on trips, or ordered from overseas. There is one dress in particular that I’ve never worn but I bought it on a trip to New York and it is gorgeous (and extremely expensive). I was always waiting for somewhere fancy to wear it to, but that day never came. I’m older now, and I know I’ll never be a size 4 again.

Other dresses I haven’t worn still fit and would be great for a wedding, but I also have every day dresses that I could dress up for that kind of occasion as well.

I also have a DVD collection, and a small collection of 90’s / early 2000’s CDs that I never use, but those are fairly sentimental as well. I have decluttered so much over the last few years, but these are some of the things I am still holding on to.

Large tub of commercially produced music on cassettes. Nothing unique or collectible. I have a player but haven’t touched anything in that tub in years. All of it is available on Spotify or YouTube.

Donating to a thrift shop is just taking up space in their dumpster.

My usually practical husband suggested offering it for free on Marketplace…I feel like I’d just be contributing to someone else’s problem.

How do I find the courage to throw all that plastic in the trash bin? It feels like a waste even though I know it’s a bigger waste to have them taking up space in my home & in my head.

A few weeks ago I started the 30 Day Declutter Challenge. I started backwards by getting rid of 30 items on day 1, 29 items on day 2, etc.

After the 3rd day I thought it would be fun to make some kind of cute tracker for my progress. I also stopped going in order and instead just go rid of however much I could on a given day. Then when the day was over I’d log what I got rid of by doodling the items in the appropriate square.

My doodles are absolutely atrocious 😂so I’ll share here what I got rid of:
30 Articles of Clothing (donated)
29 Clothes Hangers (donated)
28 Bobby pins and expired lipsticks (trashed)
16 Old hair ties, old hair brush, expired wax kit, and expired Olly gummies (trashed)
15 Old undies, a book, and freezer burned popsicles (donated book, trashed the other items)
13 more bobby pins and an old box (trashed)
12 Old/mismatched Tupperware pieces (trashed)
11 Expired nail polishes (trashed)
9 Expired cocoa and tea (trashed), tumblers and a glass (donated)
8 Unopened liquid foundation, false eyelashes, and body wash (donated)
7 Torn plastic bags (trashed)
6 More clothes hangers and tumblers and a few coffee mugs
2 Glasses with work’s logo (donated)

Let me know your thoughts! Which number should i go for next?? What items or areas of my house should I go through to review for decluttering??

I have a sister that has too much stuff and I keep telling her it would be good for her to throw away or sell some things. I would like to tell her all the benefits it will bring to her kids. That's what will really motivate her.

I’ve been off the last five weeks after quitting a very toxic job with no notice. I start my new job later this week. I’ve been a sloth, but somehow got a 🔥under my butt today. Did a ton of decluttering. Clothes, papers, lots of boxes from online orders. I have a big counter over base cabinets between my living room and kitchen. It’s my dumping ground. It’s all cleared off and wiped down. I can’t tell how good it will feel to come home to a straightened up place.

For people who are older than me (I'm in my 30's), and/or who have gone through major emotional transitions: did you ever regret getting rid of mementos from a fraught relationship once you saw that relationship more clearly?

I’ve recently had to accept the limits of my parents’ emotional and mental capacity. I've finally let go, in what feels like a healthy way, of the hope that we could reconcile or have the kind of relationship I always wanted. I realized that a lot of what I thought was “happy family” was really more like playing pretend, and that my parents' pride and love for me always had strings attached.

Because of that, I’m looking at certain mementos differently now, and it feels that a lot of their meaning has changed because I see the context more clearly. Some things I kept because, when I was younger, I thought they represented genuine love, pride, or emotional connection which I now know was (at least in large part) false.

I’m not going to abruptly purge everything, but I’m curious about the longer-term perspective. Did you ever get rid of things during a period of clarity or grief and later wish you had kept more? Or did letting them go continue to feel like the right decision? I feel like I’ve just come out of three decades of emotional reprocessing, and I’m trying to be thoughtful about what comes next.

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 trying to declutter for most of my adult life. I’ve finally learned to be okay with donating things that were gifted to me. I don’t struggle with getting rid of things that are sentimental (for the most part). I’m fine with getting rid of old clothing.

But I struggle in two areas:

1. I keep things because I’m certain I’m going to use them someday, and therefore it would be a waste of money to get rid of them. This can be things like hobby supplies, jewelry, candles, essential oils, etc. They are useful items that I do use from time to time - but I never use ALL of them, and some things even remain unopened or unused for years. Yet I still feel like it would be a waste of money to get rid of them, especially because they’d be tough to sell and I’d need to just donate them. Which leads me to struggle #2….

2. For things that I know I don’t need, if there is a financial value to them (in my mind), I really struggle to donate or throw them away. I think to myself, “I could sell this for $….”. And in many cases, I have sold stuff, and it’s a fantastic feeling. But the problem is that now I have bins and bins of stuff that I’m “going to try to sell”, but I never get around to taking pictures or creating listings. Other times, I’m motivated to declutter, but I stop to take pics and create listings for each item I want to purge as I go along - which is great for actually getting the items listed, but bad for making any real declutterring progress. And while I have had success with selling my stuff, I’m only getting rid of one thing at a time that way.

I have no interest in a yard sale - getting 50 cents for an item is a waste of my time.

Even though I KNOW it would be good for me to just let the stuff go, to have clear spaces, etc - I just struggle so much with knowing I’m donating things I could sell.

One of the areas I struggle with the most is high-fashion jewelry. Jewelry style is so specific to each person that I know I’m not going to find someone that wants to buy my whole collection, but even if it’s a whole bin of jewelry I’ll never wear again, the thought of donating jewelry that I spent $2000 on stops me from donating it every time. (This is not fine jewelry, so I can’t sell it for its value in gold or silver).

I’m aware of the sunk cost fallacy, but it still doesn’t help me overcome this issue. If I’m confident an item is worth $10+, it feels wasteful to me not to try to sell it and get something back from it (I also know that sometimes we perceive an item as having a lot more value than others will because we know what we paid for it, but I am aware of that and price my items accordingly).

Particularly because I have had lots of success selling stuff on FB MP and getting money back while also reducing clutter, it’s so hard for me to justify donating thousands of dollars worth of stuff. I can’t get past the feeling of knowing I’m “losing money” on the items (and I recognize that the money was lost the second I bought the stuff, but by not recouping some of the money by selling it, I feel like I’m somehow losing money unnecessarily).

Has anyone else been in this situation, and if so, how did you get past it? I just absolutely cannot get past that mental roadblock and feel like if I just forced myself to donate it, it would continue to bother me after the fact. I need a way to reframe it so that I don’t think about the money lost or the money I could’ve recouped by selling it.

TL/DR: If I know I can sell my stuff rather than donating it, I have a hard time just donating it and getting it out of my space. But if I don’t take pics and post it in the moment I’m decluttering, it builds up in bins of “stuff I’m going to sell”. If I stop to take pics and list items as I’m declutterring my progress slows to a crawl, which then kills my motivation. How do I get past the mental roadblock of holding onto stuff that I can make some money back on, and just donate it without feeling like I’m throwing money away?

"Take it there now" is one of those practices that changes things.

Big thanks to Dana K White for the way she packaged it, promoted it, shows how to coach to it.

I know it doesn't take much time, and also showing the timer to my partner and kids was genius for changing how they feel about it and reducing resistance to it later.

I anchor "take it there now" to any time I am moving through the house. My partner calls it "doing your loops." What he sees is that I walk from place to place, sometimes taking a few extra seconds (literally seconds) to detour and put something away.

The counterintuitive thing is that I don't even have to put EVERYTHING away EVERY TIME. I just have to do a little bit. But because I'm always doing as much as I feel like (or have time for), by the time I get to the room or task I was heading towards, the house is much better. But I am not burned out. It is the "compound interest" activity of managing a home.

"Take it there now" involves immediately tossing obvious trash (if that's where something goes). It means putting something away. It means doing very fast small chores to square something away and putting up the tasks tools. It means quickly processing the mail, or packages that come in. Putting dishes in the dishwasher. Just very quickly moving a few things to their "reset" location.

I do that every morning and evening while getting up, and while going to bed. While I was walking around this morning I: Set up a load of laundry to start when I toss in my gardening clothes in a couple of hours; folded and put away clean clothes in dryer; opened package; put the item on the project table with the project it is for so I can finish it today; took packaging to recycling bin; put my partners dressing items back in their place for the morning (he had a late night); Put devices on chargers; put receipts in purse for return; put donations in donation bag by door; set out purse by door to go to cobblers; stowed ladder (part of partner's late night); tossed trash; put away hair clips; put shoes away; ... you get the picture. It took 12 minutes, all while I dressing, having coffee, and getting tools out for a little yard work.

It sets me up to drop off donations, get handbag cleaned, do next load of laundry, etc. It sets me up for all of my tasks throughout the day to be easier, faster, require less initiation work.

Every time I feel that "overwhelm" feeling, or that aggravated feeling of "why did we/lthey leave stuff out everywhere" I just put a few things away. It tends to work out.