Gretchen Rubin, author of the forthcoming book, The Happiness Project, offers several good de-cluttering tips in a blog post titled "Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering."
Here are the first three:
1. "I need to get organized." No! Don't get organized is your first step.
2. "I need to be hyper-organized." I fully appreciate the pleasure of having a place for everything, and perhaps counter-intuitively, I believe it's easier to put things away in an exact place, rather than a general place ("the third shelf of the coat closet," not "a closet.") However, this impulse can become destructive: if you're spending a lot of time alphabetizing your spices, organizing your shoes according to heel height, creating eighty categories for your home files, etc., consider whether you need to be quite so precisely organized. I find this particularly true with toys – I've spent hours sorting pretend food, Polly Pockets pieces, and tea sets, only to find everything a jumble the next day.
3. "I need some more inventive storage containers." See #1. If you get rid of everything you don't need, you may not need any fancy containers.
In short, she's a fan of getting rid of stuff. Me, too!
