#decluttering

#decluttering

My father kept manuals for products we hadn't owned in years, filed alphabetically in a cabinet. When I asked why, he looked at me like I'd suggested burning money. "What if we need to look something up?" The concept of finding any manual online in seconds just doesn't compute for a generation that had to rely on these paper lifelines.

It's about what happens in those crucial minutes before bed. The psychology behind this makes sense. As behavioral scientists have found, our environment significantly impacts our stress levels and mental clarity. A cluttered space often leads to a cluttered mind. Those who maintain consistently clean homes have figured out that small, nightly rituals prevent the overwhelming buildup that sends the rest of us into cleaning frenzies.

When it comes to clutter, my parents were a case of opposites attract. My dad had a shorthand saying: "ABC." It meant "always be clearing." My mother, on the other hand, loved beautiful things and collected them without much rhyme, reason, or organization. I always followed my dad's footsteps more closely. Although I hold a doctorate and have a career in academia, I started a professional organizing company 17 years ago. Today, A Clear Path has 17 employees.

The space couldn't be more than 500 square feet, yet it feels like something out of a design magazine. Meanwhile, I know people with houses three times the size that somehow feel cheap despite the hefty mortgage. It got me thinking about what really makes a space feel luxurious. After years of observing homes that punch above their weight class financially, I've noticed certain patterns. The truth is that creating an expensive-feeling home has surprisingly little to do with actual expense.

When you reach a certain age, one of the things you notice at the turn of the year is the "stuff" you have accumulated. Old newspapers, documents and books jostle with the detritus of life, from pieces of dead coral from Barbados to an old label that never made it onto a bottle of Guinness. I have spent the last decade preaching to my adult children, telling them to stop buying things.

I've made €900 in nine months by putting unwanted clothes up for sale My Vinted journey began in April 2025 while in the middle of my maternity leave. Amid a spell of frenzied spring cleaning in between naps and breastfeeding, I was forced to seriously contemplate my bursting wardrobe and heaving attic storage. Years of impulse buying and overspending on clothes had caught up with me and now,

I gave birth to a baby girl a few weeks ago, and my mom has been coming to help every week for a full day. She's wonderful with my newborn: she changes diapers like a pro, she is great at getting her to stop crying, and she is respectful of rules that were different from when she had her kids (like the fact that babies are supposed to sleep on their backs, without blankets and stuffed animals in the crib).

As 2025 comes to a close, we're reflecting on a year of stories - from surprising laundry tips like not washing sheets after guests, to highlighting the best daily deals. Our editors have recommended tons of fantastic cleaning and organizing solutions, and our readers have taken note. To help everyone declutter and kick off 2026 with a fresh start, I've compiled the Amazon bestsellers that our audience loved most.

A new year invites a fresh start, and sometimes the easiest way to feel lighter at home is simply to let a few things go. Experts say January is the ideal moment to release the items that you're "making do with" or " saving just in case " but never actually use. Whether they're tucked in drawers, crowding your cabinets, or hiding behind holiday decor, these everyday culprits add visual noise and drain energy without you even noticing.

The holidays always bring a mix of cozy joy and creeping clutter. I love the lights, gatherings, and food, but my apartment rarely survives the yearly wave of gifts, decor, and "I'll deal with it later" piles. This year, I want to head into January with less stress and more space, so I'm trying something new: following a reverse advent calendar.

We've been doing this for ten years. We rent a dumpster where neighbors can come throw all of their extra cardboard and dead trees from the holidays. All that clutter that builds up in their home that everyone hates. There's a place to dump it. It costs about $150 to $200, depending on where you're at," she explained. "December 23rd to January 1st, you can wrap a bow around it! I've had my kids decorate it before.

When you're getting ready to , depersonalizing your home is one of the simplest ways to draw in more buyers. At its core, depersonalizing means removing or minimizing the items that reflect your life - things like family photos, collections, bold décor, or anything highly specific to your taste. The goal: help buyers picture life in the home, not yours. It's a tried-and-true selling strategy because it reduces distractions, appeals to a wider range of buyers, and helps people form an emotional connection with the home

I renovated my primary bathroom about seven years ago, but I've been battling one problem ever since: the space under my sink. During the remodel, my contractor tossed the shelf that was supposed to be installed inside the vanity (he didn't want to bother cutting around the plumbing), which left me with an oddly shaped, shelf-less cave to figure out on my own.

The family car tends to be a bit of a black hole, with all our little daily transit needs routinely absorbed into its unfathomable depths. It's where phone chargers go to die; where water bottles roll under seats, never to be seen again; and where homework assignments and field trip permission slips disappear without a trace. I'm not saying a multi-compartment trunk organizer is going to keep that from happening, per se,

I love my mom a lot. But whenever she visits, she brings at least a few boxes from the attic - also known as the packed-to-the-ceiling hell where every single thing from my childhood is kept. The boxes she brings sometimes include a treasured piece of jewelry or a timeless toy or a long-forgotten photograph, but they also include lots of broken stuff, out-of-date books, and every single worksheet from second grade.

My home used to be a carefully curated museum of a life I wasn't actually living. The clothes I wore were a uniform, the decor was a decoy, and the entire space felt like a stage set for a character I was exhausted from playing. Coming out of the closet was the curtain call. The most tangible, cathartic part of the process was the great purge that followed - dismantling that set piece by piece.

Apartment Therapy's Decluttering Cure is a free two-week decluttering program that'll help you achieve a tidier home. Sign up here and get all 14 assignments delivered to your inbox. There usually comes a point in the decluttering process in which you can't decide if you really want to get rid of or keep a certain item. If you've ever faced this dilemma, there's a brilliant strategy that'll help you make a decision: the "box and banish" method. Here's how it works.