I have 5 kids. I have had to declutter our home more times than I can count. One time it required a 30 yard dumpster. Yeah, we’re talking layers and layers of clutter and crap that had been given to us from family members, things we toted around too long, and just a general overwhelming amount of stuff. Let’s go over how to be ruthless with decluttering.
Related: My House is a Disgusting Mess
Related: Declutter a Room in 30 Minutes; Step-by-Step Plan!
Decluttering Sentimental Items
First, let’s deal with the guilt that comes with decluttering. I wrote an entire post about how to declutter without guilt here.
I really think you should read it first because I have found guilt to be the biggest culprit in keeping us stuck. That will help get you in the right mindset to tackle what we’re going to discuss next.
I’m not sure that we truly have the emotional attachment to these items that we think we do.
Heirlooms and things that have true sentimental value are a different story.
BUT how many of these old clothes and items taking up your limited physical space truly have sentimental or emotional value to you?
I think it’s more likely one of two things, guilt and money.
The second one is related to guilt. It is spending time and energy worrying about money.
Either how much something cost when you bought it or how much you could potentially sell it for instead of throwing it out.
If the second one is a huge hang up for you, I want you to give yourself a week.
Anything that you really think has monetary value if you tried to sell it on Facebook marketplace…dig it out and list it.
Don’t worry about getting perfect pictures or writing the perfect description.
Just as fast as you can possibly get that sucker up and on Facebook marketplace in front of eyes of potential buyers.
Then give it a week.
Have you listed things in that week? Did anyone actually buy anything?
If you’ve dedicated any amount of time of that week to actually trying to sell things and they don’t sell – they never will.
That’s a hard lesson.
I wish as much as anyone else that there was a portal I could put things into that would hand me back even a small percentage of our hard-earned money that we spent on those things.
You don’t have time to list things on Facebook? Then believe me when I tell you that you will also never have time to organize a yard sale.
Sometimes we have to just accept the disappointment that money was wasted on things that we bought or that those things have outlived their purpose in our lives.
The next best thing to making money from those mistake purchases is to humbly pass it on to someone else that could use it.
Holding onto items in good condition in your home when you aren’t using it is actually a waste of the item. Is that really the price that you want to continue to pay?
Why not pass it on to someone that can actually use it.
Thrift stores, second hand stores, and consignment stores are the best way to do this.
You need to hand those things over, send out a silent hope that it will find a new home, and let it go.
Decluttering in Reverse – a Winning Strategy
The solution is to be absolutely ruthless when you declutter.
I do this by decluttering in reverse.
Walk into a room and look around. What can you absolutely not live without? What means so much to you that you would be absolutely heartbroken if it were no longer part of your life?
Everything else, and I mean everything, is on the chopping block.
I went from being a maximalist to a minimalist in just a few short years – and we have TONS of kids.
Honestly, decluttering and taking minimalism for a test drive was more of a necessity for me than a want.
Having tons of stuff felt comfortable for me. It was reassuring and gave me some sort of weird stability.
Like having all of this stuff meant we wouldn’t ever have to go without, even if things got bad or my husband lost his job.
It anchored me to my home and made me feel like an adult. Having all of this stuff meant we had been successful in some way.
I had a really hard time not keeping a bunch of clothes that might fit our kids someday or that a new baby could grow into.
We had a pile of clothes for each age in storage containers in our garage.
Then the overwhelm took over and we had 4 kids in 4 years. It was impossible to keep up with all of that stuff and it just sat in storage never being used.
Slowly, my husband’s desire to be a minimalist took over and now I actually look for reasons to get rid of things.
Our Kitchen Declutter
This is where you’ll really see what I mean about ruthless decluttering.
When I walk into my kitchen, I want to see just the right amount of stuff to make and serve dinner.
Not a million other dishes that just take up precious storage space in my cabinets.
Years ago, we went through and kept one place setting for everyone in our family and donated the rest.
We literally had two ceramic plates, two ceramic bowls, a small pack of kids plates, and silverware.
Every bowl and plate we owned took up half of one cabinet shelf.
We don’t host elaborate dinner parties, so if friends were coming over for a cookout, we bought paper plates.
Honestly in all the years we’ve been living like this, it has never once been an issue.
Also on the chopping block were pots, pans, baking sheets…
I kept one stock pot, one frying pan, and a small soup pot. Plus a cookie sheet because I have a serious addiction to chocolate chip cookies.
One 9×13 Pyrex dish rounded out my kitchen ware. This is literally all I had.
At Thanksgiving, we bought disposable roasters for our turkey.
When we initially pared down our kitchen, I think we took 6 cardboard boxes worth of stuff to a Salvation Army.
Decluttering Clothing
I have an entire blog post about how to ruthlessly declutter clothing. You should absolutely check that out, especially if clothing is a big issue for you.
Now, I have admittedly too few clothes.
Young woman folding her clothes and packing them in a delivery box, she is changing her wardrobe
It has become a thing for me – I don’t want to buy new clothes and end up back where I was.
I have a very minimalist wardrobe that I wear all year.
Living in Florida makes this easy because I have no real need for seasonal items.
I do keep a small box of cold weather stuff for when we travel in the wintertime, but I have zero extras.
The only sentimental thing I kept is my wedding dress and the shirts my husband and Pappap wore to our elopement ceremony.
My husband and I share one small closet and it is literally 1/8 full of clothes.
When we took minimalism for a test drive, I packed away everything except the bare essentials in all areas of our home.
The weight that was lifted off of my shoulders every time I walked through the door was so extreme that I swear you could hear it.
When I open my closet doors, I want there to be as few decisions as possible.
If you have a closet that is packed to the gills and you’re too overwhelmed to even think about decluttering it, I highly suggest you do this:
How many items do you use on a regular basis. Make a mental list of items of clothing you couldn’t make it through your week without.
Maybe that’s workout clothes, clothes for work, pajamas, and something comfortable for the weekends.
Pack everything else into totes or cardboard boxes. Even if they just sit in your closet in those boxes – that’s fine.
Write a future date on top of the boxes and commit to making a decision by then.
This is an exercise in showing you how little you can actually own and how much easier it is.
There is an 80/20 rule that says you wear 20% of your wardrobe 80% of the time.
I would venture to guess that for most people those numbers are more 95/5. We are creatures of habit.
As a society we are more stressed and time-constrained than ever before. It is comfortable for us to reach for the same tried and true things again and again.
Why not only have those few items in your closet and get rid of the rest?
Pack it away for now, try it out, and if you agree with me – take all of that to the thrift store.
If you end up needing a different article of clothing in that amount of time, you can always dig it back out of whatever storage boxes you’ve stored it all in.
I am confident that you’ll end up just like me and realize you love the stress-free feeling that comes with having less.
If packing things away seems like too much of a hassle and you’d rather just deal with all of it right now, here’s the key:
You have to move FAST.
Grab a black garbage bag and go through your closet, keeping only what you wear on a regular basis.
If you even think for a second about “maybe someday” or “what if” when you look at a particular item, that one goes in the bag.
Moving as fast as possible and forcing quick decision after quick decision is what helps to skip over the emotional side of decluttering.
Don’t give your brain time to ponder the what ifs.
Use your logical side to decide if something is actually necessary to keep.
Everything else needs to go into a black trash bag or dark storage container that you can’t see into.
The Konmari method made me think too far into things. I swear even items I forgot I owned were “sparking joy.”
Moving as fast as I possibly could was the only way to get the emotional side of my brain to shut the hell up so I could make some real progress.
My Capsule Wardrobe
If you’re curious about what I kept, here is a list of every clothing item I own:
one pair of jeans – yes one.
Three pairs of shorts
One casual dress
10 t-shirts
3 nicer blouses
About 6 black leggings but only because I sleep in these (okay okay and occasionally wear them everywhere else)
And a handful of maternity clothes like two shorts, 3 or 4 shirts, and one sweater. Our youngest is only 9 months old and I’m just not positive he’s the last. When he’s 18 months old, I’ll get rid of the maternity stuff. Based on our track record, I’ll be pregnant by then or we’ll be sure we’re done.
My dresser drawers have three pairs of socks, maybe 12 pairs of underwear, and 6 or 7 camis.
Not having a lot of clothes or extra makeup has made it SO much faster to get ready in the morning. My closet is always organized and I fit in everything in there. Well, except the maternity stuff but I digress.
Bathroom Declutter
This is the last room I’ll dig into mainly because the benefits of decluttering sort of accidentally spill over to every other room of your home.
Once you’ve decluttered your closet and the kitchen, the last place that needs you (other than your garage but dear God. Let’s start small) is your bathroom.
This is where you get ready.
This is where too much makeup, beauty products, and trial wrinkle creams live (no? Just me?).
Are you ever going to use all of those things in the medicine cabinet or under your sink?
Wouldn’t it feel better to only see the things you need when you walk into your bathroom instead of pushing around things you haven’t used in years?
I had a collection of Bare Minerals makeup to be envied.
Over time, I stopped using that brand and transitioned into other things, but because I had spent SO much money on all of that over the years, I refused to get rid of it.
Surely someday I’d use it. Maybe I needed this eyeshadow for a smokey eye for a wedding, etc.
In the 7 years since I’ve thrown all of that out, I haven’t missed any of it. Not once.
Questions to Ask When Decluttering
Does this fit my current lifestyle?
Am I keeping this for the person I hope to be?
Does this fit my current body shape and size?
Am I keeping this for a special occasion that isn’t currently scheduled? Ex: A wedding coming up in the next few months
Am I assigning sentimental value to this to excuse keeping it?
Is that sentimental feeling actually just guilt because a friend or family member gave it to me?
Does this item fit in my end goal picture of what my clutter-free home will look like?
If after answering these questions you realize you are still stuck on an item, you can do what so many professional declutterers and organizers suggest and put that item in quarantine.
Just be sure you’re using this process selectively and not just delaying the decluttering process with your inability to let anything go.
I will just reiterate to you that decluttering has truly changed my life. Especially when we bought a completely furnished house (that hadn’t been touched in a decade) and it felt like we had started right back to square one. The process is the same. You go through each area methodically, gather as much as you can, and somehow make decluttering fun in the process. The good news is that it has never been easier to get rid of unwanted items. You can literally have a completely different home this time next week if you just commit to some decluttering goals and put one foot in front of the other to make it happen. This is the way to add more hours into your day and more life into those days. If I can do this, so can you! Just pick a room and get started!
