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The “Quick Condense” Purge

If you have packed boxes that have been following you around, or overflowing drawers, or piles of paper that you haven’t seen the bottom of in years, here’s a strategy that will almost certainly help you.

I call it the “Quick Condense” purge.

Most decluttering advice tells you to pick up an item, figure out what to do with it, and then do it. The idea is that you don’t have to handle things more than once.

For some people and some messes, that’s just insane. And I have the alternative.

Here’s what you need:

  • 1 container for trash
  • 1 container for donations
  • 1 container to fill with “I don’t know” items

Here’s what you do:

  1. Grab a box, a pile of paper, a junk drawer, or whatever your “problem receptacle” is.
  2. Grab the first item you see.
  3. Is it….
    • Garbage? Into the garbage can.
    • Something you want to donate? Into the donation bin.
    • Something you’re not sure about? Into the “I don’t know” box.
    • Something that goes elsewhere? Go put it where it goes.
  4. Repeat with every item.

At this point most decluttering experts would be tearing their hair out, because what I’m describing is the deliberate process of not making ultimate decisions regarding many items. That’s the goal of most decluttering advice – to handle items once, force a decision, and be done with it.

But my experience is that the real world doesn’t work that way for many people.

Yes, ultimately you have to make a decision about every item you own. There’s no getting around that. But even in a hugely cluttered mess, there’s usually at least some stuff that unambiguously just needs to go. And if that stuff is buried in boxes under other stuff, and you can’t get to it without forcing your brain to process everything on top of it, you stall.

And honestly, you’ve probably been stalled too long.

So, no. This isn’t organizing. This isn’t a final solution. This is a way that will help many people get fast, visible progress – and free up space. When I did this before my massive initial declutter I condensed thirty to forty boxes down to fifteen, filled my outside garbage can, and had a carload of donations to take to Goodwill. All in a day.

Is this inefficient? Relative to the ideal scenario of unpacking each box and putting everything away neatly, probably. But efficiency and progress aren’t always allies. And the fact remains that in order to unpack a box and put everything away, those things need to have defined places where they go. If they’ve been in a box long enough to be forgotten, there probably isn’t a place being saved for them.

Ultimately, the most efficient thing to do in any situation is the thing that gets you closest to your goal the fastest.

Give it a shot, and let me know how it works for you!