More than one person has advocated this rule to me, but personally speaking I don’t find it useful. However, I figured that was just me though, and that there are probably many people out there who could make use of this rule in managing their home clutter, so I decided to write an article on it anyway.

To put it simply, the In-Out rule of managing home clutter is where you would throw, give away or otherwise move out of your house one item which you do not like, for every new item that you bring in.

It’s very simple and should be very easy, but like most of the old stuff that I have. I wouldn’t actually like to be parted with it unless I had to, which is probably why I had a home clutter problem to begin with.

If you can bear to part with something though, this rule works beautifully and should keep both sides of the equation beautifully balanced. I have found out that it works on a grander scale however. For instance the other day I bought a new hedge trimmer, and in the manner of all good home clutter management, did away with the old hedge trimmer.

This was simply common sense, and part of the In-Out rule of home clutter management. In the earlier days I would have definitely kept the old one on the off chance that the new one broke down, but one day a stray thought popped into my head. If we only had one old item, what would we do if it broke? Well, depending on the age of the item we would either try to repair it, or we would just throw it away.

We didn’t have a spare one to back us up, unless of course you kept the very first one that you bought from ten thousand years ago with you, which I wouldn’t put past a home clutter bug! This gave me the incentive I needed to throw away the old machine, because if you look at it, you would do the same things for the new one if it broke, as you would have done for the old one.

And the new one comes with added advantages as well, because for one thing it still has a warranty on it. So you would either get it replaced, or repaired, and that’s definitely much better than having to use your old one again.