Top 5 Household Items We All Need to Edit

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In my career as an organizer, I’ve noticed people tend to collect the same kinds of things in large quantities. These are my top 5 things you have unintentionally collected and probably need to pare down:

1. Reusable Shopping Bags

Whether you buy them out of guilt for forgetting your bags at home, or you’ve been given them for free after purchasing something expensive, you probably have more than you need. First, sort your bags by size and quality so you keep the highest quality and most useful sizes. Place a few different sized bags in each vehicle, and if you walk, by the door you exit. If you carry a backpack or purse, keep a small foldable one in there. If you tend to bring wine to parties, keep 1 or 2 wine bags near your wine storage and if you tend to pack food from your kitchen to bring elsewhere, keep a few in the kitchen. Some of your bags can be used to collect donations or clothing you want to consign and to bring online returns to stores. Donate or give away the rest on Nextdoor or Craigslist.

Next, create a routine to make sure you remember to use your bags. Here are some suggestions to help you create habit-forming routines:

1. Create a rule to put bags back in the car after unloading groceries. Make it a part of the task.

2. Put your bags with something you always need in the car - your keys or your shoes.

3. Create a location-based reminder on your smartphone to notify you when you are at the store to remember your bags.

4. Mentally map getting your shopping cart to remembering your bags by visualizing placing your bags in the cart.

5. Create consequences for forgetting: If while shopping, you realize you have forgotten your bags, leave your cart at the customer service desk and go get your bags. You will only need to do this a few times before the inconvenience will create a stronger motivation to remember.

6. If you forget your bags and remember as the cashier starts scanning your items, forego bags altogether and load your groceries back into your cart. That’s how they were a second ago anyway, right? When you get to your car, bag your groceries yourself. The inconvenience of this task will help you remember your bags next time.

7. The laundry basket trick - if you have a sturdy plastic laundry basket, you can keep it in the back of your car and load groceries into it. They are surprisingly easy to carry, load, and unload.

8. If all else fails, ask for a paper bag and then commit to reuse it for crafts, compost, or to tote donations to the drop-off. Do not buy a new reusable bag if you don’t need it!

My last tip for reusable shopping bags is to check out these shopping boxes. This is what I use personally and I love them. They are way less likely to crush your items and they fold flat and store very easily.

2. Cables

You probably have a bin or a drawer full of power cables, charging cables, adapters, converters, USB cables, headphones, audio-visual cables, and countless others in various lengths, ages, and functions. Categorizing and organizing cables is one of my favorite things to do at my job, so if you’re in the Atlanta or San Francisco Bay area and you want perfectly organized cables, give me a call!

For everybody else, step one is to sort those cables! Make piles of power bricks, power cables, device chargers, audio/visual, video game, and obsolete cables (for devices you no longer own or for obsolete technology). Step two is to edit your cables - keep one or two extra cables for devices and technology you still own and use and edit down the rest. You can find cable recycling drop-off locations at Earth911 and most Best Buy locations have cable recycling as well.

Step three is to label the cables you keep with these handy cable tags:

I like to coil cables neatly and wrap them with these cable ties. Pro-tip: they can be used to secure rolled posters, pens and pencils, and other supplies too!

Lastly, you’ll want to find a place to store your cables. You could store them together in a bin so you always know where to find cables of any kind (this is my preference) or you could store them near or with the devices they fit. Here are some choices for storing your cables:

Weather-tight totes from The Container Store are my preferred storage method for cables.

These cable organizers from Amazon will work great for smaller cables in a drawer or on a shelf.

3. Paint (that isn’t a color of your walls)

Paint is difficult to dispose of properly and the containers are cumbersome and hard to store. If you have paint that is no longer one of your wall colors, you can visit Earth911 to look up paint drop-off locations in your area.

If you don’t have drop-off locations in your area, there are products like KrudKutter or Homax Paint Hardener that solidify paint and make it safe to throw away in your regular trash. Double check with your garbage collector to make sure solidified paint is acceptable.

For the paint you keep, I like to store mine in small canning jars but there are plastic paint storage containers available as well. They are much easier to store and since they are clear, you can see the color of the paint. I label my paint with the brand, sheen, color, color formula, and the room. I also take a photo of the original paint label so I always know exactly what kind of paint I have. Most places will not take paint for recycling that is not in its original container, so you will have to dispose of it using a hardener I linked above.

4. To-go condiment packets, flatware, and chopsticks.

I don’t need to tell you that plastic flatware and straws are terrible for the environment - you already know that. They are almost never recyclable, and if they are recycled, it is likely part of a program that ships plastic waste to very poor countries. Source: NPR. What can you do about it? Decline flatware preemptively when you place your takeout order. If you use plastic flatware, throw it in the trash so your municipal waste service can handle it properly and keep it out of the oceans.

But this blog is about reducing clutter, and while plastic flatware and condiment packages have a negative effect on the environment, they also have a negative effect on your mental well-being. They are taking up an entire drawer in most kitchens, and that drawer is precious real-estate. Here are some suggestions:

1. Bag up your to-go condiments and donate them to a food bank or an organization that serves meals to the homeless or elderly.

2. Search for recipes that use up condiment packets (there are tons of marinades and dipping sauce recipes you can make!)

3. Buy your own condiment sauces from the grocery store and decline them from takeout orders. Grama’s Sweet Chili Sauce is one of my favorite substitutions for egg-roll dipping sauces.

4. Keep reusable flatware and chopsticks at your desk, in your car, and in your kitchen so you can decline them when offered.

5. Vases from flower deliveries

It’s so nice when somebody sends you flowers! I love having fresh flowers in my house, but I do not keep the vases they come in. I donate them to my local thrift shop. Why? Because I have one or two vases of every size already and I do not need any more. They are bulky to store, they take up a lot of space because they do not nest, and I would much rather have 4 unique vases that I love than 40 clear glass vases that a florist bought in bulk for deliveries. Donating them to thrift stores makes them available for event planners and people making crafts from them. You could also see if your local florist would like the vase returned to them. This completes the cycle and saves your cabinet space!

I hope these tips have been helpful in your decluttering journey! As always, be calm, be organized, be you! ~Kenna