Are you actually using those samples, or just holding on to them in case there's a war and maybe shampoo gets rationed? I totally understand being prepared. My armageddon cabinet (What? Doesn’t everybody have one?) is fully stocked with candles, life straws, a camping stove with fuel, and my trusty Red Cross solar-powered and crank-up phone charger/radio/flashlight/omelette cooker. 

However. If you’re serious about paring down, then stuff’s gotta go and stuff’s gotta stop coming in. And these little tubes of goop are much easier to get rid of compared to your grandma’s china, right? So let's do this.

1. Gather up and separate lotion, conditioner, shoe shiners, shower caps, tiny toothbrushes the size of your finger, etc. 

2. If you travel, then save two of each although wait, won’t the hotel have more? Don’t they always have more? Ah, but camping, you say, or places where they don’t have these precious commodities. So, keep two of each although do you really expect to use the shower cap? I do have to interrupt here and say that I keep the good lotion (not the cheap fake smelly ones) in my bedside table where I use it every night before bed because...hands getting older and dryer every day now.

3, Bag up the rest and donate to a homeless shelter, food bank, foster care agency, or your favorite charity shop.

4. If you can’t bear to “waste” these by passing them on to others, then use them up. Remove the big bottle of shampoo and condition from the shower and force yourself to squeeze every last drop out of these puppies. 

I know it's hard, but unless you use these items right away, stop bringing them home, even if "you're paying for them anyway” or "they're so cute" or "I may need them someday." It’s just more stuff. 

​It’s the word need that makes decluttering downright complicated. But I’m assuming you’re reading this because you really and truly I-mean-it-this-time want to pare down your home, your life, your stuff. I mention this because you may feel attached to those 25 coffee mugs you’ve collected over the years, but you don’t need them, unless you’re a church meeting room, in which case you probably need more. 
 
1. Gather up all your coffee cup and mugs and take a good look at them. Spend a few minutes in silence with any fond memories you might have.
 
2. Add up how many people in your household drink coffee, or tea if you use the same mug, although my British mother would be horrified because teacups and coffee cups are not the same. Shudder. For now, count only the family members who drink hot beverages on a regular basis; we’ll do guests later.
 
3. Multiply the number of coffee drinkers by two: one cup to use throughout the day, and one in the cabinet or waiting to be washed or left upstairs on your nightstand. 
 
4. Choose two favorite mugs for yourself and move them into the cabinet. Then either choose mugs for the rest of the household or let them choose their own. Move those into the cabinet.
 
5. Guests. How many guests do you typically have at one time during the average month? Whatever your answer is, choose one cup per guest and add these to the cabinet.
 
6. Larger gatherings: About five or six times a year my friend Betsy has 25 to 50 to 100 people at her house because she’s into cooking and entertaining and she likes people, which is pretty much the exact opposite of me. So Betsy needs (uses) all her coffee cups. And maybe you do too. If so, gather those puppies up and put them way up high, way down low, or way over there so they don't overcrowd and clutter your everyday coffee cup shelf. 

7. Gather up all the cups that didn’t make the cut and take them to your favorite charity shop. If there are one or two mugs that you don't use because of cracks or broken handles, but the idea of getting rid of is breaking your heart, then find a use for them; to hold pens, or flowers, or bubblegum.
 
8. Step back and admire that shelf! It’s peaceful and uncluttered and...happy. Peaceful, uncluttered, .happy shelves are good because they'll make you feel peaceful, uncluttered, and happy every time you look at that shelf.

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. 

​Let's step into the bathroom for a minute. Or if you're really lucky and have a linen closet, head thither. Hopefully, every towel you own is in one of these two places — unless they're in the wash — because if you have towels anywhere else, we'll need to figure out why and that just might turn into a whole new kettle of fish. See: "Seriously? You're KEEPING THAT?" or "So what? The money's already SPENT."

Actually, step away from the towels for a minute because first we need to do some heavy soul searching because if we goof up on this you may not have a clean towel after your next shower and will be forced to pull a dirty one from the laundry or use a pillowcase or wool blanket or a sock or something equally not absorbent. Although actually, the wool blanket might work. 

1. How many people are in your household?
Generally speaking, think three towels per person: one being used, one waiting to be used, and one hanging out in the laundry. But your number will depend on your answers to questions #2 and #3 below because nothing is easy, especially soul-searching.

2. How often do you need a new towel?
Your call here. I'm going to stick my neck out even though I can already hear the cries of disgust and say that we use the same towel for about a week because (A.) we hang them up so they dry quickly and (B.) we're (mostly) clean after showering. This is a no-judging zone. 

3. How often do you do laundry?
I do laundry about once every two weeks because it's just the two of us. That's 14 pairs of underwear if you're counting and I have no problem with that number whatsoever. But really, I'll do towels whenever I have a full load. I'm flexible like that.

Now starts the crazy hard work and it involves math. If x people need a clean towel every x days, and you do laundry every x days, how fast is the train going? But really, you don't need math if you stick to the three towels per person and do laundry once a week. However, if you want a clean towel every day because yuck! then the math, my friend, (and the laundry) is all on you.

4. How many guests do you typically have at one time and for how long? 
Think two towels per guest per week because sometimes said guests don't hang up their towels even after you specifically point out the shiny towel racks you hung just that purpose and sometimes said guests really were raised in a barn. Not naming names here. 

Whew. Take a break. Have a nice cup of tea or a stiff gin & tonic. Then choose the exact number of towels you decided on and put them as close to the bathroom as your home layout allows — in the bathroom is best — then bag up the remainder to (A). Cut up for rags (Unless you already have enough rags and if so please I beg you don't add more rags as we'll just have to go through them later.) (B.) Donate to Goodwill or someplace/someone else. If you're going to donate, go put those towels in your car right now. Then, after all that hard thinking and soul-searching work, you may just need a shower. 

I could so easily get on my soapbox and pontificate about how I grew up in a household — and lived the first half of my adult life - with one set of sheets per bed. One. When they were dirty, you washed them. When they were dry, you put them back on. The upside? No folding! The downside? Night sweats. Kids wetting the bed. Vomit. I won't go on.

Now that I have two sets I can tell you it's heaven, although I still usually put the ones I just washed right back on the bed because...folding. If you have more than two sets, choose the two highest quality and donate the rest to animal shelters or the charity shop of your choice. Then luxuriate in the white space on your closet shelves and sleep well knowing that if something untoward does happen in the night, you're covered. 

I once read that Queen Elizabeth has her people turn the sheets every day so they wear evenly and thus last longer. I'm not there. Maybe if I had people.

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. 

I love books and for years I collected them, although maybe hoarded is the more honest term. I am a voracious reader, a description I once read in a book and have ever since tried to casually work into a sentence describing my own reading proclivity — another word gleaned from a book  — and here I am: using these words in sentences. Books really do Expand Your Mind.

Truthfully, I often like books better than I like people, especially when people insist on talking while I'm reading, like when they want to know if I'm ready for dessert or if I'm ready to leave the kids' baseball game that ended 15 minutes ago and the kids are hungry. Jeez. When my kids were little we had a robust collection of books so they could Learn Stuff and be Encouraged To Read and Grow Up As Readers. I read to them every night of their lives, even way after they could read on their own, and getting into bed every night to read for a few hours myself was a highlight (sometimes the highlight) of my day.

But enough is enough.

Even better is Mary Poppins's pronouncement that "Enough is as good as a feast". 

During my three-year purging odyssey, when I got rid of 75% of what we had collected in our 23-year sojourn into suburban life, I sold or donated or forced on friends no fewer, and probably way more than,  800 books. I don't miss a one. I still have my enough is as good as a feast selection because I kept a hundred or so of the books that would have ripped out my soul to get rid of. And, I always have the library for more.

Why get rid of books? Well, (1.) they take up a lot of space and require shelving which also takes up a lot of space; (2.) you have to move them every time you paint, which I do way too often to be healthy; (3.) they collect dust and require dusting, which I do much less frequently than I paint; (4.) they're just more stuff, which is what I was working so hard to eliminate; and (5.) I only got rid of the ones I wasn't reading and didn't treasure.

How many books to keep? Only those that you treasure way deep down in your soul. Deep deep down. You'll know the ones. Pack up the rest and sell, donate to charity, or give to the library. As always, move them straight to your car. Then come back in and revel in the openness of your shelves, the white space in the room, and the sense of peace that comes with eliminating the unessential and making room for the treasures. You will enjoy your books more. I promise.
​

My sister brought this one up and it led to a short but intense discussion. Glenda's house is freezing cold because she lives that way, so slippers - as well as long underwear and sometimes a house hat or scarf - are required for comfort and to reduce the effects of hypothermia. I used to live that way as well — we had competitions to see who could wait the longest to turn the heat on in the fall - but I recently moved into a condo building where cold floors don't exist when you're on the 7th floor and heat rises, which it most assuredly does. 

Our discussion hinged mostly on the question of slippers you can wear outside for the quick jaunt to the car or the trash can or to get a closer look at just what your neighbor is doing over there behind the shrubs, is that a joint? We then segued into do you really want to wear the slippers that trudged through wet grass or dog pee or dead spiders back into the house? Which led to does not said action defeat the second purpose of slippers, which is to leave your contaminated shoes at the door so you don't track things into your house and cause more sweeping and vacuuming than is good for one's health and one's back and one's reading time? A hearty NO! to the first question. An enthusiastic YES! to the second. We were riled up now.

Our conclusion? You only need one pair of good quality slippers (because quality almost always pays) and these should be indoor slippers only. As for the outdoor slippers, we agreed that it makes more sense to have boots that are easy to slip into (because sometimes you have to hurry to catch the neighbors at their shenanigans). Get rid of all the rest and make someones else's feet warm and happy.

All this is to say that now I'm in a pickle. What do I do with the LLBean sheepskin indoor/outdoor slipper clogs perched high on the shelf in our condo-with-the-warm-floors closet? I like them. But. If I don't wear them during this first winter in the condo, I am determined to send them out into the world. I will miss them. It saddens me. And I might just put them on right now as my feet are a tiny bit cold after all.

One.
Unless you're an avid baker and you need a special size for ...what?...tartlets? And if you are in fact an avid baker then please, please, oh please would you bake me a lemon meringue pie or some proper British scones or anything made with marzipan or almond paste (I'm thinking there is a difference?) and I'll come pick them up. Thank you in advance. 

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?