Getting rid of unnecessary things. General cleaning of your life: getting rid of trash and obstacles. You need to store family heirlooms and your own trophies, but not all of them

He approaches unnoticed. It takes up all the corners, cabinets, drawers and space under the bed. It’s easy to let it into your home, but it’s very, very difficult to get rid of it. His name is Junk. How to get rid of junk in an apartment, how to recognize which things are unnecessary?

Rubbish accumulates gradually, remains when you don’t dare to throw something away, and is brought into the house with the next guests who are not aware of your tastes and give completely unnecessary gifts. Today we offer a small reminder for those who are wondering how to get rid of junk in their apartment and cannot decide what to throw away and what not.

Get rid of junk: what things are unnecessary in our home?

Things (equipment, dishes, clothes) that broken/torn and can't be repaired

Things that are spoiled and that you set aside to fix and then forgot- and they have been in a damaged state for more than 1 year. If you haven’t gotten around to it in a year, it means you don’t really need this thing, but you’ve managed just fine without it for the last 365 days.

Clothes that have become too small, too big, frayed, worn out, morally outdated, tired, or simply don’t like them and you don’t wear them, but carefully move them from place to place every time. You can leave a couple of pants and sweaters in case of repairs or work at the dacha; it’s time to get rid of all the other trash. It’s a good one, but (follow the link - I’ll tell you how) via the Internet.

Medicines– go through your first aid kit: all expired tablets and jars must be urgently expelled.

Outdated documents, printouts, checks and receipts- another category of clearly unnecessary things. Periodically, it is worth looking through your own diaries, receipts for payment of various services, warranty cards, checks, discount coupons, notes and photocopies - if something is out of date, feel free to throw it away.

Unnecessary gifts: souvenirs, etc. Unfortunately, this happens to everyone: we all receive gifts that are unnecessary, inappropriate, or that we simply don’t like. The fact that this is a gift should not deter you from taking a decisive step: get rid of unnecessary things that will never be useful to you at all, if something is in good condition- distribute. If you wish, you can take a photograph of what has been preserved in acceptable condition and - I just recently wrote an article about the nuances of selling used things.

Postcards and remembering other people's memories. Of course, you can leave a couple of greeting cards from childhood to show your grandchildren later, but carefully storing a dried flower from a friend’s wedding, a lottery ticket that your mother used to win $20 three years ago, or a drawing by a cousin’s friend is not the most rational decision.

Next should go a box of chocolates given the year before. New Year your grandmother, and a ticket from your first plane flight, and a happy birthday card from the bank whose card you use - with all this “good” you will never get rid of the junk in your apartment.

By the way, if you are leaving postcards or children’s drawings, there is no point in keeping them in a box on the mezzanine - create a memory board where you will keep the most memorable and precious mementos. If something is expensive, but not so expensive that you can keep it in person for the rest of your life, snap it on a camera and store it electronically.

And force yourself to throw away unnecessary things. Today we present a list of things that are usually the first to be thrown away.

When I know exactly where to find what I need and can easily put a letter in a folder and a towel on a shelf, I am overcome with a pleasant (even illusory) feeling of complete control over my life. Getting rid of clutter makes life easier. When a friend says, “I cleaned out our closets and I feel like I've lost five pounds,” I know exactly how she feels.

Trash formula

Using the “shelf by shelf” method, I was able to derive a formula for the appearance of junk in the house. It became easy for me to identify and eliminate problematic items. Here's a rough list of what should leave your home first.

"Darling" kitchen utensils, which works unknown how.
Broken things. Well, why can’t we admit that something is broken - a burnt toaster, a cracked vase, three holey umbrellas, etc.?
Things that seem potentially useful but are not used - an oversized water container or a complicated corkscrew. Or duplicates - well, how many glass jars do we need?
Things you want to “save”. Well, why do you need a nice shower gel if you never use it? Why “save” the bright tin trays you inherited from your grandmother? A friend once gloomily admitted to me: “I saved expensive truffle oil for so long that it spoiled.” Once you spend your money, use what you bought and then throw it away.
Items that should have been used but were not used due to reluctance or laziness. Several years ago I bought a digital voice recorder - I was going to conduct interviews. But something didn’t work out, and the recorder was of no use. And the expensive exercise equipment purchased by my friends, which are collecting dust, taking up space?..
Things that should have been thrown away a long time ago. Luckily, there was no room in our apartment to store such things: no attic, no closet, no utility room - just a part of the basement where we stored Christmas tree decorations, spare filters for the air conditioner and a few high chairs. We didn't even have a garage, which many people use as home storage. According to the Department of Energy, 25% of Americans with two-car garages don't park their cars there at all.
Items that ended up in the house according to “grandmother’s right.” Grandmothers always have their own rules about what our children Eliza and Elinor need. My mother-in-law never buys anything new for herself, but she gives the girls solar-powered prisms, sets of miniature colored pencils and such. All these things are funny, but gradually the apartment becomes littered with them.
Things we never used. It's time to get rid of the rice cooker I gave my husband for his birthday. He loves to cook, but he continues to cook rice in an old saucepan.

Throw it away or organize it?

Saving is expensive in every way. Possessions take up time, space and energy. And someday you will have to decide how to get rid of this property.

I told a friend about my shelf-by-shelf approach.

“I know this feeling,” she nodded. — My apartment is filled with garbage. (True. I know for a fact that she has actual warehouses in three states: in the town where she grew up, where her grandmother lived, and another one 40 minutes away from her apartment.)

“I need to figure all this out too,” my friend added.

- No, just don’t figure it out! - I exclaimed. - Don't think about organizing this junk!

And then I stopped. I didn't want to seem rude to my friend.

- What are you talking about? - she was surprised. - You saw my apartment. I definitely need to organize everything properly.

“Well,” I said carefully, “try to get rid of everything unnecessary first.” And then you won't have to organize.

- How is this? — my friend asked suspiciously.

— Unnecessary papers can be thrown away rather than put in folders. Donate the clothes you never wear to a charity and you won't have to find room for them in your closet!

“No, I use almost everything,” my friend objected. “I won’t have to throw away much.” I just need to buy a few things to better organize everything.

I couldn't find anything to say. I've noticed that the people who have the biggest clutter problems tend to buy clever hangers, furniture with convenient drawers, and colorful plastic boxes. Organizing your belongings can be very useful—as long as it organizes what you need, of course, and doesn't add to the accumulation of clutter.

As I sorted shelf after shelf, I mentally answered a lot of questions. Do we use these things? Do we love them? And I felt a big difference between what we don’t use and what is useless. Eliza doesn't use her animal rubber stamps anymore, and I don't wear my mom's brightly colored vintage hats. We have a lot of things that are dear to us that we don’t use. I wanted my home to be filled with things that had symbolic and sentimental meaning, not just practical ones. Unlike a broken pancake maker, they always have a place in my house.

Ecology of consumption. Lifehack: Today you would call me the fashionable word “minimalist”. Although just a few years ago everything was different...

I strive for liberation. I am freeing myself from everything unnecessary in my life.

Today you would call me the buzzword "minimalist". Although just a few years ago everything was different. My house was bursting at the seams with an endless supply of new clothes, cosmetics and perfumes, and some interior items.

But life has taught me a lot. My parents’ house burned down, I got divorced and spent a lot of time moving, renting an apartment and supporting myself, giving up clothes and travel. In the rented apartment there was no closet or vacuum cleaner, and I learned to wash the floor regularly, that is, to do something that I have not liked since childhood, and I placed my clothes in boxes on the floor. And nothing - it was even cozy.

1. Regularly get rid of unnecessary and/or old things

Moving from apartment to apartment, I appreciated that the less unnecessary things I have, the easier it is to live. The main thing is that what travels with me is needed specifically for at this stage and right for my lifestyle.

Life is unpredictable. And if you give yourself completely and emotionally invest in things, it can be very difficult if you suddenly have to part with them.

A dozen sentimental bears from the past, clothes that no longer fit or simply don’t like, but seem to be not old yet - it’s a pity to throw them away - all this takes up a lot of space and drains energy. And here we are not talking about esotericism - we have to spend energy on ironing, vacuuming, dry cleaning and doing many more manipulations with things that are no longer suitable for us. Elementarily, excesses in the wardrobe complicate the choice of clothes. While you're going through your entire closet, you can forget about a new blouse under a pile of old dresses.

Cloth

Once a season I review my entire wardrobe. I get rid of what I don’t like, what doesn’t fit well, what I’ve never worn and can’t even imagine a situation where I would wear it. I make an exception only for very expensive and high-quality items and jewelry. Who knows, maybe in ten years they will become a valuable rarity? Or will they finally fit me in size again?

With everything else I do this: I wash cheap clothes or those that are not in very good condition, put them in order and take them to a charity store or, in the end, leave them next to a garbage dump in the city center or in a residential area. Usually the homeless take it right away.

I sell the better one. I often use Avito. Just today I sold a wool scarf with a Guess hat. The hat was prickly for me, and I didn’t like it at all, so it lay there for two seasons almost untouched. And sometimes we team up with friends and organize parties with trying on and exchanging such clothes. A great reason to meet and have a great time. Cocktails included!

If there is something left that I don’t yet dare to sell or give away, I put it off for half a year and see if my attitude towards this thing has changed.

Why did I decide to clean out my wardrobe once every three months? Yes, because it’s incredibly tiring to sell and give everything away when the closet hasn’t been thoroughly reconsidered for a couple of years. Despite the fact that I have been periodically getting rid of everything for the past two years, I am now in my second week of organizing my wardrobe.

Unnecessary/outdated household appliances and gadgets

Oh, these surprise gifts and everything that we receive “on duty” or from those who do not know us well. Then there are always extra coffee grinders, multicookers, smart alarm clocks and other things that seem to be necessary, but are not for us. They lie and wait in the wings, or rather the moment when they are already morally obsolete and will be sent to best case scenario, to the dacha.

If the item is in packaging and has not yet been used, I sell it or put it away as a gift to someone who really needs it. Among my friends and acquaintances there are also lovers of fresh coffee and those who need a flashlight keychain for their keys.

Sometimes it happens that you choose some super fashionable gadget for yourself, walk around with it for a month and realize that, that’s it, you’ve played enough. This happened to me, for example, with the Jawbone Up24 smart bracelet. I chose it myself as a birthday present for myself and wrote it on my friends’ wish list. I thought he would help me wake up with my biorhythms and eat only the right food. As a result, after a month I got tired of him, and I adjusted my biorhythms myself.

I didn’t throw it into a box with unnecessary items and decided to sell it. By the way, this is where my acquaintance with Avito began. I reduced the price by 4 times, and a buyer was immediately found. Yes, it’s a pity to give away a good thing at such a price, but for myself I decided that it would be better for me to go to a restaurant twice with this money than to fill a drawer with something I don’t need.

And so it is in everything. Now I safely sell the extra juicers and food processors left over from family life, I can’t wait to find a family again and squeeze the juice out of my children and husband. Perhaps my future husband lives in another country and has a personal chef who squeezes juice for him every day!

2. Choose things according to their expediency.

I used to often buy myself clothes and perfume for my mood. Hence the extra clothes and wasted money. But life, as they say, taught me the ruble. Renting an apartment is not a cheap pleasure. And I slowly began to save. And most importantly, it brought back that same joy that arises when you look for something for a long time and find it.

I'll tell you using perfume as an example. I used to have about ten different ones, and I used them depending on my mood. That’s why they didn’t end for a long time and bored me like crazy over several years. It’s a shame to throw it away, but I don’t want to use it.

Everything is different now. I have one daytime perfume, one evening perfume and one for seduction. Something like that. And now I choose perfumes for several months. I go shopping, sniffing whether it’s mine or not. And I only take those that made me remember their smell.

And how nice it is to buy something for a reason, but to make a mini-holiday out of it! For example, I decide that I will devote Saturday exclusively to myself. In the morning I wake up, have a delicious breakfast, go shopping, buy a dress, then have lunch in a new place, and at the end of the day - a movie or a spa. This is a whole ritual that gives much more pleasure than a blouse or mascara bought in a hurry and in a fit of melancholy.

If you’re just sad and want to cheer yourself up, it’s better to go for a massage or to the theater. Spending money while delirious is not a good story.

This is about clothes, but what about large purchases? Household appliances, cars and other things? Again, the principle of expediency. Why buy a TV for every room if I only watch it in the living room, and only on holidays? Or what's the point of having a food processor if there's nowhere to put it. It will be stored in the pantry or under the bed, and, accordingly, almost never used.

3. You need to keep family heirlooms and your own trophies, but not all of them.

Over the years of life, a lot of memorable little things usually accumulate in one place, which over time can absorb the entire apartment if they are not cleaned regularly. For myself, I choose only what I am ready to spend my space on; everything else I arrange according to its intended purpose. I store old photos on removable hard drives, I give away the disks, keeping only the most memorable ones.

It is always very difficult to part with the belongings of beloved relatives after their death. But you can’t take everything with you and carry it around for the rest of your life. I would really not like to get rid of my grandfather's military uniform with orders and his records or some of my grandmother's jewelry and photographs. But, for example, I would give some of the books to those who really need them: friends, small cafes, orphanages. This won’t make my memories any less, but I will have more space.

Or another example, I have a memory box where I used to put old concert tickets, love letters and other nice little things. Although it takes up a lot of space, until now I did not dare to throw it away and steadfastly carried it with me during all my moves. But now I’m already morally mature enough to part with her if life demands it. After all, all the memories are in our heads!

4. Plan your living space consciously.

In the living space, everything should be convenient and at hand. For example, I love to cook and put everything in the right order for me. It’s important to me that everything is close by and not in a closet or closet. When I had a large kitchen, I could afford to display all the kitchen appliances on various tables and kitchen islands and use them regularly. As soon as I put something away in a drawer, I forgot about it. So, the blender could stand idle for months. When I moved into a rented apartment with a small kitchen, I took only the most basic things - a couple of frying pans, pots and other small utensils. I no longer had time for steamers and food processors.

The same applies to extra shelves, boxes and small items. When planning a kitchen and apartment (strange, but I’ve already done this many times in my life), I try to reduce as much as possible unnecessary rooms and objects that are then not clear how and with what frequency they will be used. Everything that does not provide real functionality only gets in the way and clutters up your apartment.

I arrange my cosmetics so that in the morning I have only my regular set at hand, and not a whole cosmetic bag. Eye shadows and lipsticks, foundations, which I use less often, are kept separately. This way I save a lot of time, because I don’t have to look for anything.

I also have several drawers and compartments that hold the contents of my most frequently used outdoor items. For example, in the fall there is an umbrella, keys, documents, gloves, a couple of bags, a shoe sponge or credit cards. And in the summer - sunglasses, adhesive plasters, napkins.

Such I place functional sets in those areas where I find the fastest access to them at the right time. And again, I regularly get rid of everything that I don't need and doesn't work. I mean it doesn't work for me and my current life situation.

5. Don't buy extra food if you don't have time to cook it.

My heart bleeds every time I see that my parents make excess jams, sauces, mushrooms and cucumbers! Year after year the situation does not change, and only half of everything that was done so diligently and with soul is eaten.

I always try to use the principle of expediency. For example, I'm a fan of fresh berries - so at the end of summer I can devote time to picking them or buying them and processing them for storage in the freezer. But I sincerely don’t understand those who do this “out of inertia” - you don’t have to be a “fraud” who was ruined by greed. This only makes life more complicated, because we lose precious minutes that we could spend on something really important.

I myself am not a fan of jam and canned vegetables and fruits, so I don’t strive to make such preparations. When I was married, I made several jars, just enough to last through the winter. I don't like it when food gets thrown away. The same goes for shopping. I prefer to go shopping for perishable foods, such as milk, meat or fish, several times a week, than to buy for a few weeks in advance and store it all in the freezer.

Again, all products that have been subjected to heat treatment, whether by cold or heat, no longer carry as much benefit as fresh ones. For myself, I decided to buy seasonal vegetables and use a grain sprouter.

There is always a solution if you really want to find it.

6. Periodically evaluate whether all those expensive things we use are really necessary.

Now we'll talk about apartments, cars, dachas, yachts... A car is good, but how much time and money does it take to maintain. The cost is quite comparable to daily taxi trips. There are also traffic jams, time to warm up the engine (especially in winter), problems with parking, and so on. Yes, still the car makes us walk less. This makes walking a hundred times less. And to be in shape, you then need to go to the gym, but you could just walk five to ten kilometers every day. And this is quite real.

I'll tell you with my own example. As soon as I got a car, I started driving it almost constantly. With the change of job and housing last year, I simply couldn’t get out of it. So what's the result? I gained a couple of extra kilos, despite the sport. And then I decided to reconsider my attitude towards the car, to evaluate whether I really need it every day. Having abandoned the usual pattern that a car is convenience and comfort, I rediscovered walks, minibuses, metro and even trains. And I was satisfied. Now I often do this: I come to work in the morning by car, and in the evening I go home without it. I leave a couple of metro stations earlier from home to walk and do some shopping. So, I walk more and manage to do my other things at the same time.

Apartments, cottages and other real estate. I am sincerely convinced that these things should work for the owner. Either they live there regularly, or they are required to bring money. My choice is simple. I don't want to waste time maintaining houses that I won't live in, buying furniture, cleaning, insurance, etc. After all, strength and energy flow into this hole, why give it to something you practically never use. Guided by the principle of expediency, if possible, I will rent out something, sell something, and where my heart is, I will live. about published

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There is no use fighting this. The desire to drag a lot of valuable things into their burrow and keep them longer is characteristic of all living things, even gophers. All that remains is to relax and enjoy. You can also optimize your inventory, its position in space, and your relationship to it.

What is trash is a truly philosophical question. This is the whole point: if you understand that there is rubbish, consider that you have gotten rid of it.

Trying to identify trash item by item is a hopeless endeavor. To some, egg shells are garbage, but to others, valuable fertilizer for their favorite cabbage; to another, a bunch of old screws and bolts are junk, and to another, a future receiver with transistors. There are things that are rarely used, there are those that will never be useful, they lie and lie. Sometimes they still warm your soul, sometimes they don’t. Trash is exactly what is never used, lies like a dead weight and does not warm the soul, but only makes you want to put it away and not see it.

People aren't born trash, they become trash.

But this thing will definitely, definitely come in handy! And another board is dragged into the house, which should become a handmade super chest of drawers, or a piece of fabric is bought, from which someday, when I learn to sew, I will sew a dress. And it doesn’t matter that I’ll never learn to sew anyway...

But this wildly cute little thing, of course, won’t be useful at all. But she is so cute that there is simply no way to throw her away. And empty perfume bottles, coffee jars, candy boxes and old wall calendars with crumpled but wildly cute pictures are stored and stored in our house.

Sometimes very good, useful and necessary things become trash. Only they are useful and necessary not for us, but for someone else, and we, crushed by stereotypes in the spirit of “every decent family should have a crystal vase,” litter our house with cheese cutters, turbo mops, coffee sets and smart books that we don’t want to read even under pain of death penalty. All this is neatly stored in cabinets and never used in life, because it may be more pleasant to bite off a large piece of cheese and drink coffee from large mugs.

The space is very well cluttered with various (useless) little things that are rarely used and difficult to store. It’s much easier to buy new cake candles at X hour than to look for where you put the old ones.

The apartment is almost hopelessly cluttered with various large-sized rubbish. For example, an old, solid and dull wardrobe or chest of drawers. He will outlive you and your grandchildren, but your grandmother could no longer look at him without tears.

Trash- these are possibly very good, but potentially unnecessary or hopelessly outdated things. All this accumulates, occupies cabinets, mezzanines and storage rooms, collects dust, fills the living space, requires care and consumes energy. We need to get rid of all this, and the sooner the better.

Fight against trash comes down, in essence, to just two actions. First, you need to understand that this is him in front of you. Secondly, you need to find the strength to throw him out of the house. And this should be done easily, playfully, so that not only your home, but also your inner world is cleared of trash.

14 ways to get rid of junk:

Let's play moving: While cleaning, periodically ask yourself the question: “If I were moving to a new apartment now, would I take this thing with me?” If an item is not needed in a new apartment, then why store it in this one?
Matroskin's first lesson: If you want to get rid of junk and get pleasure from it, sell something unnecessary. Imagine that you have no money at all and you are forced to sell things. What would you sell first? So sell it, and use the proceeds to buy something you really need.
Matroskin's second lesson: To sell something unnecessary, you first need to buy something unnecessary. But we won’t do this. Before you buy a big thing, imagine what will happen to it in 5 years. You can’t imagine anything good or reasonable; you don’t need this thing.
“Boogie Woogie Throw Out 27”: Right now, get up and walk around your apartment with a garbage bag in your hands. You must find 27 things you don't need and throw them away immediately. The junk is right in front of you, you just need to look at it in a new way. Pay special attention to magazines, newspapers, expired medications, old batteries, broken pens and markers, empty boxes from under cassette tapes, empty bottles, old sponges and rags, torn tights and socks.
Throw it out by flylady: Look at the thing and ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I love this thing?
- Have I used it within the past year?
- Is this really trash?
- Do I have the exact same thing, only better?
- Do I really need two of these things?
- I love this thing because it brings back emotional memories and feelings?
- Or does she make me feel guilty and sad when I see her?
- Clear your room of anything that doesn't make you smile.
Man is a dog's friend: Get a puppy. A kitten, in principle, would also be suitable. Everything unnecessary will be quickly chewed up and torn to shreds. Everything that you thought you needed, but didn’t hide in time, too. And now you can throw it all away with a lighter conscience.
Organize a viper: Let's be realistic - it is impossible to achieve the ideal, completely get rid of trash it is forbidden. Therefore, let’s give our household junk a cozy place, for example, a small bedside table. And we will store all the trash in this wonderful nightstand, and only in it. Sooner or later, the nightstand will be full, there will be nowhere to put a new portion of junk, and we will have to solve the problem of which of our household junk is junk, what to put in the nightstand, and what to throw out. An authorized viper is an extremely convenient thing: the amount of rubbish in the apartment is limited, everything is in one place, and at the same time, you don’t have to step on your pet peeves and completely get rid of old jars and cones put aside for a rainy day. But remember that there can only be one viper in the house.
Dacha season: Dacha is wonderful and useful. It helps to easily and without remorse rid the house of a boring good-quality chest of drawers, out-of-fashion curtains with teapots and old jeans, but here it is important not to go to extremes and not deliberately clutter the dacha itself.
In the best traditions: It seems that in Italy it is customary to throw out trash and old things from the house on New Year's Day. Isn't it a wonderful tradition? A holiday of renewal, a holiday of getting rid of junk. Be sure to celebrate it at least 2 times a year.
Garbage basket: With its help it is very convenient to get rid of various small things. However, if the basket is large, then it can also help in the fight against larger trash. All the things you don't know where to put; everything that you don’t know what to attach to; everything that you think will be useful to you, but is not yet clear how, you put in this basket. Let him lie down. Once a week, month, quarter, the entire contents of the basket are mercilessly thrown away. By that time, the really necessary things will have already been extracted from it, and everything else will be trash.
Format the hard drive: This method helps well to deal with papers, documents, disks, photographs. Let's imagine that the filing cabinet is not a cabinet, but a hard drive that you have to format tomorrow. Everything valuable must be saved today. Everything else will be destroyed. Save what you have the strength and desire to do. These are truly valuable things. And it’s not a shame to throw away the rest.
Worse than the Tatar: This method is similar to the previous one, but requires truly samurai endurance from the performer. First you hide everything valuable, and then you invite guests and offer to take away whatever they like from the rest. As an additional bonus, you get the opportunity not to take the trash out of the apartment - the guests will take everything out themselves.
Gifts that are not needed: I would like to say separately about the pile of unnecessary gifts that fills our home several times a year. A napkin from Marya Petrovna from the personnel, a vase from Elena Mikhailovna from the accounting department, an apron on duty from the mother-in-law, 24 postcards “to your favorite class teacher from 7 “b””... It’s good if the gifts have receipts and they can be returned to the store. If there are no receipts, unnecessary gifts can be re-gifted. A napkin - for my beloved mother-in-law, a vase - for Marya Petrovna. It will be more difficult with postcards, but you can also get rid of them - write words of gratitude in response to each student on a postcard and return them back. The main thing is to nip the “inconvenient and dishonest” complexes in yourself, it’s inconvenient to store all this, and it’s dishonest to throw it in the trash.
If you can’t change the world, then change your attitude towards it: If you stubbornly fail to throw away trash, you can change your attitude towards it. For example, you can declare yourself a collector, and then your school folder with crumpled postcards will become not junk, but a collection. You can’t throw away the bronze chandelier that your beloved mother-in-law decided to keep in your apartment? Call it a family heirloom and tells guests the stories and legends associated with this antique.

When getting rid of junk, it is important not to go to two extremes: on the one hand, not to turn into Plyushkin and still rid your home of various junk, on the other hand, you must remember that, in fact, some are old and unnecessary we need things.

What is trash is a truly philosophical question. This is the whole point: if you understand that there is rubbish, consider that you have gotten rid of it.

People aren't born trash, they become trash.

The process of turning a normal thing into trash is complex and mysterious; its reasons and features lie in our soul. This is a good thing, it’s a shame to throw it away, maybe it will come in handy. And a hopelessly out of fashion, but very high-quality coat or a bunch of children's onesies are sent to the mezzanine in anticipation of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In a couple of years, even the illusory hopes that the grandchildren will wear it will melt away, but it’s a good thing, it’s a shame to throw it away, in case it comes in handy.
But this thing will definitely, definitely come in handy! And another board is dragged into the house, which should become a handmade super chest of drawers, or a piece of fabric is bought, from which someday, when I learn to sew, I will sew a dress. And it doesn’t matter that I’ll never learn to sew anyway...
But this wildly cute little thing, of course, won’t be useful at all. But she is so cute that there is simply no way to throw her away. And empty perfume bottles, coffee jars, candy boxes and old wall calendars with crumpled but wildly cute pictures are stored and stored in our house.
Sometimes very good, useful and necessary things become trash. Only they are useful and necessary not for us, but for someone else, and we, crushed by stereotypes in the spirit of “every decent family should have a crystal vase,” litter our house with cheese cutters, turbo mops, coffee sets and smart books that we don’t want to read even under pain of death penalty. All this is neatly stored in cabinets and never used in life, because it may be more pleasant to bite off a large piece of cheese and drink coffee from large mugs.
The space is very well cluttered with various (useless) little things that are rarely used and difficult to store. It’s much easier to buy new cake candles at X hour than to look for where you put the old ones.
The apartment is almost hopelessly cluttered with various large-sized rubbish. For example, an old, solid and dull wardrobe or chest of drawers. He will outlive you and your grandchildren, but your grandmother could no longer look at him without tears.
Junk is probably very good, but potentially unnecessary or hopelessly outdated things. All this accumulates, occupies cabinets, mezzanines and storage rooms, collects dust, fills the living space, requires care and consumes energy. We need to get rid of all this, and the sooner the better.
The fight against junk comes down, in essence, to just two actions. First, you need to understand that this is him in front of you. Secondly, you need to find the strength to throw him out of the house. And this should be done easily, playfully, so that not only your home, but also your inner world is cleared of trash.

14 ways to get rid of junk:

Let's play moving: While cleaning, periodically ask yourself the question: “If I were moving to a new apartment now, would I take this thing with me?” If an item is not needed in a new apartment, then why store it in this one?
Matroskin's first lesson: If you want to get rid of junk and get pleasure from it, sell something unnecessary. Imagine that you have no money at all and you are forced to sell things. What would you sell first? So sell it, and use the proceeds to buy something you really need.
Matroskin's second lesson: To sell something unnecessary, you first need to buy something unnecessary. But we won’t do this. Before you buy a big thing, imagine what will happen to it in 5 years. You can’t imagine anything good or reasonable; you don’t need this thing.
“Boogie Woogie Throw Out 27”: Right now, get up and walk around your apartment with a garbage bag in your hands. You must find 27 things you don't need and throw them away immediately. The junk is right in front of you, you just need to look at it in a new way. Pay special attention to magazines, newspapers, expired medications, old batteries, broken pens and markers, empty cassette boxes, empty bottles, old sponges and rags, torn tights and socks.
Look at the item and ask yourself the following questions:
Do I love this thing? Have I used it within the past year?
Is this really trash?
Do I have the exact same thing, only better?
Do I really need two of these things?
I love this thing because it brings back emotional memories and feelings? Or does she make me feel guilty and sad when I see her?
Clear your room of anything that doesn't make you smile.
Man is a dog's friend: Get a puppy. A kitten, in principle, would also be suitable. Everything unnecessary will be quickly chewed up and torn to shreds. Everything that you thought you needed, but didn’t hide in time, too. And now you can throw it all away with a lighter conscience.
Organize a trash shed: Let's be realistic - it is impossible to achieve the ideal, you cannot completely get rid of the trash. Therefore, let’s give our household junk a cozy place, for example, a small bedside table. And we will store all the trash in this wonderful nightstand, and only in it. Sooner or later, the nightstand will be full, there will be nowhere to put a new portion of junk, and we will have to solve the problem of which of our household junk is junk, what to put in the nightstand, and what to throw out. An authorized viper is an extremely convenient thing: the amount of rubbish in the apartment is limited, everything is in one place, and at the same time, you don’t have to step on your pet peeves and completely get rid of old jars and cones put aside for a rainy day. But remember that there can only be one viper in the house.
Dacha season: Dacha is wonderful and useful. It helps to easily and without remorse rid the house of a boring good-quality chest of drawers, out-of-fashion curtains with teapots and old jeans, but here it is important not to go to extremes and not deliberately clutter the dacha itself.
In the best traditions: It seems that in Italy it is customary to throw out trash and old things from the house on New Year's Day. Isn't it a wonderful tradition? A holiday of renewal, a holiday of getting rid of junk. Be sure to celebrate it at least 2 times a year.
Garbage basket: With its help it is very convenient to get rid of various small things. However, if the basket is large, then it can also help in the fight against larger trash. All the things you don't know where to put; everything that you don’t know what to attach to; everything that you think will be useful to you, but is not yet clear how, you put in this basket. Let him lie down. Once a week, month, quarter, the entire contents of the basket are mercilessly thrown away. By that time, the really necessary things will have already been taken out of it, and everything else is trash.
Format the hard drive: This method helps well to deal with papers, documents, disks, photographs. Let's imagine that the filing cabinet is not a cabinet, but a hard drive that you have to format tomorrow. Everything valuable must be saved today. Everything else will be destroyed. Save what you have the strength and desire to do. These are truly valuable things. And it’s not a shame to throw away the rest.
Worse than the Tatar: This method is similar to the previous one, but requires truly samurai endurance from the performer. First you hide everything valuable, and then you invite guests and offer to take away whatever they like from the rest. As an additional bonus, you get the opportunity not to take the trash out of the apartment - the guests will take everything out themselves.
Gifts that are not needed: I would like to say separately about the pile of unnecessary gifts that fills our home several times a year. A napkin from Marya Petrovna from the personnel, a vase from Elena Mikhailovna from the accounting department, an apron on duty from the mother-in-law, 24 postcards “to your favorite class teacher from 7 “b””... It’s good if the gifts have receipts and they can be returned to the store. If there are no receipts, unnecessary gifts can be re-gifted. A napkin - for my beloved mother-in-law, a vase - for Marya Petrovna. It will be more difficult with postcards, but you can also get rid of them - write words of gratitude in response to each student on a postcard and return them back. The main thing is to nip the “inconvenient and dishonest” complexes in yourself, it’s inconvenient to store all this, and it’s dishonest to throw it in the trash.
If you can’t change the world, then change your attitude towards it: If you stubbornly fail to throw away trash, you can change your attitude towards it. For example, you can declare yourself a collector, and then your school folder with crumpled postcards will become not junk, but a collection. You can’t throw away the bronze chandelier that your beloved mother-in-law decided to keep in your apartment? Call it a family heirloom and tells guests stories and legends associated with these antiques. When getting rid of junk, it is important not to go to two extremes: on the one hand, not to turn into Plyushkin and still rid your home of various junk, on the other hand, you must remember that, in fact, we need some old and unnecessary things.
A few words in defense of trash: Probably, each of us as a child dreamed of a house with a large attic filled with all sorts of things; or at least about grandma’s big chest, where every time you find something new and interesting. Probably, today you should start creating such a chest for your future grandchildren. Yes, and we ourselves sometimes need to look at the dress in which you danced at the prom, or even at the corner in which you were discharged from the maternity hospital; reread old letters and newspapers, paint all over the bathroom mirror with expired lipstick, smile at a teddy bear with a torn paw...