Over the years I've read about a lot of organizing and decluttering methods and used several of them. The best method I've found for organizing and decluttering your physical possessions is the "Clear And Simple" method by Marla Dee, and in particular her S.T.A.C.K.S method.
Text: https://clearsimple.com/stacks/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfBF5n5kTQA
STACKS stands for:
- SORT -- Just quickly sort into categories. DO NOT make any keep/toss decisions during this step except for obvious garbage.
- TOSS -- Go through each category one at a time and make keep/toss decisions. This is usually the hardest and most emotional part of the process, so doing it as a separate category-by-category process lets you concentrate on the specific type of items you're looking at and switch to a different category or take a long break if you're getting bogged down because of decision overload or emotion.
- ASSIGN A HOME -- After each category or sub-category has been weeded out to just what you're going to keep, decide where in your house you should keep it. Don't try to make this decision during the SORT or TOSS steps. Making keep/toss decisions is emotional enough without adding extra complexity to them by trying to decide where to store something or who to give it to at the same time.
- CONTAINERIZE -- Now, and only now, it is time to think about what containers, baskets, dividers, etc your have or could buy, because you can't really make an intelligent decision about what containers you need until you know for certain what objects you're going to keep and what cabinets, drawers, or shelves you're going to store them in.
- KEEP IT UP -- After your house is completely organized and decluttered, keep it that way by doing a mini-STACKS process on a regular schedule to put everything back in it's place and deal with any newly acquired possessions.
- SIMPLIFY -- With your stacks process firmly established, continue keeping an eye out for ways you could simplify or improve your life.
Some of my specific notes:
Like Marie Kondo, Marla deals with one category of stuff at a time, but instead of rummaging through everything in your house looking for things in that category, Marla sets up a bunch of boxes, puts a category label on each one, and then just goes through a specific area or room sorting each thing she picks up into it's category as she goes, then she moves on to another area. To me that makes a lot more sense than hunting through your whole house looking items in a specific category.
Second, I've often read that you should look at each item once, make a decision, put it where it belongs, and move on. IOW never touch anything more than once. But the fallacy of that is you won't really know how many mugs or dishes or whatever you have until you get them all together in one box, and you likewise won't know which ones you like best until you see them all side by side. So if you think you have too much of some particular thing, there's really no way you can make an informed choice about how many to get rid of or which ones to get rid of until you see them all together side by side. Therefore making keep/toss decisions as you go isn't practical. That's why both Marie Kondo and Marla Dee advocate gathering everything into categories and even sub categories before you start making keep/toss decisions. And Marla Dee's box method is better than Marie Kondo's toss it all on the bed method imo for several reasons.
Marla likes to use banker boxes because they can be set up without tape (which makes it easy to re-flatten them for storage) and they have separate lids (which means you don't have to reach over the upright flaps to put stuff in them). I prefer sturdy moving boxes of banker box size because they are usually sturdier and sometimes cheaper. Moving boxes also come in a variety of sizes and shapes, which makes a difference if you're sorting bulky stuff. And taping boxes to use them, then cutting to tape to flatten them for storage doesn't bother me at all.
One of the reasons Marla likes to use boxes instead of sorting things into piles is that you can neatly stack the boxes against a wall and come back to your STACKS project hours or even days later confident that everything will still be right where you left it and the labeled boxes will keep you from forgetting what category is in each box. There's a lot of truth in that. One of the problems I've run into repeatedly while deluttering is taking a break for a couple of days and when I come back I've forgotten where I left off and what the difference was between similar piles of sorted stuff.
Another advantage of sorting into boxes instead of piles is you can easily pick up the box and move it to wherever that category belongs. It's hard to do that with a loose pile of stuff.
Any comments, corrections, or questions about this subject are welcome. For the next 100 days I'll be applying this process to my entire (cluttered, overloaded) house in preparation for moving to a smaller house 1400 miles away.