I was shocked to discover last year that we owned five count 'em five hammers: One that I inherited from my father, one my husband inherited from his, one that we bought when we were first married, and two that came from Lord knows where. Five. So how many to keep? As we had a garage on the lower level, it made perfect sense to keep two hammers so one could live in the kitchen and the other in the garage. God forbid we take the stairs to go get a hammer. 

So I kept the two father hammers because they made better quality things back in the day plus they have dad memories all over them. I packed up the rest to Restore and felt really good about myself. Within a week one of the hammers broke (my dad's). We tried to fix it but couldn't.

Not wanting to mention to my husband that we had no extra hammers even though a week earlier we had five, count 'em five, I begged one from a neighbor who had all kinds of extra hammers and of course she said yes.

You might think the moral of this story is to not get rid of extra things, but it isn't. Not in the least. Of the 30,000-some things I have gotten rid of in my lifetime, I've only regretted a couple. No. The moral is that if you do regret getting rid of something, chances are super duper good that you will be able to get another one. 

It’s almost time to hurt your back again by ferreting out your holiday boxes filled with all that good cheer and...stuff. This year, why not be super-duper selective in what you keep and what you donate? The time to donate is now so others can use your items this year because nobody wants Christmas tree ornaments after the holidays. Well, not nobody but definitely not as many people who want them for the holidays. 

So go haul those boxes out right now, before the crazy begins. Paring down decorations will get you started on the road to eliminating the madness that runs rampant in December which is, you know, supposed to be the hap-happiest time of the year. Happy, I’m saying. Not stressful and dread-filled. 

Spread everything out and separate into categories: outdoor, tree, mantle, lights, whatever. Step back and look it over. Are there things that you don’t even like? Things that fill you with dread just looking at them? Move the dread items to one side. Don't overthink this. Trust your first reaction. You’re not getting rid of anything yet, just rethinking the damn things. If you want to simplify and declutter your life, you start by eliminating the items and traditions that bring you no joy, or that you do just because you’ve always done it, or because what will the neighbors/kids/friends think. 

Does hanging up outside lights make you crazy? Then stop using them! If you still want some sort of outward-facing holiday cheer to remind the neighbors that it is in fact the holidays, simplify it. Put a (or several) lighted things in your window(s), no ladder or staple gun required.

Next, pull out the items that just fill and swell your little holiday heart with crazy holiday cheer, and move them to the other side. Don’t include the things that you feel obligated to cherish. Either it has huge pleasant meaning to you, or it doesn’t. Be ruthless. 

Here’s my Christmas lesson: As the kids grew older they had zero interest in decorating the tree, even if we had cookies and eggnog and Christmas music playing. I too was sick of ornaments, both putting them up and taking them down and packing them oh so carefully away again. So after the first year of decorating the tree all by my lonesome, I stopped doing it. I put lights on the tree because I love little colored lights at Christmas. Guess what? The tree looked beautiful and not a single person cared that there were no ornaments. Stop doing things that don’t bring you joy. Stop caring about what others think. Stop doing things simply because you’ve always done them. Simplify and declutter your life to leave you time and space to breathe and think and enjoy life instead of racing right through it. 

So now you have three piles: the dread/don’t-like pile, the brings-immense-joy pile, and the ambivalent pile. Pack away all the dread items in one box, and the ambivalent stuff in another box and put them somewhere not too difficult to get to but out of sight. Don’t even think about them. Look at the items left and decide if you’re happy with those decorations. If you’re not putting up outside decorations this year but want some lighted object in your windows, go get it.

When it’s time to decorate, use only the joy items. If, after putting those items up, you feel morose and downhearted because something’s missing, wait it out. If you still want that item back after one week, go get it out of the box and put it up. If after one week you’re enjoying the simplicity and white space and peace all around you, not to mention all the time you save not blowing up those eight tiny reindeer and Santa’s sleigh for the front yard — then take those boxes to Goodwill or wherever.

But wait! Oh no! What about the kids’ ornaments? The ones grandma gave them each year (10 of them now if you have a 10-year-old) and the ones you bought every year to commemorate something in their lives that year (another 10). And what about the ornaments from your spouse’s childhood (18+) and the ones from yours (18+). And the ones you bought when you were first married and the ones you bought over the years. Who on earth started this circus and how long will it go on? Because here’s what happens: when the kids move out, they get their box of ornaments. Then when you die, they get your own ornaments collected over the years as well as your childhood ones, as well as any of your parents’ ornaments that were passed down to you. That’s a mighty lot of ornaments. What this should mean is that after two or three generations, people don’t need to buy ornaments anymore.

​And yet .

My suggestion to young parents: rethink the ornament a year or you will be overrun with ornaments by the time the kids grow up. I doubt my millennial kids will ever have the big decorated trees we did. They’re a simpler, pared-down generation. If you absolutely have to do the ornament each year thing, let it be just one. Fight with grandma if you have to, or let her be the ornament giver. Now that I’m at the other end of life (the early other end) I can tell you that we have quite the collection of ornaments and I’m pretty sure the kids won’t want/use half of them. 

Can't lie. I myself couldn’t get rid of the danged things. So after going through the ornaments one last time to weed out the broken or crappy ones, I packed the rest away in marked boxes for the boys to snag when Bob and I topple over into our graves. I don’t bring those boxes out at Christmas, and I rarely ever see them as they are packed away in our storage room. Meaning they don’t clutter up my mind at all and yet offer me the assurance that I am not ripping the kids’ holiday joy and memories out from under them. Plus, let the boys deal with the danged things. 

For those with young kids, slow down on the holiday decorations. Ask anyone over 50 and they’ll tell you: most of it is just stuff you’ll get rid of later. Save yourself while you can!

None. Clutter is stuff you don’t use or love and if you don’t use or love it it shouldn’t be in your home. Those who read my blog or hire my services already know that the goal of decluttering and organizing is to keep only the items that you "know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." William Morris said that and he was smart. Smart, I'm telling you. Really smart. So, once you get rid of the items that don't fit the William Morris model, you will have no clutter. None. Zero. You might have a disorganized pile of paperwork needed to be filed away, but that isn’t clutter. That’s just a task to be scheduled.

How many super bad reasons are there to keep clutter? Probably to infinity and beyond but here are the top four:

They were wedding gifts! and 
They were expensive! and you 
Might need them later! and your 
Grandmother gave it to you and now she’s dead.

Look, I’m sorry about your grandmother but grandmas die. And so will you. And when you die you will leave a bunch of stuff for others to wade through, sort out, box up, and get rid of. And whoever’s sweeping up after your whirlwind existence on this earth will be oh so grateful if you lighten their load by getting rid of things that have no meaning or use to you. There’s a Swedish word for this: dostadning, which is a hybrid of the words death and cleaning. More on this in another post. 

I know, I know. The Container Store and the Dollar Store and all the stores in between have those handy dandy contraptions to organize gift bags and gift boxes, tissue paper and ribbons, wrapping paper and bows — do people even use bows anymore? And if so, here’s hoping they don't just slap them down in the middle of a gift, which is how we kids used bows growing up-- squished down all by their lonesome looking sad and out of place in the middle of a scotch-taped to hell and back present. Here. Happy Birthday or whatever.

But, just because you can keep stuff organized does not mean you need to keep stuff. Boy, that’s good. Write that down.

1. Gather up all your gift wrap supplies. If your Christmas (or any December holiday) wrapping supplies are packed away with your Christmas (or any December holiday) stuff, as mine are, skip those. We’ll do holiday in January.
 
2. Sort items like with like: gift bags in one pile, bows in another and so on, not that I think I have to explain “like with like” but, well, you never know. 

3. Pull out anything you know you won’t ever use, like that 3-inch bit of ribbon, the torn wrapping paper, the butt-ugly gift bag you got God knows where and kept God knows why. If it’s truly just crap that no one would use, get rid of it. If there’s a chance the item can be used by someone else, start a donate pile.

4. Think through your gift wrapping process. The easiest method is to use gift bags. These - and the tissue paper the gift is wrapped in - can be reused by the recipient, often for a dozen or so gifts. Simplify further by sticking to colored or patterned bags rather than “happy birthday” or whatever bags because giving a graduation gift in a plain blue bag is perfectly fine, but the same gift in a “congratulations on the new baby” gift bag might draw some sneers or raise some brows, even if you cross out the “new baby” and write in “graduation”. 

5. Look at what’s left and ruthlessly pare down. Yes, you need tissue paper to wrap gifts in gift bags (why do we essentially wrap the gift twice?) but you don’t need a five-foot stack of it. If you always use gift bags, which is just plain smart, then move the wrapping paper to the donate pile. And if you use gift bags, why keep the bows? No sense going overboard here. How many gift bags to keep? Start with one bag for every gift you think you'll need over the next year. 

6. Pack up the donations and take them to a charity shop. There’s one in Cincinnati (Main Street OTR) that takes donated art and craft supplies.

7. Make a home for your gift wrapping supplies, preferably right where you wrap gifts. 

P.S. If gift wrapping is high art to you - as it was for me once upon a time long ago - then have at your hundreds of wrapping materials and supplies. Don’t let me or anyone else take away your joy. But take the time to set up a wrapping center and come up with a system to keep your materials handy. That’s what The Container Store is for, after all.

I love these easy ones because the answer is so clear, so simple, so...duh! that it only takes a New York second to answer:

​NONE. 

OMG, what is all that gasping and ruffling of feathers and is that crying coming from over there? What the. Clearly there’s been a misunderstanding. Just to make sure we’re all simpatico here: we’re not talking about the wedding gifts you know and love and use, we’re talking about the never-used-yet, probably-never-will-be-used, not-even sure-where-they-are, don’t-even-like gifts. Unused and unloved, I’m saying. Not being used and/or don’t even like, in other words. 

Wait, what? Oh my. Let me make sure I’m getting this. You say you can’t get rid of those wedding gifts because:

THEY WERE WEDDING GIFTS! and 
THEY WERE EXPENSIVE! and you 
MIGHT NEED THEM LATER! and your 
GRANDMOTHER GAVE YOU THOSE AND NOW SHE’S DEAD!

Look, I’m sorry about your grandmother but grandmas die. And so will you. And when you die you will leave a bunch of stuff for others to wade through, sort out, box up, and get rid of. And whoever’s sweeping up after your whirlwind existence on this earth will be oh so grateful if you lighten their load by getting rid of the things that have no meaning or use to you now. There’s a Swedish word for this: dostadning, which is a hybrid of the words death and cleaning. But more on that in another post. 

If the reason you’re hanging on to unused/unloved wedding gifts is one of the four above, practice saying these words out loud: SO WHAT? Say them again, louder: SO WHAT?  

So what if they were wedding gifts? What? No one can ever get rid of things that were wedding gifts, just because they were wedding gifts? As if this would be bad luck for your marriage? Really?  If you’re not using/loving something, pass it on to someone who will.  

So what if they were expensive? If it’s about money, then just sell the damn things online or take them to a consignment shop. It wasn’t your money anyway, just saying.

So what if you might need them later? You haven’t used those 12 china egg cups yet, why on earth would you need them next year? There are people in this world who would actually use them now. So pass them on. 

So what if grandma gave you those and now she’s dead? Again, sorry about your loss but if you don’t love that painting of a lonely sheep in the field on a dark rainy night, and if you know none of your kids love it, then why hold on to it? Grandma would love for that poor sheep to go to someone who appreciates it. 

Well, THAT took a lot longer than I thought it would. Who knew that wedding gifts could cause so much ruckus? Can't wait till we get to Great Aunt's collection of "nun-sized hankies", which do, I assure you, exist. 

It's probably true that there are some good articles or pictures or recipes or projects in that pile of magazines sitting dejectedly and slowly withering away over there on that shelf. But I am here to tell you that the probability of most of us going back to that stack on a regular basis is exactly zero. Truly. There are only two reasons to hang on to old magazines. (1.) someone in your home is an artist and actually uses magazines on a regular basis or (2.) someone reads them on a regular basis. 

Oh, but maybe they'll be worth something some day because how many old National Geographic magazines can there possibly be in the world? Well then by all means take them to a rare books person and find out for sure. But for the rest of us? Give them to an art teacher, sell them at Half Price Books, or donate them to an assisted living facility. Pack them up and be done with it. 

I know that for some of you this will be painful. I feel the panic in your heart. I hear the wail in your throat. I know you've built up special relationships with each of those 28 black slacks taking up an inordinate amount of closet space and requiring you to whip hangers right and left willy-nilly as you seek out the skinny-day black pants, the bloated-day black pants, the I-am-looking-good black pants, or the to-hell-with-it-I'm-gonna-be-comfortable black pants, but. ​Seriously? Really? 

Now if you're a member of the "uniform" or "capsule" wardrobe club — where you wear black slacks every single day to simplify your life by eliminating the dreaded what-do-I-wear question we all face every dang morning of our lives until our last dying day — then woohoo! Have at it. The Silicon Valley geeks live like that and just look how successful they are. 

But many of us aren't members of those clubs and it's to you that I say Seriously? Really? because I'm betting that you also have a wide variety of, say, beige pants, or blue blouses, or Christmas sweaters. Not to mention shoes to match, purses to coordinate, jewelry to pop. No judgement here but. But. If you want to live the freedom, experience the headiness, taste the joy that comes with a pared down, simplified, just-what-you-need, everything-where-you-can-find-it-in-two-seconds closet, and leave behind forever the overstuffed drawers, the shoe shelving in the guest room, the sagging closet rods, the last minute panic to find that one particular blouse you know is in here, then stop. Just stop. 

As this post covers black pants only, there's a super simple remedy to figure out which to keep and which to send out into the universe of plenty and it's this: Put all those black pants in another room. Far away if you can. The basement if you have to. Then, mark the day on your calendar and in one year (or six months if you're a quick study) keep only the slacks you wanted bad enough to go traipsing through the house to get and only those you absolutely love. Bag up the rest immediately and stash them in your car. Repeat for the beige pants. Oh, and equally important: don't buy any new black pants. Or if you really and truly simply must buy new ones, donate one of the pairs you already have. One in, one out. 

My friend Tina always has flowers in her home, so she needs a vase or two or maybe even three. I, on the other hand, am too cheap to buy flowers although I have to admit they do add a sense of luxury and glamour, not to mention color, to a room and I have decided to follow Tina's example and start buying flowers each week. Although I refuse to spend more than $7 tops. No need to be extravagant. We'll see how it goes.

But back to you. Now, if you entertain a lot and really do use 18 vases at a time, then have at it if you have the storage. But most of us probably don't need more than one, maybe two vases at a time and if you fit in that category then that's how many you should keep. One or two. Depending on your flower predilection (had to look up the spelling on that one), maybe keep one for smaller bunches and one for medium bunches. I myself have one vase, which I found at MOMA and was smitten as soon as I saw it because it folds up when not in use and how cool and sensible it that? 

If you want to pare down even more, use tall drinking glasses or canning jars or anything really instead of having a separate "vase" because using the same item item for multiple functions is the height of uncluttered living.  And we all aspire to the heights, right?