At the risk of sounding hypocritical given my own rules (e.g. thou shall not have a whole drawer dedicated to junk), I want to poke holes in some oft-cited rules for home organizing. Here are the three I hear most often.
Rule: If you haven’t worn it in a year, donate it.
I have a dress that’s appropriate for formal occasions in cold weather. I didn’t have any truly formal occasions last winter. Should I chuck the dress? Of course not. It’s useful, beautiful, and stored properly so it’s ready to come out of dormancy for the winter wedding I have coming up.
Instead, when evaluating an infrequently worn item, I ask myself: Do I avoid wearing this item in favor of something comparable? Does this item of clothing give me a feeling of doubt, hesitation, discomfort, or embarrassment when I think about wearing it?
Rule: If it’s damaged, toss it.
A strap tore off a pair of shoes I’ve had for years. I brought them to Canton Shoe Repair and had the broken strap repaired and the other strap reinforced. It cost me $18, bringing the total lifetime cost of the shoes to about $100, which still is a very low cost-per-use. What I saved is time shopping for a new pair, and the resources that would have gone in to making that new pair. Plus I supported a local, independent business instead of a DSW.
Youtube has thousands of tutorials. Replacement parts are available for purchase. A sewing kit is under $15 bucks. A great tailor can repair damage that is outside my wheelhouse, at a fraction of the cost of replacing the item. My objects are not inherently disposable. I shouldn’t treat them as such.
Instead, I ask myself: Can I spend a reasonable amount of time and money repairing this item? Would I use/need/want the item after it’s been repaired?
Rule: One thing in, one thing out.
I was gifted a book last week, and I’m enjoying it. Did I immediately head to my one bookshelf and evict another title? No, of course not. I love all the books on my shelf, and this gifted book may join their ranks one day, or I may pass it on to a friend or Little Free Library when I’m done. I’ll need to finish reading it first, and then decide.
At a certain point in the decluttering process, you love/use/need/want/treasure all the things in your home. And you shouldn’t have to discard one of those curated possessions because you just so happened to get another useful, beautiful, needful thing.
The dark side of this rule is that some folks use it as justification to purchase new things all the time because they are also donating and discarding things all the time. It’s financially and environmentally reckless to bring in a sack of new clothing every Black Friday just because you plan to a haul a trash bag of clothes to the trunk of your car on Saturday.
I’m comfortable with my gut assessments of what should head out of my house. Instead, I focus on ruthlessly critiquing what comes in to my home. I ask: Do I need to be bringing anything in to my home right now? Is it on my shopping list? Does it fit within the container I have for this category of things? Do I already have something suitable?
If these rules help you dig out of an unbearable pile of clutter, then great. But if you’ve advanced from hemorrhaging clutter to curating possessions, then it makes more sense to tune into your own feelings about the merits of individual objects rather than follow a rigid rule.