I haven’t met anyone yet who tossed these items and regretted it.
Many times things come into our homes in innocent ways, but when they quit serving their purpose we feel guilty about not using them, we forget the items are in our home, or we feel guilty about the money we wasted and stubbornly hold on to them ‘To Use Someday’. In my experience ‘Someday’ rarely ever comes!
The Items that I threw out were things I needed to permit myself to get rid of. Most of them had no recycling or reusing value It was items like expired coupons, used gift cards, and phone chargers that I no longer had a phone for.
These items made me frustrated every time I saw them, but I couldn’t seem to take the time to go through my coupons, clean out my junk drawer, or discard obsolete electronics. All the extra items in my office space clogged up my desk and made it impossible to find important things.
Feeling frustrated every time you see an item is not good for your mental health or your relationship with your family. It’s much better to learn from your mistakes and let the items go.
Annie Eklöv
If you can identify something you learned from the items you need to discard, it can be easier to let them go because you can be confident that you won’t make the same mistake again at least not intentionally.
Annie Eklöv
When it’s hard to start decluttering your home, starting with trivial items like old coupons, half-used pens, or limp rubber bands can get you started and get the momentum rolling. Often if we just get started on the easy items we get excited about transforming our home, and continue into slightly harder spaces!
These Items Clogg Up Your Office! I Can Almost Guarantee That You Can Toss Them Today and You Won’t Miss Them At All!
Electronics
- Old cords. Get rid of them if you no longer know what they go to.
2. Old Chargers that you no longer have a phone for.
3. Obsolete Electronics
- Old Phones
- Old computers
- Old monitors
- Old TV’s
- Old gaming consoles
- Old radios
- Old tape players
- Old cd players
- Old VHS players
In other words, if it doesn’t work and it’s not worth fixing get rid of it.
4. Get rid of CDs if you no longer have a CD player.
5. DVDs if you no longer have a DVD player.
6. Get rid of Tapes if you no longer have a tape player
7. Anything else that you own which is missing the accompanying player.
Office Supplies
8. Throw away rubberbands that lost their stretch.
9. Toss staplers and staples if you have a mess like I did where you can’t find the right staples for an old stapler and I bought a bunch of different kinds of staples that didn’t work. When I finally decluttered I had 3 staplers and a bunch of staples that didn’t go together! I had to get rid of everything and get a new stapler that I could actually buy staples for.
10. Donate excessive thumbtacks and paper clips. We don’t use as many of these supplies as we used to now that most everything is digital.
11. Donate excessive pens and pencils. For some reason, we all seem to have more pens and pencils than we can use up in our lifetime! Keep your favorites that feel good to write with.
12. Donate part of your stock of home office supplies if you have more paper, sticky notes, note pads, or any other paper product that you no longer use as often because life is more digital than it used to be.
Often schools and homeless shelters are happy to take these supplies off your hands. Even Goodwill or other secondhand stores can resell office supplies if they are still in the packaging.
If it’s nostalgic, take it to a place where they can turn your obsolete media into computer files.
Annie Eklöv
Eliminating unnecessary Paper Clutter
13. Rewards Cards. You can now use your phone number, social security number, or your driver’s license if you need to register points for a rewards club.
14. Owners Manuels. You can now look up owner’s manuals on the internet. It’s often faster and easier to look it up on the internet than to try to figure out where you put the owner’s manual.
15. Expired Coupons
16. Old Take-Out Menus
17. Take-Out Menus that you can find on the internet
18. Used Gift Cards
19. Old Magazines that no longer inspire you
20. Old Note Books are full of old notes that you no longer need to reference.
21. Products from classes or conferences that are over.
22. Advertisements that come in with your mail
23. Old receipts that you don’t need to save for returns or for taxes
24. Used envelops
Eliminating Clutter On Your Phone
25. Declutter duplicate photos
26. Get rid of apps you don’t use
27. Make sure you don’t have paid subscriptions for apps that you no longer use. It’s possible to delete the app and still be paying for a subscription.
28. Unsubscribe from email lists that you don’t actually benefit from.
29. Delete contacts in your phonebook if you no longer remember who they are.
30. Unfollow Social Media accounts that give you a bad vibe, or that cause you to compare yourself to others and feel bad about yourself.
Random Things You May Have In Your Office, That Probably Need Decluttering
31. Loose change. find a jar to put it in and take it to the bank when it’s full.
32. Scented candles. You probably have one of these in your office. If you don’t like the scent, if it’s almost used up, or if you like my husband and are allergic to some scented candles get rid of it. For some reason, we tend to collect 3/4 burnt candles and instead of using up the last little bit and getting them out of our homes, we tend to have a closet where used candles go to languish. Take the challenge and use up your candles!
33. Get rid of anything in your office that you don’t like. This includes gifts that you may feel obligated to keep, but if the giver truly cares about you, they won’t be happy that you are keeping something that causes you frustration. The point of the gift was to say that they care about you. The gift already did its job when you received it by communicating love, thoughtfulness, and caring.
I hope this helps you get inspired to declutter.
I never wanted to declutter, but I realized that other members of my family were not doing well surrounded by the clutter I stubbornly insisted we needed.
I finally started decluttering so my son who has ADHD would feel calmer in our home, and to my surprise, I liked the feel of our home much better once I relieved it of all the excess stuff.
Annie Eklöv
