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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

You're right, however sometimes trying to shove things out of your life may not be easy or effective. I personally decided to dig deeper and understand why I accumulated that amount of stuff in the first place.

Instead of wasting time trying to actively make this decisions and drain your mental energy, why not try semi-passive observation? I found that putting everything away and getting things that I regularly use from that pile, and getting rid of the least used part regularly (weekly, monthly, semi annually, etc.) works best.

This way also decluttering doesn't feel like swimming upstream, at least for me.

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A common solution to this problem is to make the decision based on the cost of replacing the items. If you haven't used an item in 3 months and it takes 20 minutes and $20 to replace then that's a candidate for throwing out. If if takes 3 days and $300 to replace with little resale value then that's a candidate for storing.

Sometimes I'll just put everything in my way into a cardboard box (for instance, everything on my desk, or the majority of a cluttered shelf). I write the date on the box and put it in a closet. The rule after that is I can take things out of the box if I need them, but I can't put anything else in. Any time I find a box with a date more than 1 year old I just donate the whole thing to a thrift store without looking inside.

Wow, that's a really good idea. Time to find some boxes!

On the contrary, to me it appears that we are in agreement. You have found a method (to figure out what can stay) that works for you and I'm yet to find mine. I will consider if your method could work for me.

We are actually in agreement, you're right. I just wanted to say that trying to decide too actively on what to keep, and what to let go may be too tiring and working against your purpose.

The method I mentioned is a way to set things in motion, and your brain unconsciously decides what to keep by getting it from that pile. Then you can give the rest (or some of it) away.

Hope it helps.

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