A Room-By-Room Guide For What To Toss

Most of us love the idea of decluttering, but it's tough to know how and where to start. Let's go through your home and toss a handful of items from each room. And by toss, I mean donate, recycle or dispose of properly.

Organized pantry

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, explains how clutter imacts us negatively: "One of my great realizations about happiness...is that outer order contributes to inner calm. But as much as most of us want to keep our home, office, car, etc. in reasonable order, it’s tough."

Rubin is right. Letting go of our things can be tough. She goes on to list eleven myths of decluttering to help us to break free of the clutter that crowds out calm.

Once we've made peace with why we hold on to things, it's time to work on letting them go.

Here's our room-by-room guide for what to toss:

Kitchen

  • old spices and herbs
  • expired foods
  • nearly empty cereal and cracker boxes
  • half (or more!) of the contents of your junk drawer
  • mugs with chips or stains and those you don’t enjoy drinking from

Family room/Living room

  • old magazines, newspapers and catalogues
  • VHS and cassette tapes (Yes, they hold memories, but no, you probably won’t watch or listen to them.)
  • random power cords (If you don’t know what they go to and you haven’t been looking for them, there’s a great chance you don’t need them.) 
  • knickknacks or tchotchkes that you don’t absolutely love

Learn more about how decluttering and getting organized can help with stress >>

Bathroom

  • nearly-empty shampoos and conditioners
  • old makeup (Most makeup is good for twelve to eighteen months, except mascara, which should be tossed after three months.) 
  • perfume or cologne that you don’t wear
  • expired prescriptions, over the counter medicine and vitamins

Bedroom

  • clothes in need of repair or dry cleaning
  • clothes you haven’t worn in the past 18 months
  • books that you’re keeping on your nightstand to read one day (If you aren’t reading them now, put them on the bookshelf until you’re ready and clear up some precious nightstand real estate.) 
  • tired, worn and stretched out bras, panties, socks and workout clothes

Kids Rooms

  • toys that your kids no longer play with
  • books that they no longer read
  • socks, underpants and other clothes they've outgrown
  • anything that belongs in another room

Don't miss these 52 ideas to organize your home >>

Home Office

  • old greeting cards (Take a digital photo and recycle the card.)
  • receipts for items that you know you won’t return
  • bills (Scan them if you feel you must and then toss, or better yet, request electronic bills to save yourself from future clutter.)

Garage/Attic

  • old paint
  • baby products that you’ve held on to just in case (It’s likely that if you have another baby, safety guidelines will have changed and you’ll want to replace those items anyway.) 
  • those bags that you stuffed with things to be donated the last time you decluttered

It can be tough to let go of the things that we've acquired over time, but decluttering frees up space, makes your home more organized and can make a huge difference in your peace of mind.

More on decluttering

8 Modern decorating ideas
Declutter the playroom
Organise your home office

Tags: organisation tips

Comments

Comments on "Declutter! One room at a time"

Sharleen October 28, 2012 | 9:34 AM

Robin--- if you do have and still currently use a VHS than fine. What she is suggesting is to get rid of what most people dont use and just take up space. These days you can convert tapes to DVD, save some room and get rid of the VHS if you have both. You dont have to throw everything away just realize what you have and dont use. I often see homes that have an excess of bottles in thier bathrooms. They forget to use the rest of what is left of the old and keep buying new. Also why do you have clothes that need repair??? Give them away or mend them! Most people have way too many clothes and if something is wrong with them they just sit in the closet for years! And chips in your glassware and ceramics can be dangerous. One they have a crack or chip it can compromise its integrity and be more prone to breaking. If you dont use them any way than why not just toss them. I wouldnt even recommend donating this. And finally again there is alot of clutter that can build up from half or more than half empty boxes in your pantry. I do use everything in it so to save room for i take bags of a like item and store it in the some box to free up box space! So Robin i would suggest for you to see why people are saying what they are saying BEFORE calling them wasteful. And its just ideas. You obviously do not have to follow every blog post to a T.

Jen April 05, 2012 | 3:51 PM

Good list! Robin - at the top it says toss can mean donate, recycle, or throw away responsibly. As for the "almost gone" items, I toss the box but keep the contents - saves room

Robin April 04, 2012 | 5:37 AM

Wow!!! Sure is a lot of throwing out of things that are "almost" gone. Believe it or not there are families that live paycheck to paycheck & would NEVER consider throwing out an "almost" empty box of cereal or crackers! Also please consider not everyone has a DVD player. There are still homes with ONLY VHS players. Really....clothes in need of repair or dry cleaning need to be tossed??? That's a big waste of money right there. While I find most of the items on your list make sense to get rid of there were quite a few that made me wonder what you were actually thinking. While my family does fine keep in mind there are so many families without the financial freedom to do what you are suggesting.

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