Declutter By Staging A Mock Buy-Back

If you have trouble getting rid of stuff this simple exercise forces you to put a hard figure on the worth of your possessions and assess whether you really want them or not.

Photo by sufinawaz.

Earlier this week we shared the /”This Isn’t My Stuff” approach to decluttering with you, courtesy of the organisation blog Unclutterer. One Unclutterer reader offered an interesting decluttering strategy a friend used to help her purge her place.

I’m rubbish at decluttering, but I had a girlfriend help me do my place.

She brought $US20 in coins to start me off, and put everything I owned to one side of the room. If I wanted to keep anything, I had to buy it for a dollar (Just one dollar!) at a time. You soon realise that you wouldn’t pay a dollar for that CD in a junk shop – so why are you keeping it? All the money I paid went to charity, the amount of stuff I didn’t want also went to a charity store. It’s amazing how unappealing that old sweater looks when you have to pay for it.

This technique has all the makings of a solid decluttering strategy. It forces you to attach real—not emotional—value to things, it appeals to your sense of altruism by both a cash and a physical donation to charity, and it involves an outside party to keep you from slowing down or cheating the system. Have a favourite decluttering strategy to share? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Reader Uncluttering Strategy: Buy Back Your Stuff [Unclutterer]