7

Reverse Your Clothes Hangers

One specific trick for decluttering clothes is to put everything on hangers, then hang them backwards in your closet (so you have to reach underneath to unhook them). Then, when replacing any clothes that you've worn, you rehang them normally. After six months or a year or whatever you'll soon see from the hangers facing in the right direction which of your clothes you actually wear and can throw the rest into the sea.

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It must be the sea. Don't cheap out on this point.

The only problem with this is that there might be some garments you wear infrequently that shouldn't be thrown away; your seasonal clothes or good suit or dressy bondage gear or whatever. Which means this technique will still require you to make a judgment call for each garment on the reversed hanger, and it was your inability to make those judgment calls that got you into this mess in the first place.

Another problem I noticed is that because of the time it takes to wait for your hangers to do their magic, this technique encourages procrastination rather than action. If you are capable of making these decisions, you probably know what clothes you do and don't wear -- you don't need your clothes hangers to whisper these secrets into your ear.

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(spookily) "Throw away the brown shirt."
"Shut up, Dale! No, throw away the blue shirt. Throw away ALL the blue shirts."

6

Categorize

No matter what technique you use, you're going to have to efficiently decide what to do with each object you examine. The easiest way is to start moving things into one of three piles. Toss, Donate, or Keep. The Toss pile can go straight into a garbage bag.

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If you're throwing away actual garbage bags, you have to empty them first,
then put them into new garbage bags.

If after working through a couple rooms this way you seem to get the hang of it, then that's honestly all the tips you need. This just takes effort, and that's not something I can give you over the Internet.

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Traditionally, I have given my readership the exact opposite.

But if you're like me and find yourself making really slow progress, with your Toss and Donate piles growing slowly, if at all, you might have a bigger problem. Obviously you don't want to self-diagnose a psychological condition like hoarding just because you read a column on a comedy website. You'd need some kind of quiz for that. But if you're cognizant enough of your clutter problem to get this far, then you might also be aware enough to realize when you need professional help.

5

Have Some Booze

But professional help is expensive, so let's unpack what we're trying to do here. This is about making hard decisions, and those are always easier if you don't understand them. This means that wastedly plowing through your landfill of an apartment with a bottle of brown liquor and a garbage bag for a shirt is the smartest thing you could possibly do.

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I don't want to encourage irresponsible drinking, so please make sure to wear a high-viz garbage bag.

When I tried this myself, it worked great, and I soon found myself wastedly hauling a ton of stuff down to the charity donation bin at the end of the block. Success!

Less successful was what happened next, when I wastedly traded my clutter for an even larger pile of soiled garments from that donation bin.

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In my defense, a lot of those dog sweaters looked like they'd been worn only once.

As I sifted through my stinky haul, I realized that it was time to face the truth. I needed real help.

4

Call A Professional

You've got a few options if you do seek professional help. Junk-removal companies can do all the heavy lifting for you, though they won't be of much assistance with the emotional hand-holding if you're having trouble deciding what to get rid of. A full psychologist could help you do that, though those don't come cheap and usually want to stay far, far away from your stinkhole.

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"Can we find another name for that?"

3

Start A Fire

Fundamentally, the biggest problem here is your inability to set priorities. In your sick mind, the benefit of a clean apartment is somehow diminished when compared with the benefit of keeping seven knife blocks with no knives in them.

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"Is that ... half a kayak? That's worth less than no kayak at all."
"NO I LOVE IT."

2

Panic

Panicking isn't strictly speaking a tip, but if you get deep down into decluttering you'll likely experience a similar emotion. "Oh no, can I really live without this." "Oh, I really wish I hadn't thrown that out." "Oh God, the flames are getting higher."

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"Oh no, my vintage moonshine stills!"

Once you start to panic, you're no longer thinking clearly, so try to avoid making any further decisions. No more picking what to donate, or tidying up what you're saving, or deciding whether you should set other fires to fight the first fire you set. Just calm down, take some deep breaths, and go outside. If you feel dizzy, that might be smoke inhalation, so maybe go outside before those deep breaths.

There. Feel better? Now back to those decisions.

1

Save The Professional

It will eventually come to pass that the professional you hired will be angry with you for trapping them in a fire and then pass out from said fire. This occurs during 75 percent of all high-level decluttering scenarios. And here at last we see something that is undeniably worth saving: a human life. So have another couple swigs of brown liquor and get right to that.

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This will also "save" you from a second-degree murder charge.

And with that one, most important thing saved, you will find that you are past your mental block. The rest of the decluttering will seem to take care of itself, and soon it will be obvious which must be thrown away.

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All of it.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and has dozens of mental blocks still to get past. His first novel, Severance, is incredible and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

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