One of the toughest things for people to let go of when they’re organizing are the inherently useful items. It’s the pencils, pens, cleaning rags, plastic drinking cups, Tupperware®, craft supplies, office supplies, and sticky notes that cause us to say “I can always use another one of those.” Sound familiar?
Keep this tip in mind: No matter how useful something is, you only need so many of them! We don’t need 300 rags to wipe up spills, or 1000 pencils to write notes. No one does. 🙂 And all this extra stuff just leads to clutter!
Next time you’re organizing, if you hear yourself saying “I can always use another _______,” stop and figure out how many you really need or how much space you have for that inherently useful thing. Then, when you’ve reached your limit, send the rest to a happier home—someone else’s home!
P.S. This is one of many organizing roadblocks discussed in Organizing 101. To find out your roadblocks (and how to get past them and get organized once and for all!) download Organizing 101.
This is soooo familiar. I’m cleaning out my kitchen right now – things left from my mom and some boxes of stuff left from my granny. I have real trouble throwing out useful stuff, like spoons. But then, who need 29 teaspoons??? Yup, 29, I counted those. Afterwards found a handful from boxes also, so it’s more like 50….
Fortunately, I found some charity organization near here and can give them all spoons’n’stuff that I really don’t need. 🙂
This is such great advice and probably one of the hardest things for me to do. I am a Girl Scout leader and I can almost always find uses for something I really should get rid of.
I recently went through my GS craft box and got rid of a bunch of stuff that I haven’t used in years. It was hard, but it really felt good.