Get Rid of the Clutter by Throwing Away Items by Default
Keeping your items for as long as possible is easier on your budget, but also leads to a lot of clutter. Instead of trying to keep your belongings for as long as possible, choose to throw them away by default.
Most of us don’t throw things away unless we can think of a good reason to do so. Organization consultant Marie Kondo is of a different opinion. Author Tim Harford explains the lesson he learned from Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic of Cleaning :
Kondo turns the situation around. For her, the status quo is that every item you own will be thrown away unless you come up with a compelling reason why it should stay. This mental upheaval, paradoxically, turns the status quo bias into a force for change.
While this sounds like a small psychological change, you can eliminate the status quo bias by reversing the situation . If you have a clutter problem and can’t find a good reason to keep the item, consider throwing it away. When you decide to get out of the clutter and sit on the fence, change the question from “Why throw this away?” to “Why keep this?”
Why more and more is less | Tim Harford