(Updated 5/12/2026)

For years, I thought I had to keep everything because I might never know when the kids or I might need it. I had three girls and thought I needed to keep all their clothes for the next one. Never mind, they would also get new clothes for their birthday and Christmas from their grandparents. I thought I had to keep all the toys in case they wanted to keep them. Turns out, they only wanted to keep the special ones.

I would keep many of their school papers, awards, cards, and art projects. Now that my kids are older, they don’t want to keep all those school things. I am still going through totes with their things and they are only keeping pictures and special awards.

Even though I eventually stored everything into totes, I still had clutter. Totes are useful tools for containing items, but they are also an easy way to hide clutter. You are not really dealing with the clutter so much as you are hiding it to deal with another day.

The problem is that they become clutter unless you find a way to deal with them. The problem with clutter is that it will grow until it takes over every available space. When I decide enough is enough, I make a very conscious decision to declutter and organize. I schedule some time and get it done. While I am still not very good at organization, I created this decision tree to help me declutter most of our things. 

I got done moving almost a year ago. I pared my processions down by 80% due to space and changing needs. I dealt with most of those totes. This decluttering decision tree proved to be essential for deciding what to keep and what to give away. 

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