Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life

by Matt Paxton

“Ten-Minute Sweep.” You clean for ten minutes every night, five nights a week.

If you know you’ll use it within one month, keep it. Not six months, one year, or two years. One month. If you won’t use it within one month, the odds are you won’t use it at all.

We have to force ourselves to say goodbye to our “fantasy self” items, the stuff that we think we’ll use when we’re different versions of ourselves.

When you find an item in the attic that you bought hoping one day you’d use it, remember that it was a stepping-stone to the person you are today. When you got it, you needed it. Even if you never used it once. Now you are ready to move on, because you’ve grown. Maturity is realizing we’re all human and that wisdom comes from self-acceptance.

Pictures are frequently the items that most hold us back.

toss the duplicates. Most of the pictures you have, you don’t even need one—you definitely don’t need two!

toss anything blurry. Unless it’s a modern piece of art, nothing blurry belongs in your home.

throw out photos of generic landscapes, such as beaches, mountains, and bodies of water, unless you’re a professional photographer and can sell them for lots of money.

80/20 rule.

discard 80 percent of your photos, and you’re allowed to preserve at most 20 percent of them.”