Ways to Decide What to Keep or Toss When Decluttering

If you think your home has a lot of clutter, then it is high time for you to take action and focus on organizing things around you. It is a good idea to do this before you start shopping for Christmas, buy more stuff, and create more clutter in your home. This can apply to the expired food you have in your pantry, old receipts, invoices, documents, etc., and everything else that makes your life unorganized.

There are so many ways you can use your management skills and determine whether you have to keep something in your home or declutter/discard them for good. Decluttering your home or room can be daunting and tricky at times. But you can use the following ways to declutter your home or living space and make it a more organized and pleasant place to live.

Look for Items That Have Passed Their Expiration Date

Expiration dates are generally associated with food items in the store or your pantry. But if you broaden your vision, it can also be applied to paperwork and documents. For instance, if you have old invoices, your outdated resume, bills that you have paid last year, etc. they are just occupying too much space in your drawers or suitcase. The best way to declutter them is to shred them properly and toss them out.

Likewise, if you have an old shirt that you wore at your first football game that is not going to fit you anymore, you can simply give it to someone else who needs it.

Keep Your Documents in a Safer Place

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You must be having different documents like tax returns, bills, financial papers, etc. that are 5 to 10 years old. You should free up space in your suitcase by scanning them using your phone and saving them in a virtual drive or flash drive. There is an amazing scanner app for iOS and Android devices that can turn your phone into a scanner.

You can take a picture of the documents and create PDF files instantly. Download such apps using WOW Internet Wifi by check out this link. You can keep all softcopies on your computer as well but make sure that your drives are not cluttered with too many PDFs and other files.

Look Out For Duplicate Items

Many people have the habit of ordering/purchasing two pieces of one item. For instance, many people buy more than one shirt of the same design. Duplicate items consume a lot of space in your home, especially if you have to store them in a prime storage spot like your kitchen or your closet in the hall. If you want to have duplicate items, you should store them in a place that is not located in your primary living space.

Think About the Items You Use Regularly

There are different items that you have to use regularly. You should decide and distinguish between items you use regularly and items that you rarely use. For instance, you are supposed to wear your office uniform daily to work. Also, you are supposed to use your car keys to drive to work in the morning.

Apart from that, there are items that you can discard to declutter your space. This can include an old watch that cannot be repaired or a broken calculator you used back in the day. You should discard items that can be replaced by another alternative and free up space for the more important stuff.

Pass on Gifts You Hardly Use

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There are so many gifted items in our drawers and closets that we do not use. For instance, if you do not want a watch or already have a lot of them, it might be useless for you. Likewise, if you are someone who does not own a car, a car mount phone holder is useless.

When you receive such gifts, you can send a thank you note to the sender and accept the gift but do not let it create a cluttered space in your home. To declutter such items, you can pass them to someone else who owns a car or loves to wear watches.

Sell Items Too Good To Throw Away

You might have an item or several items that you think you should keep. You can put these items to better use. For instance, you might have an antique piece of glassware that stays hidden away in the cabinet. You can list such items on a website and sell them out for a good sum of money.

Many people rent out or sell their preloved wedding gowns and different equipment by posting them on social media groups and websites. This way, they declutter their home and earn a good sum of money as well.

Conclusion

In the end, one can say that it might be a very tricky task to determine ways to use or discard items in your home that clutter up. You can use the tips mentioned above to determine what to keep and things you can throw away and ways to declutter your home to make it an organized place to live.

Source: thespruce.com