This is a stupendous tip for parting with those items you don’t think you really want to part with:
Incubate and Date!
I recently reorganized my utensil drawer in my kitchen. I love kitchen gadgets and it seems mine had multiplied while I wasn’t looking. Three pair of tongs. Twelve extra knives. An extra ice cream scoop. A nut cracker? (I have no clue the last time I needed a nut cracker.)
Instead of trying to justify why I needed to keep all these nifty gadgets, I loaded them into an extra bin to incubate for a month. I kept the bin in my basement. If I was in my kitchen and suddenly needed a nut cracker, a quick trip down the stairs and I was back in business. I’d take the nut cracker out of the bin and back into the utensil drawer. Essentially, I had a month to figure out if I really needed any of these gadgets or not. Guess what? I didn’t make a single trip to the incubator. (Not even for the nutcracker as shocking as that may seen.) So, everything in the incubator is going straight to charity.
Give the incubator a try next time you’re on the fence about items you encounter in an organizing project. Just be sure to set a date and then, when the date comes, anything left in the incubator, goes!
Lovingly lifted (with permission!) from the lovely Aby. Aby Garvey is a professional organizer and the owner of simplify 101, inc. Her mission is to help you create time and space for what matters most in your home and life. Aby is the author of the e-book “the happy scrapper - simple solutions to get organized and get scrapping!” Visit the simplify 101 website for organizing ideas and to subscribe to Aby’s organizing email newsletter.
Now that we’re almost completely done moving, I’m going to start doing this. I want no more boxes hiding out and never looked into… Ever… (Of course, don’t we all have some odd little boxes like that? I swear, they multiply in the night!)
