The older I get, the more I want to simplify things! I was raised by a hoarder and am working hard to break that cycle now. I was diagnosed with ADHD recently and am now seeing things through a new light. Wish me luck!!

My friend hired a large skip. Opened the garage which she never goes into cause clutter, boxes etc. She decided not to look but just dump. She cleared the whole garage...nil left. Now she is cleaning and designing a setting room for self. Simple style.

09/26. Every day, I get rid of 20 items. Yesterday was 6 shirts, 10 pieces of paper, 4 pieces of plastic. Today's 10 pieces of paper, 4 library books, 6 pieces of plastic. Recycling, tossing, giveaways all count. Tomorrow, I'm taking a carton of odd items to e- Recycling. I'm 77. Tina, Al's wife

I've been on the ride since jeez 2009 or so, and I've found that organizing DOES help for me, with the caveat that I've got ADHD.  Without a real effort to have a home for everything, even a fairly minimal home like my own can get out of sync.  I think it's vital to keep true to us.

Organizing excess is saying you need to declutter.  Organizing in itself is a good thing.

Every couple weeks I throw out a box. Was holding onto some documents in folders. I wish I had a bigger bin so I could do more and quicker. My local thrift stores have become stricter with donations and it’s also a barrier to getting rid of it so I generally bin it.

that makes a lot of sense, thank you!!

If you wanna increase the gamification on the minimalism game even further I recommend using it like a bingo card instead of following the order.

Cheers

It's personal and different from person to person.
For me it was one draw/cabinet/storage box at a time to start with. I started 3 years ago and didn't obsess or stress.  Every single day now I choose "one item to go" and surprisingly I always find one.
I fully agree with the WHY question: You should know the WHY you are doing it, then it will be easy to find your way to do it.

Actually, organizing my things helps me declutter. As I gather everything in one catagory, I can see all of that catagory at one time. My mindset is not to move things around and get new systems, but rather it is to create space and shed a few things. Having it all in front of me, I can then compare what I have. I see the excess, and immediately notice the "less than" things I rarely reach for and the multiples I don't need. I ALSO see the things I love and will use over and over again. It is such a freeing feeling to let go of  the not needed items,  and then re-organize the loved things  into a more spacious area, where they can breathe and I have easier access. Versus having too many things in one catagory jammed into several places, that take great effort to find and use. Now I know what I have and they are happily co-existing in one place! Organizing for me is form and function at it's best! I get great joy out of this method!  And someone else will get use out of what I don't need.

I think one does need to organize in addition to decluttering.   In the decluttering process, one aspect is to move things to the same location as other things of the same type.  Let's take suitcases.  So the first step would be to move all the suitcases to a suitcase location.  Maybe we have a lot of suitcases and they do not all fit in the location allocated.  So THEN, after we have moved them all to that location, we assess which ones we are going to keep and work on donating the rest.  In the process of doing this, the owner assesses, "hey, I really don't need to buy more suitcases", and it is the process of consolidating all the suitcases in one location that got the owner to think this way.  Now do the same with paper towels, with toilet paper, with scrubbies for the kitchen.  When all the excess items of one category are in one place then one can easily take inventory.  Inventory is essential to managing a house.  So I don't agree with just decluttering without grouping like items first, taking inventory, then assessing whether that is too much.  If one has 149 rolls of toilet paper left over from Covid hoarding, then maybe keep those but just use them up and don't buy more until  you are down to 2 rolls, but the point is, if there are 147 in the same location then the owner will know they don't need to get any more and will stop buying; if they are distributed into 10 different locations of 14 rolls each the homeowner might not see that this is an issue.  So organizing before decluttering makes some logical sense.

This really resonates with me, from two angles.

As a quality engineer, this immediately reminded me of the Five Whys method — you keep asking "why" past the surface symptom until you hit the actual root cause, then fix that instead of patching symptoms. That's exactly what you're describing here: decluttering the "how" (organizing, tidying) treats the symptom, but asking "why do I want to simplify?" gets you to the actual pain point driving the behavior.

It also lines up with Simon Sinek's Golden Circle — start with why, not what or how. Once you know your why (your values, your purpose, emotions, pains), the how tends to follow naturally, and it's also much easier to explain your actions to other people.
Loved this framing — thanks for putting it into words so clearly!

My issue is one day I might need 1 of the 283 different type of PVC pipe fittings so I don’t have to spend .89 in a year when I need one.

🎉🎉🎉

💕

Last week I got rid of about 70% of my organisers.. even though I decluttered and kept nothing in them, I kept the organisers just in case.. because I found myself re-buying them multiple times. But this time they have sat empty for over a year, so it was time to also part ways with them too.

Aaaannnd…. Now we’re back to the Josh soliloquy…

Get a boxcar.  Keep what you like.

When I listen such videos I always wonder about tools for DIY projects, can I have a hammer in my home ? 😅 even I did not use it for 10 years 😂

I know WHY I want to declutter, I just don’t know how to start. Help