by KATY WELLS
For most families, clutter isn’t really about having too much stuff. It’s about life moving faster than our homes can keep up. Kids grow, seasons shift, and before we know it, we’re surrounded by things from a version of life we’re no longer living.
And we feel it: the stress of a chaotic room, the frustration of not being able to find what we need, the weight of walking past the same piles day after day. When our homes don’t function the way we need them to, it affects more than just the space.
There’s no single strategy that works for everyone, but I’ve found that certain approaches click depending on where you are in life.
Honoring What Was While Moving Forward
Rachel, a young mom I worked with last spring, had bins of baby items she couldn’t seem to let go of: the coming-home outfit from the hospital, the shoes from first steps, the swaddle that finally got her newborn to sleep. Her youngest had just turned six, and she knew she was done having children. But every time she tried to donate the items, she froze.
“It feels like I’m closing the door on that part of being a mom,” she told me.
What helped Rachel was separating the memory from the item by taking photos and writing a few sentences about what each piece represented. Reminding herself that the memories wouldn’t leave with the stuff allowed her to curate the best of the best to pass down to her daughter one day and feel at peace letting go of the rest.
Clearing the Path for Your Next Chapter
Susan’s youngest had just left for college, and for years she’d dreamed of turning the spare bedroom into a painting studio, a dream she’d set aside when the kids were small. But the room was still full of bunk beds, board games, and bins of Halloween costumes.
“Part of me wants to keep it exactly how it is,” she told me. “But I also know I’m using their stuff as an excuse not to move on with my own life.”
What helped Susan was changing the question. Instead of “what should I get rid of?”, she asked, “what do I want this room to become?” When she led with vision, the decisions got so much easier.
Strategies for Every Season
If you’re in the thick of raising young kids and decision fatigue is real, try simple methods. Keep a donation box by the door that you add to whenever you come across something you no longer want or need, and try the one-in-one-out rule so things don’t pile up faster than they leave.
If you’re facing an empty nest or a major transition, start with vision rather than stuff. How do you want your home to feel and function now, and what do you want to do in this space? Let those answers guide what stays and what goes.
If you’re sorting through inherited items or grieving a loss, give yourself permission to curate rather than purge. You don’t have to keep everything to honor someone, so choose a few meaningful pieces and display them where you’ll actually see them.
Clutter isn’t a character flaw; it’s a signal. And when you start to understand why you’re holding on, letting go gets a whole lot easier. Your home can support you in every season of life. Sometimes it just needs permission to evolve alongside you.
Katy Wells is a leading voice in the decluttering space, known for redefining how families approach their homes with more clarity, ease, and compassion. She is the author of the newly released book, “Making Home Your Happy Place: A Real-Life Guide to Decluttering Without the Overwhelm” and the host of the top-rated podcast “The Maximized Minimalist.” Wells is recognized for offering a refreshing, real-life alternative to the exhausting “do more, try harder” approach that has dominated the home space for decades. She lives in Asheville with her husband and two sons.