Don’t keep clothes on bedroom walls, in the corridor or the hall, etc. Decide on just one place to put them. Once that fills up, start checking through what you’ve got. If there’s anything there that you never use, think about getting rid of it. The same approach can be taken with towels and sheets, with shoes that don’t fit on the rack, food that doesn’t fit on the shelves, books that won’t go in the bookcase. Once you’ve decided on the amount of space each type of item should be allocated, think carefully beofre increasing it.
• Pens, pencils (pen holder)
It may seem a minor thing, but it’s worth keeping an eye on pen holders. They tend to fill up very quickly and you want to be able to take pens out and put them back with ease. So once this becomes difficult, get rid of some pens. It’s likely that there are some that don’t work very well, or others you were given but never use. Don’t make the mistake of starting up a new pen box in your drawer.
2: DISCARD WHEN THEY EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU CAN USE
• Wrapping paper, string, boxes
It’s good to have stock of nice wrapping paper, boxes, ribbons, and string, which can all come in useful. But if the supply exceeds the amount you use, then stock just keeps accumulating. It should be easy to decide how much to keep, based on how much you use. Then you can choose a bag to keep wrapping paper in, say, and a box for ribbon, and once there is enough to fill the bag or box, throw away or recycle the excess. Deal with supermarket and department store bags in the same way.
• Used paper
In the past people were careful to make use of the reverse side of flyers to write notes. But nowadays we have so much paper around us we can’t regard it as “sacred.” We have to consider throwing it away. Waste printouts can be useful for printing drafts or taking notes, but the amount you’re going to use is limited. Decide how much you will actually use and identify a bag or file to keep that amount of paper in. If you exceed capacity, then recycle the surplus.
3: DISCARD WHEN THEY EXCEED THE NECESSARY NUMBER
• Pajamas
• Bath towels, sheets
• Mugs
• Chopsticks, spoons, etc.
• Cloths
• Pots, kitchen utensils
For these and many other items it’s easy to establish the number required based on how many are necessary per person. And don’t allow for too many spares. It’s important to have enough, of course, but the number you really require may be surprisingly small (see Part One, Attitude 6—“If you’ve got it, use it”). If you exceed that number, get rid of the older ones. Keep the same number over time, gradually replacing old with new. So, for example: three pairs of pajamas (summer and winter), two sets of sheets, two bath towels, plus one or two for guests. As for mugs, spoons, pairs of chopsticks—one per person plus two extra for guests; cloths—four in total. Decide how many pots and serving plates you require according to size—for example, two large and two small.
Why this strategy works
We keep getting new things, but the old ones can still be used and we often hold on to them. This strategy provides an opportunity to get rid of the older things and so smoothes the replacement process.
This strategy works for many of those things that survey participants found “difficult to dispose of.” Whether something gets thrown away or kept can depend on how many disposal opportunities you create.
4
DISCARD AFTER A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME
Fix a suitable time period for the item—say, one month, one year, three years—and if it hasn’t been used at all by the end of the period, dispose of it.
What sort of things?
• Manuals
• Catalogues, pamphlets, etc.
• Toys
• Documents/files
• Books/magazines
• Letters (including birthday cards)
• DVDs
• Clothes, utensils, etc., that have been stored away in boxes or containers
Strategy variations
1: THINGS WHICH ARE ONLY USED FOR A LIMITED PERIOD
• Manuals
We tend to buy manual-type books when there’s a particular necessity—for childcare, cars, computers, computer games, etc. They’re essential reading for people who haven’t had exposure to specific tasks, and we may use them a lot to start off with, but then we may never open them again. If we do, it’s just to check a detail or maybe for fun. It’s seldom for anything crucial.
So when you think your learning period is over, throw the manual away. After that, you can always look online or contact the manufacturer. There’s no necessity to keep a large manual just on the off chance.
A good way of disposing of childcare books is to pass them on to others who are having children.
• Catalogues, pamphlets, etc.
It depends on the subject matter, but information in catalogues and pamphlets is often outdated after a certain time. Look for specific dates or periods that may be printed in one corner. It can be fun to look through old catalogues occasionally, but they’re not going to be any real use. So get rid of them.
• Toys
Toys that once absorbed a child will be used less and less as they get older. They tend to want to hang on to them forever, so they’re very difficult to throw away, but you can’t allow toys to accumulate.
Every year, say on or around the child’s birthday, get them to decide what to throw away. As suggested in Strategy 3, it’s a good idea to limit the space made available here by having a fixed-capacity toy box, for example.
Sometimes you can dispose of toys by giving them to people with smaller children. But children often have a glut of toys, so this isn’t always a reliable recycling method.
2. ITEMS YOU’LL BE ABLE TO DECIDE ABOUT AFTER A CERTAIN PERIOD
• Documents/files
• Books/magazines
• Letters (including birthday cards)
• DVDs
• Clothes, utensils, etc., that have been stored away in boxes or containers
All of these items were mentioned under Strategy 1 (see here). The basic idea here, however, is that if any of these things is essential, you’re bound to see them at some point within a certain period—and if you haven’t seen them by the end of that time, you should get rid of them.
I suggested in Part One, Attitude 3, that generally if you don’t use something for three years, you don’t need it, but you can decide on the periods most appropriate for different items. They don’t always have to be worked out on a logical basis. The most important thing is for you to decide on a timeframe of some kind—the point being to create discarding opportunities.
Why this strategy works
Like Strategy 3, this creates a lot of opportunities to throw things away.
You set the period so that you won’t just keep things forever after you stop using them. Once the allotted time expires, you get on and discard them, no ifs, ands, or buts. You thought they might be useful “sometime,” but “sometime” isn’t coming. You know that now. In due course, you might get better at deciding fast what’s necessary and what’s not, and then you’ll stop hiding behind those phrases.
If you think the period you have chosen is too short or too long (so that things are accumulating), you can always make adjustments.
5
REGULAR DISCARDING
Ask yourself regularly whether things can be thrown away. You can do this at the end of the day, week, month, or year. In fact, you don’t have to be too precise about the periods, just so long as you make the decision to do it with a degree of regularity. It could be just a question of thinking, Oh, I haven’t checked for a while—then having a look and getting rid of anything unnecessary.
What sort of things?
• Receipts/shipping notices
• Household account books
• Spare buttons and keys
• Warranties/contracts
• Product instructions
• Memos stuck
on the fridge or on your memo board
• Stationery and other small items in drawers
• Ties, socks, underwear
• Books, magazines, clothes
Strategy variations
1: DOCUMENTARY RECORDS
• Receipts/shipping notices
These are useful in case there’s a problem with a product or delivery. (I’m ignoring here their use in recording household accounts or applying for expenses.)
Once the products have been used or the delivery has been made, however, their useful life is over. Don’t leave them in your bag or wallet. Every time you go shopping or open your wallet, get rid of any that you can.
• Household account books
A lot of people like to keep records of day-to-day expenditures, and although they generally use a new account book each year, they tend to keep old ones. They can be good mementos, and it is surprising how often one wants to refer back, particularly to the previous year’s accounts.
So when you buy a new account book, keep last year’s. But, at the same time, discard the one from the year before. Or, if you don’t feel comfortable with this, keep each book for two years rather than just one.
This regime of conscious, regular discarding means you will never accumulate more than a fixed number of account books.
2: THINGS THAT STICK AROUND EVEN WHEN NO LONGER NECESSARY
• Spare buttons and keys
Spare buttons lie forever in sewing boxes and drawers. Spare keys tend to be kept long after we’ve forgotten what they’re for.
When you throw away an item of clothing you’re not going to take the trouble to seek out the spare buttons and throw them away too. So in due course, you’ll have buttons that you don’t want. That’s why a regular check will help.
If it looks as though you’ve accumulated a lot of buttons or if you have a lot of keys jangling about on a fob, sift through them to see if they’re all necessary. Some of them will almost certainly not be.
• Warranties/contracts
Warranties for electrical goods and furniture tend to last between one and three years. Contracts are often for between two and five years.
When these periods are up, the documents become redundant. The best approach here is to keep all your contracts and warranties together, then look through them on a regular basis. This might be at the end of the year, or perhaps whenever you put a new document in the file. If you then find one that has expired, you simply discard it. There’s no difficulty deciding—an out-of-date warranty is no use at all.
• Product Instructions
Unlike warranties, instructions don’t have set time limits. But that doesn’t mean we have to hang on to them forever. Is it really worth keeping vacuum-cleaner instructions? And how long do you have to store advice on what to do if you think there’s a problem with your heater or how to clean an electric fan or a leather jacket?
There’s a difference between manuals that can be used for troubleshooting and ordinary instructions we get with products. Don’t confuse them. Once you’ve gotten used to a product, think about throwing the instructions away.
Treat them in the same way as warranties and contracts—store them all in a dedicated place. And whenever you put in a new set of instructions, check through the others to see if any can be discarded. Don’t be tempted to keep them because they have the manufacturer’s customer-service telephone number and it’s a pain to make a separate note of it. If you don’t have that specific number, you can always use the company’s main telephone number and ask to be put through to customer service or simply look it up online.
• Memos stuck on the fridge or on your memo board
Information on a sale or an exhibition, the school-lunch schedule, bills, telephone messages, a review of a book you’re thinking of buying, etc. Any or all of these might be fluttering on the fridge door or a memo board. Sometimes you knock one down as you brush past. When you pick it up you find that the sale is over or that you’ve passed on the message already or that the lunch schedule is for last month.
Make a point of checking through all of these whenever the space looks crowded or when something falls down. From my experience, one can always dispose of at least one-third of the memos on display.
• Stationery and other small items in drawers
Every household has one or two drawers where people shove miscellaneous items—stationery, nail clippers, unused films, compasses, glasses cloths, etc. They might be in your telephone table, or your china or kitchen cabinet. You may have a desk drawer at work which you use in a similar way.
If you find these drawers easy to use, then that’s fine. But do they sometimes get so full you have to press the contents down to shut them? If that happens, you need to sort out the contents. You’ll probably find old memos, receipts from last year, pens that don’t work, old snaps, a sticky, old sweet…
Every time a drawer starts to look full, check through it. Otherwise, you’ll always be having to push down the contents to close it. It may even jam shut, and exist only as a mysterious closed drawer.
3. WHEN IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEPARATE WANTED FROM UNWANTED
• Ties, socks, underwear
A frayed tie, a sock with a thinning heel, old underwear—even if you notice them, it’s difficult to throw them away. You tend to think you’ll wear them just once more. Or some fastidious people may decide to wash them before discarding them and then once they’ve been washed, put them straight back in the drawer.
Get in the habit of regular checking. These are small items, so the overall volume won’t be large, and they’re surprisingly easy to throw away. It’s up to you what cycle you set, but checking once in spring and once in autumn can work well.
• Books, magazines, clothes
My survey suggests that books, magazines, and clothes are the three things that people find toughest to discard. Creating more disposal opportunities must be a good idea. A system of regular disposal will not automatically make these items easy to part with. But I’ve listed them under this strategy just in case it helps you deal with them.
Why this strategy works
The previous two strategies involve disposing of things once they exceed a certain quantity or after a certain amount of time. This may be easier said than done though and things will still accumulate. So creating a regime of regular disposal will help.
Of course, it won’t stop things accumulating between your regular clear-outs. And the more they do accumulate, the more onerous the regular checks will be. So this approach is particularly effective for items which accumulate relatively slowly, and when it’s easy to identify whether they are necessary or not. Although I’ve included books, magazines, and clothes in this section, please be aware that the strategy may not work very well with them if it’s the only approach you use.
6
DISCARD THINGS EVEN IF THEY CAN STILL BE USED
Don’t think you can’t throw something away just because it can still be used. Change your mindset. Think to yourself, I’ve used it once, so I can throw it away.
What sort of things?
• Clothes, books, magazines
• Cosmetics and toiletries
• Medicines
• Freebies
• Wrapping paper, string, boxes, used paper
• Spices
• Product samples
Strategy variations
1: THE BIG THREE—THINGS THAT PEOPLE FIND MOST DIFFICULT TO DISCARD
• Clothes, books, magazines
The approach here is basically the same as for items listed under Strategy 2, but please note that people find things in these three categories most difficult to discard because it gives them a feeling of being wasteful: “I can still wear it”; “Maybe there’s some important information there”; “I haven’t read it all”; “It may be useful one day.” Almost everybody in our survey had this mentality.
The belief that things should be used until their potential is exhausted i
s a powerful one. People seem to think that if they keep something, there’ll be the opportunity at some point for this potential to be used. (The reason some people like passing things on to second-hand shops is the idea that somebody else will take over this potential.)
But it’s better not to bother about whether you use things to their full potential. It may well be the case that they could be used more, but they can still be disposed of. Accept this and you’ll save yourself a lot of worry.
Or you could go a bit further and say, “It’s done what I bought it to do, so that’s that. I’ve used it to the full.” Say you bought some fashionable clothes on impulse, for example, and you enjoyed wearing them once—that’s enough. Or you bought a magazine for its special feature—you read the feature, so you don’t have to keep the magazine because you haven’t read the rest of it. In other words, by fulfilling your purpose, its potential has, in fact, been exhausted.
2: YOU’VE GOT SOME YOU HAVEN’T USED, BUT YOU KEEP GETTING NEW ONES
• Cosmetics and toiletries
It is easy for make-up and toiletries to accumulate. And it’s not just women that have trouble discarding these kinds of items. Men have similar problems, too. Not many women like to use the same eyeshadow over a long period, for example, so they tend to purchase new ones frequently. And even if you don’t buy a lot of cosmetics for yourself, you may be given them as gifts. So you end up with a collection of partially used items.
Look in your drawers and baskets. Are there jars of foundation where you’ve reached the bottom at the center but not at the sides? Are there tubes of hair gel that could be squeezed just a few more times?
The Art of Discarding Page 8