How to Teach Other Family Members to Declutter

Over a year ago, I started to see the benefits of decluttering in my house. I got rid of a lot of my stuff, along with some neutral items in the kitchen and living room. But my two adult sons still had closets overflowing with excess items.

How did I know that?
Well, I had a few issues with the laundry at that time.
First of all, I would put the clean clothes on the hangers, but the hangers wouldn’t fit into the closet.
Secondly, every time I did the laundry, I didn’t have enough hangers to put the clean clothes on.
Those were signs for me that there was too much stuff.

When I told them that I never had enough hangers to put their laundry on, they said, “What’s the problem? Let’s just buy more hangers.”
That’s when I had to show them how tightly packed the hangers were in the closet, and it was obvious that no more hangers would fit in there.

So, that’s when it started to occur to them that they had a problem.

I wanted them to have a positive experience with decluttering, so I was really willing to help them. They also needed to learn a lesson that would help them keep their place under control when they live on their own.

I did a few things to reduce the amount of stuff.
One thing I did with my boys was go through their shirts one by one, and they decided whether to keep them or let them go. We did this seasonally.
Another tip I used was consolidating. When my son said a shirt was for home use only, I would set it aside. At the end, he had 10 shirts just for wearing at home. The question was if he really needed that many shirts, he evaluated and picked the 5 best ones, letting the other 5 go.

I have to be honest: the first couple of times we did this, I wasn’t quite happy with the results. I was expecting more and wanted to free up space faster. They were more reluctant at the beginning of the process. It took about a year to make my boys feel confident about making decisions regarding their stuff. During the last Christmas holidays, they made huge progress, got rid of a lot of things, and their closets feel so much better now. Now, I can easily put away their laundry because there’s breathing room in the closet, and I have plenty of hangers to use!