For me, the hard part isn’t remembering how many times I’ve used a container or item in the last month or year. The hard part isn’t simply dedicating the time to comb through a bunch of stuff and get rid of the unused stuff.

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theshrike79 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

But wouldn't this help?

You have 10 containers, slap a marker on one every time you take something out of it.

12 months later you have 2 containers that haven't been touched (zero stickers). -> 80% reduction of the amount of stuff to comb through to find unused/useless cruft.

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tshaddox 2 days ago | parent [-]

If your decision procedure is so simple that you always throw out any container with zero dots and always keep any container with non-zero dots, then perhaps it saves a small amount of time.

But that's a pretty coarse decision procedure, both because there might be an item that's very important but gets used less than once per year and because there might be a container that is 99% full of unused stuff but happens to have 1 item that gets used once a year.

	▲	theshrike79 a day ago \| parent [-]
		You're speaking to a serial hoarder in (at least) the third generation. My grandfather was an (organised) hoarder - we're still picking through his stuff and he died almost a decade ago. No, I won't throw stuff away all willy-nilly. What I tried to convey is that the dot system is good at reducing the amount of stuff you need to go through and make the Marie Kondo decision of "does this spark joy" or "is this a rare tool that's hard to find if I throw it away now and need it 5 years from now". Like I have my grandfather's wood carving tools. Do I carve wood? No. Might I when I retire. Certainly. They're _VERY_ high quality tools so if I throw them out, I'd need to either spend an inordinate amount of money to get ones of similar workmanship or make do with some chinesium crap with plastic handles.

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ghaff 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I sorta know the stuff I use and don’t use. Had a kitchen fire last year and had to get the whole house emptied out for smoke damage mitigation. I’ve thrown out, donated, or recycled the better part of two large dumpsters worth of stuff.

For me it’s about getting into the mode of going through and parting with stuff.

	▲	LoganDark 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I've found it helps me to take photos of everything I'm parting with.

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bluGill 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The point is you don't have to. You instead just look at the boxes a few years latter and if at a glance you see one box with few/no dots you know it is safe so you spend just a few seconds thinking about only that box - then you move on to something else. Sure there might be more boxes you can get rid of, but you only need to do one box at a time when you have a few seconds. (or you look at the box and decide you are not ready to get rid of that so you put a dot on it making it less likely this one will come up next time you have a few seconds)

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_HMCB_ 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The second sentence should read “is” not “isn’t?”

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bubble_instr 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, what is the hard part, then?