There are multiple surprising items that professional organizers warn against keeping for too long! Can you guess them?
Unsurprisingly, while we all try to be as tidy and neat as possible, there are always new things to throw away in our houses. And when you ask professional organizers, the list that you may have thought to be small grows exponentially!
In the end, there are always certain items we think we need that we end up keeping, and, as chance may have it, we do not end up using them ever.
What’s more, there are many benefits to decluttering; in the end, the more things you have, the more you have to manage, and at one point, the clutter can be too much!
The best thing you can do is make sure you make do with what you label as things to throw away, be it by donating the items, recycling them, or just actually throwing them away!
There are many items in everyone’s home that need to be sorted, but today we brought you the ones that are the most surprising so that you can finally let go of some things to throw away and make space in your life!
What do you think people end up keeping when they should be throwing it away? Let us know your answer in the comments!
Things to throw away! The “bag of bags”
Yes, we mean it! The one thing that every professional organizer ends up encountering in most homes they enter is what is fondly named the “bag of bags” that a lot of us have somewhere in the kitchen.
Imagine this: you go to the store and you forget your bags, so you get some new ones.
Be they reusable ones or plastic ones, you end up bringing back a ton of shopping bags. Since we do not want to waste them, we end up placing them in a bag of bags to use later.
In reality, you are very unlikely to ever use some of the bags in that bag. And while some of the oddly shaped ones or really big ones are good to keep in case you need them, there is no need to keep them all; this is one of those things to throw away!
So do yourself a favor and go through your bag of bags, if you have one, or through your collection, and see which ones you truly use, want to keep, and are useful. The rest you should wash, donate, or just simply throw away.
One thing’s for sure: You need to discard most of them.
Old holiday decor
When it comes to holiday decor, more often than not, we end up getting more and more each year. Sure, you may end up saying that you are not going to get more, but there is something that will catch your eye, and you will find new pieces you love each year.
The drawback here is that there will be decor that you choose not to take out this year, and the sad reality we all have to face is that if you are not using it this year, the chance of actually using it next year is closer to zero than to a hundred!
This is why you should make do with the items that you are not using and free up some space.
Store all the holiday decor you gravitate towards each year and love, along with the heirlooms you are keeping and not going to throw away, and then donate the rest. You can even sell some online if you are looking to make some of the money back.
The bottom line is that any decor you haven’t used in the last one to two years is among the things to throw away.
If you have fragile decorations and heirlooms, make sure you have a safe space to keep them. If you are not sure about it, we recommend you invest in specialized ornament storage. These ones here are our favorites, and they are both affordable and useful!
Instruction manuals
We all keep those home manuals and appliance operation manuals on hand in case we are going to need them.
But with how technology has evolved, there are higher chances you will search for it online or watch a YouTube video when something goes wrong rather than start going through the closet to find the appliance’s manual.
Once you have installed and started up the item, the manual ends up being discarded in the box or in a drawer, along with many others, and you should stop hoarding them since they will not be useful in the long run.
They are among those things to throw away, and before you do so, make sure you write down the brand and model number of all the appliances. Keep the list on your computer or phone so that you can easily find what you need later.
All those manuals? They’re great for recycling or an amazing aid during BBQ season for starting traditional fires!
All those cardboard boxes
Speaking of appliances, you probably have the boxes they have come in. Along with most of the shoe boxes from your shoes, we presume a pretty good number of the cardboard boxes that brought some online orders to your doorstep.
Do not get us wrong, they are great when you need some boxes fast, but when you end up having tons of these boxes, they turn from potential aid to an actual problem!
Professional organizers even see the hoards of cardboard boxes found in people’s homes as one of their biggest enemies.
So do yourself a favor: search through them find which ones are actually useful, and bring the rest (which means the majority) to recycling.
You probably have some stashed away already, so any new ones are not going to help you with anything else but create more clutter and mess to clean; they’re things to throw away!
Or donate to a friend who’s moving, though they probably already have enough boxes of their own.
Old Clothing
Here’s where we’re going to hit a sore spot for a lot of people. There are probably a lot of old clothes in your closet that you have forgotten about, and it is time to dispel a myth.
Professional organizers end up sort of ditching the whole “if you haven’t worn it in a year, throw it away” way of thinking.
In the end, there are lots of reasons why you haven’t worn something, and this definitely goes for those more elegant and special clothes you have. There is no use for some clothes.
Ask yourself: Do you still need all those formal clothes? Will you need all the special event clothes or just some? Do you still fit some of your clothes?
Some clothes may have special meanings (no one is saying to get rid of your wedding dress), but that one dress you wore for a godchild’s baptism is not worth keeping around if you cannot wear it.
You can keep the memories and cherish them, but holding onto fabric like this for no reason is not healthy, and someone else can enjoy them now if you donate them.
Let’s be honest; we end up keeping a lot of items we never use, but there are certain times when we throw something away and regret it since we could have used it for something else later. If you do not want to end up in such a situation, check out what useful household items you should stop throwing away here!
