Do you make a justifiable excuse for keeping almost every item in your home? Do you think you're really going to fit in that dress from your college days again? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you probably need to keep reading or buy a bigger house, whichever you prefer.
1) Do you really need that outdated set of serving plates your Grandma Mary gave you 10 years ago? Probably not. Go around your house, and search for items that's sole purpose are to collect dust, fill an ENTIRE trash bag with items to donate, and BOOM you can officially call it a day.
2) Try the closet hanger experiment to identify the pieces in your closet you are never wearing. The rules are simple, just take all of the clothes hanging in your closet and flip the hangers in the reverse direction...then every time you wear a clothing piece, flip the hanger to face the correct direction. After an entire year, you will easily be able to tell which clothes you haven't worn & need to toss.
3) Try the 12-12-12 challenge with your friends/family/roommates. Simply find 12 items to throw away, 12 items to donate and 12 items to be returned to their proper home...whoever finds the most items wins!
4) Have a lot of items that you are on the verge of throwing away or keeping? Ask yourself...is this item easily replaceable, have I used this item in the last 6 months and could someone else in my life benefit from me gifting them this item? These questions should help you easily make a decision whether to keep or toss.
5) Do you have broken items laying around the house that your significant other has been "needing to fix for years"? Odds are, these things are never going to get fixed. My suggestion? Toss em' all.
6) Have some shelf control, lighten your library and be selective, you don't need to hang onto every book you've ever read. Maybe start with keeping the novels you would either read again or ones you would want someone else in your life to read.
7) If you have completed all of the steps above, you have probably mastered the "decluttering" portion of this article. Now to prevent re-cluttering, it's time to organize the existing items in your home. Space saving items like Storage Theory's Power Perch can help save space all throughout your home and most importantly, make your outlets look a lot more aesthetically pleasing.
