One of the best methods for helping to decide what to do with an item is to ask yourself how the thing makes you feel when you see it. If it brings up memories of a fun trip or a happy time in your life and it’s attractive, it might be a good candidate for a display item. If, on the other hand, it’s a gift from someone you don’t particularly like but you feel obliged to keep it, perhaps you can relieve yourself of the guilt (and the item) by giving it away to someone who will really enjoy it. Our homes are full of things that conjure up feelings of one kind or another (often unexpectedly as we glimpse them in passing). Considering each item for its positive impact on your everyday life is a good way to decide what stays out, what goes into storage, and what you’d be better off cleansing from your house and mind forever.

Most home organization professionals urge their clients to set time limits for usable items, reasoning that if they haven’t used something in six months or a year they probably never will and should get rid of it. A time limit is an effective measure for a lot of household clutter, such as single-purpose kitchen tools that you bought on a whim (or received as a gift) but have never used. Setting a one-year limit on everyday clothing is also a good idea. Other items aren’t so well suited to the time limit test. For example, if you bought a plumbing snake to clear a drain a while back and you’ve been lucky enough not to have needed it since, you’d still want to keep it because clogged drains are a fact of life and you’ll need that snake sooner or later.

Another test for assessing clutter involves replacement cost versus real-life value. If you think of storage space in your home as having value, how much is it costing you to keep inexpensive items that you’ll probably never need again? This is a good test for people who tend to hang onto leftover building and landscape materials. For example, a new sheet of drywall costs about six dollars. A partial sheet leftover from your basement remodel is worth even less. Throwing out the drywall cutoffs is a good investment, since the value of the storage space they occupy is worth far more than the replacement cost of new material.