Sometimes 
it’s easy to see the things within your home that would be better situated within a trash bag than lining the floor of your living room. Bits of old food, ancient newspapers and random credit card offers that you’re never going to take up are simple to ditch. However, there are some things that we all hold onto, hermit-ing items away that are, for the most part, completely unnecessary, yet somehow also impossible for us to get rid of. There’s a very fine line between collecting little treasures that contribute something special to our lives, and hoarding stuff that we’re really never going to use.
Clothes for the Person We’d like to be
Maybe you go out one day with the intention of indulging in a little retail therapy. Your friends, significant other, or some overly-chatty sales assistant is following you around through the aisles telling you how great you would look in that suit, hat, or new pair of shoes, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Sure, but when would I ever wear that?” We tell ourselves that one day we’ll be the successful sort of person that wears a trilby, or always goes out in a fully tailored suit. Today, you’re definitely going to stick to jeans and a t-shirt, but one day – one day you “will” wear those clothes. But you don’t. They hang around inside your wardrobe for years, and you can never quite throw them away because you’re deluding yourself with the idea that you will eventually get around to being ‘that person’. The trouble with this is although people do change, it’s usually a slow and gradual process, and by the time you’re in a position where wearing that trilby seems like a good idea, you may find that it’s already falling apart, covered in dust and completely out of trend.
Things That May be Useful – One Day
A lot of us hang on to things that we don’t need straight away, because we might end up needing it later on. In such a wasteful society, it seems a shame to throw away extra buttons or spare plastic forks when they could come in handy a little further along the line. Instead of throwing them away, we store them away inside drawers and boxes for use at a later date. This isn’t a terribly bad idea in some cases. Keeping a few extra bits and pieces aside for use at a later time may come in handy, but the problem starts to occur when you’re saving everything for ‘just in case’ purposes, from old Chinese menus for stores that went out of business three years ago, to keys for who-knows-what, and old pen lids. Like anything else, you need to know when it’s time to stop, and if your drawers are starting to get full with junk that you haven’t used in the past six months, it may be time to start being harsh with your belongings and filling up the trash bags.
Old Boxes and Bags
Why do we all do this? Almost everyone I know has a bag somewhere in their house that is filled with other shopping bags, or a selection of boxes, from cardboard delivery containers to jewellery cases they got for Christmas sixteen years ago. Keeping the odd box aside for storage is fine, and plastic bags are wonderful to reuse if you get those ones that are made to be a little more durable, but you really don’t need forty or fifty carrier bags hanging around in your hallway. Paper bags can go directly into the recycling box along with the cardboard that you’re never going to use, and plastic ones can be donated to flea markets, farmers and other organizations if you want to be sure that you’re looking out for the environment.
Books, Phonebooks, notebooks, and Catalogues
I honestly don’t think I’ve looked at a yellow pages or phone directory in the past five years, and yet for some reason, there’s still at least three separate catalogues hanging around in my living room in case I suddenly forget how to use the internet. As a book lover, throwing away something with pages just seems inherently wrong to me, like torturing an animal or telling people what’s going to happen in Game of Thrones. However, although books are a sacred thing, just because someone’s put some words down on paper doesn’t mean that it’s automatically a sacred document. If you’re not going to use your yellow pages for anything other than a booster-seat, you need to throw it away, along with any of those old catalogues that you’re never going to browse through again. It may seem cruel, but trust me, it’s the right thing to do.
