I have almost no hobbies, but I do love to help my friends clear out their clutter. Clutter-clearing always provides a huge buzz (just try it yourself, if you don’t believe me), and it’s much easier to clear other people’s clutter than my own.

Each time I face a new person’s closet, I hone my clutter-busting skills, and I’ve learned to listen for certain key phrases that signal a juicy clutter-clearing opportunity. For example, my ears prick up whenever someone says, “This stuff is perfectly useful, I can’t just throw it away.”

Yes, useful things are useful — but not in massive quantities. I have a friend who has an entire kitchen drawer filled with the little packets of soy sauce that come with Chinese takeout. She also has a full bottle of soy sauce in the fridge!

If you can’t bear to throw useful things away, look for ways to give them to people who need them. I had a shelf packed with those glass vases that come with flower arrangements – too nice to toss but too many to use – so I gave them all to the flower shop on the corner of my street. Ask yourself: realistically, am I really going to use this stuff — all of it? Is there someone who could benefit from it more?

Along the same lines, people say: “But one day, this might come in handy.”

That’s true. But there’s also cost to having empty shoe boxes, glass jam jars, flattened packing boxes, and half-filled cans of paints piled around your house. Ask yourself: how much would it cost to buy this item, if I needed it? Do I need to keep more than one of this item? How often does something like this come into the house? Have I ever used this?

Has anyone come up with some great solutions for making use of useful stuff that you can’t really use?

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