5 Things Minimalists Always Throw Away After a Year

We all love the idea of a soothing, pared-back lifestyle. But, turning your living space into the stuff of minimalist dreams takes a lot of work.

Before you start refreshing decor or rearranging your rooms, you’ll need to create a clutter-free foundation— but figuring out where to begin can be overwhelming. That’s why our organization experts suggest starting your clear-out with one question in mind: have you used this item in the last year?

From closets to cabinets, the pros have come up with a definitive guide to the first five things you should go through when taking on the project of decluttering your entire home.

Clothes

The closet is typically the first place that comes to mind when we begin to think about decluttering our spaces—and clothing is one of the best categories to start with when leaning into a minimalist home and lifestyle.

“Start by clearing out seasonal clothing and footwear you didn’t use last year, with the exception of special occasion clothes such as cocktail dresses,” Amélie Saint-Jacques of Amelie Organizes suggests.

Reba Bassett of Revelation Organizing recommends making this a gradual process and has a go-to closet-clearing technique she loves to share with her clients.

“At the beginning of the year, turn all your hangers backward,” Bassett says. “Once you wear an item and rehang, turn it the right way. At the end of the year, pull out all the hangers facing backward and evaluate whether you really need the clothing items.”

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Makeup & Skincare

Once your closet is feeling a little more clutter-free, you can move on to the cosmetics and toiletries stored on a vanity, dresser, or in the bathroom.

Start by putting aside your everyday essentials and instead tackle any old palettes, expired bottles, unopened gifts, and pile of perfume samples.

After the straightforward choices have been thrown away or put aside to give away, you can start to make the tougher choices and streamline your routine itself, or choose your favorites between duplicates of the same product types.

Electronics & Appliances

The next areas on your decluttering to-do list should be your kitchen cabinets and office drawers, which have a serious tendency to accumulate unused or outdated electronics, miscellaneous plugs, or frayed, unusable cords.

“I always recommend getting rid of small appliances—especially things like a juicer or bread machine—and any old electronics or random cords,” Saint-Jacques says.

While a waffle maker, panini press, or cotton candy machine can be fun to have on hand, if you haven’t used them in over a year, they’re likely to be better off in a new home,

Holiday Decor

Putting up the Christmas tree or setting up your Thanksgiving table becomes a lot easier when you aren’t sifting through boxes of decorations or untangling strings of broken bulbs. As you plan for the holiday season this year, set aside some extra time to declutter (and reorganize your holiday decor, since the boxes are out).

“Each season as you bring out decor, evaluate whether you still like the decorations and want them in your home,” Bassett recommends. “Decorating is much when every item you have is something you love.”

It can feel tough to part with gifted or inherited items like ornaments, special occasion dinnerware, or table linens—but chances are, if you didn’t use it the previous year or two, you likely won’t be using it at all.

Consider keeping a select few of the extra-sentimental items that you don’t reach for regularly in a keepsake box, tucked away someplace safe.

Extra Storage Items

The final thing to get rid of is a type of clutter that tends to fly under the radar: excess storage containers, garment and dust bags for evening wear, shoes, and purses, and extra grocery bags.

A minimalist home is the goal through this decluttering journey, and the result should be fewer items—not more—so you likely won’t need any more containers, baskets, or boxes than what you are already using, and most luxury items that need to stay in protective bags come with them when you purchase, so it’s unlikely your spares will be put to use.

The same goes for totes and grocery bags, which tend to overflow and cause a cluttered feel. It is ideal to keep some of these on hand for reuse, but clear down to what can neatly fit in one larger tote or a storage basket.

How to Decide What to Keep and What to Get Rid Of

Creating (and maintaining) a sleek, minimalist space and life isn’t always as easy as it looks when scrolling through our socials, and Ben Soreff of H2H Organizing has a few words of advice.

“The last things we want after a clear-out are anxiety or regret,” he says. “So it is important to ask, why haven’t we used this in a year?”

After rediscovering something you haven’t used in a year, you can ask questions like: is it sentimental or a keepsake? How expensive is it? How hard is would it be to get it again? By asking these questions, we can truly decide if we are keeping it or not.