Photo entitled Muffin 9 by Flickr user George Boyce, licensed under Creative Commons
After years of helping people with their decluttering, I’ve noticed certain categories of things show up time and again. So I grin when I see the same categories of stuff coming up in tweets, in a BuzzFeed article, and on other online sites.
New Yorker magazines
Friends, because of a twirling daughter/juice mishap, my pile of unread “New Yorker”s that I was totally going to read one of these days (nb I have not had a subscription for years) has had to be discarded. Please respect my privacy in this difficult time. — Daniel Summers, MD
I wish the New Yorker offered “every other issue subscriptions”, because every issue is too many and I just end up throwing them out. — Chuck B.The New Yorker is filled with interesting articles — and as Chuck notes, it comes every darn week. If you’ve got a big pile of these (as so many people do) you may want to emulate Chuck in recognizing these just aren’t going to get read and putting them in the recycling bin.
Also, if you’re OK with reading things online, consider shifting to a digital-only subscription (which is my personal solution).
Boxes
Pretty sure I have every box of every Apple product my family has owned dating back at least a decade - even ones for devices I no longer own. Planning on starting a museum one day. — Seth Mnookin
Do You Or Somebody You Know Suffer From KYAPBFTL (Keeping Your Apple Product Boxes For Too Long?) — Samir Mezrahi on BuzzFeedSome Apple boxes are worth keeping, of course. Boxes for currently-owned iMacs and cinema displays are useful if you’re going to be moving or if you might need to take the product in for repair. But what purpose do the other boxes serve?
And it’s not just Apple boxes. You may have a truly good purpose for saving certain boxes: for a move, for the cat, for planned mailings to friends and family, etc. But be sure you know why you’re saving those boxes! Also, make sure the ones you save are in good condition — and not so flimsy that they're useless.
Cables, Cords and Keys
The contents of my house appear to be 95% cords to things I don’t have anymore. — Susan Orlean
Ben has his box of random cords to go through, I have my stash of random keys. So far I know what exactly 2 of these are for. — catThe boxes of unidentified, long-unused cables and cords and the collection of unidentified, long-unused keys are decluttering clichés. You'll also plenty of posts from folks saying they actually wound up using something from the cord box (or could have used something they tossed).
But for many of us, those cords are never ever going to get used. The ones that say Samsung when you no longer own anything made by Samsung (feel free to replace Samsung with your brand name of choice) might be the easiest to part with.
Too Many of the Same Thing (and some much better than others)
What mundane object have you weirdly acquired too many of, personally or as a household? For me, it’s black cotton hoodies and for the household, nail clippers.— Erika Hall
“Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out. — from 100 Tips For a Better Life, on LessWrongIf you store things (such as nail clippers) in multiple places, sometimes for good reason, it’s easy to lose track of how many you have. For example, I know someone who will never again need to buy Scotch Magic Tape.
And it’s easy to fall into the habit of keeping the bad X just in case the good X breaks, gets lost, etc. In some cases that might be a reasonable choice, but in many cases it would serve us better to just get rid of the bad X (and perhaps buy a second good X if it’s an essential item and replacing it might be difficult or excessively time-consuming). One good X vs. bad X example in my own household was flashlights; the bad ones are gone now, so I have only good ones at hand every place I might need one.
Things We “Might Need Someday”
God I would love to throw away some of these decade-old t-shirts that are getting holes and don’t fit me anymore but what if I wind up having to paint for 80 straight days at some point — Twitter user nomchompsky
I’ve been in the same house for 20 years and I’m doing a full clean out for reasons. It’s amazing how much useless shit you can accumulate simply by believing it might come in handy one day. — Tim Burga
People say not to throw things out because someday you might need them. I’m at the Someday age now and see I needed none of it. —Richard KramerHere’s a personal example: My cat Moonshadow died in November of last year. He liked fish-flavored cat food; my other cat, Sunshine, does not like any kind of seafood flavors. I was keeping some of his fish-flavored food because “what if there's an earthquake” and “what if I get another cat?”
Well, she won’t eat that food even if there's an earthquake, I have plenty of food she will eat, and by the time I get another cat (assuming I ever do) the cans I have will likely be past their best-by date. I just gave them away; they’ll be going to people who need them now. And I’ve cleared up some storage space for things it actually makes sense to keep.
2 comments:
Even as a life-long declutterer, I still saw myself in many of these examples! The Good X vs. Bad X one hit close to home.
Yup, I'll own up to every one of these except substitute National Geographic for New Yorker. Oh, and my complete collections of Threads & Piecework magazines. I finally took the Nat. Geo. to the book reseller, but suspect they may have put them in recycle*. I do still have the maps somewhere, in a basement box. I have a CD archive of Threads, but found reading them much less enjoyable. And I can't write in them to clarify things or tuck in sticky notes to mark especially interesting pages. And there are articles missing due to copy write issues.
Is there anyone who puts the last NG issue to recycle when the next one comes? I vaguely recall a joke that if all the saved National Geographic magazines in the US were piled in one place on the coast, that place would sink into the ocean.
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