Decluttering Hang-up: Replacement Costs – A Slob Comes Clean Leave a comment

Y’all, worrying about the cost of replacing something can be a real decluttering stumbling block.

I recommend asking yourself if you’d be willing to pay the replacement cost of the item (whether $1 or $100) to have a usable space. For example: “Would I be willing to pay $20 to not be hit by falling clutter every time I open this cabinet?”

For a cheapskate like me, framing these paralyzing money-related decluttering decisions this way helps.

This story one of you emailed me recently is the perfect example of how changing this mindset can really impact your space:

Earlier this year I cleaned out our kitchen cupboards and got rid of a lot of duplicates and items we never use. I ended up taking a couple of totes of perfectly good kitchen housewares to Goodwill and a tote of broken/unusable/random items straight to the dump. Over these past few months, everything has been EASIER in the kitchen. There’s only one wooden spoon to get dirty, I have easy access to my favorite pots, and there’s room so I can tell at a glance where something is. It’s been great.

Over the weekend my husband got a coffee maker for his shop. I went to the kitchen cupboard because I was sure we had some filters for that particular pot. Turns out we didn’t, because I had thrown them out in the purge.

My first thought was ‘On no! I shouldn’t have gotten rid of those!’ My second thought was, ‘Are you crazy? Because you got rid of those, (and everything else) your kitchen is now pleasant and manageable.’

Replacement price? $2.75 for a gigantic stack at our local grocery store. A small price to pay for an uncluttered kitchen.

Thank you.

If you want to start decluttering, but just don’t even know where to start, I have tons of blog posts and podcasts here on the site. Or get the entire process spelled out for you in my book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life.