113. One Person's Memories, Another Person's Clutter: Decluttering Standoffs at Home

When your family can't agree on what to keep, sentimental clutter takes over. Here's how to declutter together without the fights.

Sentimental clutter is one thing. Sentimental clutter when your family can't agree on what to keep? That's a whole other level. In this episode, I share a real story from a client session — a family sorting through a home full of inherited belongings, collectibles, and decades of cards and photos — and walk you through exactly how I helped them find a way forward together using the CLEAR-5 Framework.

If you've ever slammed a drawer in frustration, or felt like you're the only one who wants a calmer, clearer home, this one is for you.

✅ Why some people need physical objects to hold onto memories — and why that's not stubbornness
✅ How to have the decluttering conversation with a partner or family member without it turning into a fight
✅ What Swedish Death Cleaning is, and why starting it now is one of the kindest things you can do for your kids
✅ How the CLEAR-5 Framework works through even the most emotionally loaded decluttering situations
✅ Why putting things in bins is not the same as actually decluttering — and what to do instead
✅ The micro-decluttering habit that keeps clutter from building back up over time

If this one hit home, send it to someone in your house who needs to hear it too...not as a lesson, just as a shared experience.

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Email me: zeenat@fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Summer is a time that seems to afford us the energy to take care of more home items. One of those is organizing the things that we often put off.

Last week, I worked with a family who has been inundated with items from their parents who recently passed. Artwork that were handmade and hanging on the walls of mom's house, letters, cards, and documents from a hundred years ago when the grandparents immigrated to the United States, military commendations, jewelry of all kinds, the silver cutlery, and so, so many photo albums. Photos from mom and dad's elementary school classes, the last remaining baby photos of mom and dad. And then the family’s family photos. Hundreds and hundreds of them. And birthday cards and Christmas cards, and Bar Mitzvah memorabilia. 

And some of the family members also collect things. Comic books, baseball cards, anime books and posters and cards.

Beyond that, they're just not sure what to do with gifts that they've been given, and so every closet is full to overflowing.

Now, as I completed my diagnosis of their home, it became clear that there is a disagreement in the home. She, the wife and mom, easily lets go of a lot of things. But he, the husband and dad, and their child, can't. They struggle with letting go, and question why they should let go at all. And we'll get to that in a minute.

In families, it's common for each person to have a different comfort level with decision-making when it comes to decluttering or simply letting go of things. And that can cause friction in the relationships. It really really can. 

I'm not a therapist, my job is not to resolve the conflict. My job is to identify at what points they’re getting stuck in decluttering, how best to approach those from an organizing standpoint, to help each person in the house who’s interested in moving past those sticking points, and just to make sure that each person hears the other as much as possible. I don't make decisions for people. They need to make their own decisions, of course.

So if you're the one who's struggling with letting go of stuff, and your partner is frustrated because of it, how do you make those decisions? Or if you're the one who's itching to let go of more stuff from your home, but your partner isn't able to and you're getting frustrated, how do you deal with that?

Well I thought I'd address that today, because even in my own house, it happens all the time! So I want to share with you how we do it in my house in a very practical way, so that each member of my family is having their needs met, with as little friction as possible. But I also want to tell you how I think it’s going to work for the family I’m working with.

Welcome to Organizing for Beautiful Living. I'm Zee Siman, the Choosy Organizer. This podcast is for the women who are done organizing everything, who are ready to be choosy about what matters, what's enough and what can wait.

This is episode 113.

I think I've told you about what we call the Black Box of Doom in my house. It's this big black plastic bin that fits in the cabinet above the fridge in our pantry room. It contains all these electronic bits and bobs. Like all sorts of cords, adapters, old routers, some empty hard drives, just a whole bunch of what I say is electronic "junk", but which my husband says is insurance for a day when we will surely need one of these things.

Now it used to be one Black Box of Doom, but just this weekend, our son needed a very specific type of adapter for an old camera, and I saw that the Black Box of Doom has been joined by a smaller, clear box of doom. Now I'll tell you later on why that's still ok with me, but I want to tell you that before we had these boxes. all these cords and connectors and hardware used to live in our home office. And before we moved to this house, where I took a room to make into a second home office for me and the kids, it all lived in the single home office we had where we all either worked, or did some homework and things like that. And it was just overwhelming. Like, electronics were everywhere. And I say that it lived in the home office, but realistically, pieces migrated to be stored in a drawer in our bedroom closet, or in the junk drawer in the kitchen, or in a cabinet in the family room, I mean, all over the house, right?

And I was really, really bothered by it. Tangled cords in all these drawers when all I was looking for was a pencil. No space for a new book that I'd just gotten for you know on the bookshelf. 

So it happens to everyone, and with nearly every category of stuff! I mean, think about it. What's bothering you right now? Is it the golf clubs that are still sitting in the garage that no one's used in 5 years? Or the overloaded closet because someone isn't getting rid of anything, but they buy new clothes and shoes and accessories? Or is it the bajillion water bottles that everyone seems to bring home each year, but they don't want to get rid of any of the old ones?

Is just thinking about this raising your temperature a little bit? Listen, you're not the only one who slammed a drawer shut cause you'd had it with digging around in there to find what you needed, and you just went out and bought a new one. And then you came home and felt completely justified in the purchase, even though your partner says "well you could have just asked me where it was!"

All right, so the frustrations are real, the differing levels of comfort with letting go of possessions are real.

Now let's address how we might get through this, so you feel more organized, and your family doesn't feel like you're strong-arming them to get rid of their stuff.

I, of course, go back to the principles of Organizing for Beautiful living for guidance. That's what I do all the time.

Live light, love your home, connect often, work to live well, and thrive daily.

OK, but even here, we can each of us be different. Living light to the husband I was working with last week is way different from living light for his wife. His version of what's enough isn't always hers.

Let me give you an example. He keeps every greeting card. Not just birthday cards and Christmas cards. but Thank You cards that just have 3 words written in them and  the signature of the person who sent it to them. And guess what, he opened one of those and he knew exactly who that person was, told me the story of that person, and how happy he felt that this person had sent them the card! His wife, on the other hand, would have read the card when they received it, felt the gratitude, and released the card into the recycling. 

Do you see? He wants the cards to trigger memories of beloved people in his life. In fact he said "How can I throw away this Christmas card that they took the time to lovingly send to us?"

Well, he's collected so many of these cards in a bunch of plastic bins that the bins now have to be stacked either up in the attic, which doesn't have air conditioning, or they're stacked in their family room. And it's not just the cards anymore. It's photos, collectibles, old vhs tapes, costumes, memorabilia, just so many things that have ended up being stacked in the family room. So much so that his wife doesn't enjoy being in there at all. 

So what do we do? We go back to the principles of Beautiful Living. We talk about what living light looks like for each of them. They hear each other as they're explaining to me their viewpoints, even as they're telling me about each other's viewpoints! Like, it's clear that they're aware very much of the other's frustrations.

Then we talk about loving their home. What each of them wants their home to be, what the family room means to each of them. 

Connecting often. Would they like to host more at home? Is the family room a part of that? 

Work to live well. They both work remotely some days a week, and so the family room has to serve partly as an office as well. But she doesn't want to be in there because of the clutter, so she has a separate office, and he also wants the family room to be more organized so he can work well at the desk in there. 

And thrive daily. What would it take for them to feel like they were each thriving daily at home individually, together and as a family?

So we had these conversations all together, and then it was time to get to work. It was time to dig in and see what exactly was all the stuff they were dealing with.

OK, so let's get into the practicalities so that if you're struggling with letting go of things like Christmas cards - I mean, a question I hear a LOT is "Well what do I DO with the Christmas cards we get?" But it can be other sentimental things too, like pictures, programs from shows you’ve gone to, ticket stubs, things you've collected and think might be worth some money so you just don't want to get rid of it, right?

And you know how we're going to do this so it's simple? We're going to use the CLEAR5 Framework. It works, you guys. It just does.

Now, listen up here, because simple doesn't mean easy. If it were easy, we none of us would ever be disorganized or have cluttered spaces, right?

But CLEAR5 makes it simple to follow steps. When you have steps to follow, you're less likely to get lost in the weeds, to feel complete overwhelm, because you see you have a roadmap you're following, and you're moving forward.

I think very visually, ok, so I literally see an image forming of a curvy road, like on a map, with dots of represent each step. I'm a little weird, but seeing that image makes it so clear in my head that I'm headed toward a goal. And that might sometimes keep me motivated, yes, but it always keeps me from feeling overwhelmed, like I don't know what I'm doing, or I'm just spinning in circles.

So CLEAR5 is the framework we use to declutter and organize anything. Any physical space, your time, your thoughts, a project you're starting, anything.

It stands for the 5 steps: Clarify, Limit, Edit, Assign Homes, and Review.

All right. Clarify. For this family, they needed to clarify what this family room was going to be used for and how they each wanted to feel when they came into it. Now for the wife - you know, I need to name them. I won't share their real names for the world to hear about their private lives, so I'm going to call them Jane and Mark. Just using their first initials.

So for Jane, it was simple. She wanted the room to be a space where they could just hang out, but more than anything, she just wanted their entire home to be neat, tidy, to feel calm and clear. She said over and over that when she steps into this cluttered room, she feels cluttered herself. It makes her uncomfortable, and she leaves the room. She doesn't want that, and Mark doesn't want that for her either, to feel like she's not comfortable in a common room in her own home.

Mark said that he just wants a space to do his work, and to store things properly. Aesthetics to him were not even present in his thoughts.

Now, the other thing I wanted Mark to clarify for himself is what he wants and needs from all of these things that he's been keeping. 

And I want you to do the same. If you're not sure what to do with all the Christmas cards, clarify for yourself, like actually say it out loud, for a few sentences about why you're keeping them. 

For Mark, you heard his why. He feels a genuine close connection to each person who sent them these cards. He tells stories about the time when the person sent the card. What they were each doing, like, very detailed memories.

So when Jane would say "I don't know why he keeps all this stuff!" I could gently remind her that well, for him, it seems to bring him a lot of joy to talk about each of these people at these particular points in their connected history.

And here's the thing about people like Mark. They need the physical object to get to the memory. Without the card in hand, the memory feels harder to reach, maybe even at risk of disappearing. It’s a little scary for them, right? So letting go feels like a loss to them. It's not stubbornness. It's just how they're wired. Jane doesn't need the object. She carries the memory just fine without it. Neither way is wrong or irrational. They're just different. Remember that if you’re getting frustrated with a family member. ok? 

But so what am I saying, then? That Mark should keep every card he ever gets in his life? Well, no, because that would fill up their entire house. We just cannot keep everything we ever get, right? It’s not physically possible. That’s why he has to let some stuff go. So what do we do?

Well, we set Limits. And that’s the second step of CLEAR5. C was Clarify,  L is Limit.

How do you set Limits more easily? You prioritize. What’s more important for me to keep? The cards I’ve received, or these books on my bookshelf? 

You only have a finite amount of space in your house, so you need to prioritize what you’re keeping in it. The more space you have, theoretically the more you can keep. I say theoretically because you’re paying a price for the stuff that you keep. You now just took responsibility for it. You’ve got to keep it clean, because boxes and bins trap dust, dirt, mold, creepy crawlies that poop on your stuff. And all of that is in your house now, even if it’s in the garage or in the attic. And so, are you going to want to take those things out and look through them when you have to clean, and dust and all that first? Realistically, how often is that going to happen? 

And also, at some point, you might want to move. Maybe downsize, maybe move cross-country or to another country. And when that happens, what will you do with all this stuff you’ve collected?

Mark and Jane also are dealing with stuff from their parents’ homes now. Things that their parents collected over the years that they just  don’t know what to do with. None of their siblings want these things, and they feel a huge amount of responsibility and guilt about letting go of any of it. How can they let go of this family history? Are they being irresponsible if they just donate a lot of it? Especially because it’s fairly clear that the next generation of kids don’t want any of it.

So, by keeping the stuff you’re keeping, are you going to be placing your kids in the same situation? Filling their house with your stuff that then they feel incredibly guilty about letting go of, even if they don’t particularly want any of this physical stuff, but they just want the memories that you all made together?

Now that’s why Swedish Death Cleaning is such a good practice even while you’re still young. If you’re thinking about the future as you look through your photo album collection one day, you’re Swedish Death Cleaning. I do it all the time. If one day I open the storage closet and I see this bin of toys we’d kept, you bet I’m thinking, OK, all of the kids, nieces and nephews are now too old for these toys. Am I really keeping these for grandkids? And if my kids don’t want these toys when they have their own families, then what? 

Well I might just slap a label on that bin that same day that says “OK to toss”, which, not to be morbid, but I’ll tell my husband and my kids, guys, it’s OK to get rid of this stuff when I’m gone. Like, you don’t have to give it a second thought if it’s not something that you want.

That’s Swedish Death Cleaning. So Mark and Jane are facing exactly this, and setting limits now is how they make sure their child doesn't inherit the same problem.

Setting Limits is about prioritizing your space. What amount of space are you willing to allocate for a particular thing? For Mark, how much space in the family room is he willing to allocate to the cards? And if his collection at some point overflows that limit, he needs to choose to either get rid of some of the cards, not keep any more that he receives, or take away space from something else that he’s keeping. So there’s a trade-off.

Again, visually that makes sense to me. I picture a bookcase. The bookcase represents your house, ok? One shelf says Cards, the next shelf says books, the next one down says Toys, and so on. If Cards all of a sudden takes over some of the books space, well what can you do? You can allow it to take that space, and move some of the books down to the next shelf. But now you’ve got to move toys. Since we aren’t going to build another shelf, most of us are not adding on to our houses because we want to keep more stuff, something has to go. What’s your priority? More cards, the books, or the toys?

So then we’re always, always Editing our things, which is the 3rd step of CLEAR5: Clarify, Limit, and Edit. We’re consistently reprioritizing as our lives move forward. 

When we had little kids, the priority was kids’ stuff: toys, clothes, school supplies, that kind of thing. As they grew up, they needed less and less crafting supplies, and more books, board games, you know that kind of thing. So in each phase of your life, your priorities shift, and you’re editing your things to match that phase of your life. Which is why over time, your entire wardrobe might change, or the types of dishes in your kitchen may change once you no longer need plastic stuff for little kids. That’s Editing. 

So as you Edit, you’ll see how your Limits might need to shift, and that’s perfectly OK.

In Mark and Jane’s house, they want to limit storage to their one closet in the family room. It’s a big closet. But realistically, in order for that to happen, they will need to edit a lot of stuff, and it’s not clear whether they’re going to be able to do that quickly. It may take them a while to get there. But if that’s the goal they have in their minds, then we’ll organize things in that room to make it possible. So no big, expensive permanent furniture pieces just for storing these collectibles or their parents’ things. Not yet, until they've had a chance to live with it once it’s all organized in a way that allows them to be very clear-headed about everything, especially as the losses of their parents is still relatively fresh and a little painful still.

Now, editing is causing a bit of friction between Mark and Jane because Jane is ready to get rid of a lot of stuff, but Mark isn’t. And this is where hearing each other and recognizing that something might be important to one person in the family and not to another is so important. 

Jane needs clear, open space and order to think clearly and to have an uplifted mood. Mark doesn’t see clutter, doesn’t focus at all on aesthetics, but he needs memory-triggers and sentimental items around him. And so in this room that they’d like to use as a family, it’s imperative that they both have what they need, or they won’t be happy using this space in their own home.

This is such a central issue in so many homes. Mark initially said well, let’s just get a bunch of matching bins or boxes and we can stack them up inside the closet and against this wall over here, right? I mean that would be neat and tidy!

And Jane immediately countered that idea. Nope, no way is a bunch of stacked boxes and bins what I want to see in this room when I walk in here.

So there will have to be compromise and careful editing.

All those Christmas cards and photos and photo albums you’re keeping? Just putting them as-is into containers is not clearing up your space. It’s just moving them to a different space.

This part of editing, this initial editing to make sure you’re keeping only the things that are your priorities as an individual and as a family, this is hard. I’m sorry. It just takes time and patience. Of course it doesn’t all have to all get done all at once. However, the longer it takes you, the longer you’re living with all this stuff all over your house, right? So there has to be a deadline. You probably will be sitting for 30 minutes or an hour each night while netflix is on or you’re listening to music or an audiobook going through photos and cards and toys and whatever else you’ve all collected.

But, man, once they’re through that part, Mark and Jane will easily progress to step 4, Assign Homes. So Clarify, Limit, Edit, then Assign Homes.

And guess what? Since they took time to Limit and allocate space, Assigning Homes is going to be pretty simple. Label what you need to label. Guys, don’t go overboard here. Be only as detailed as you absolutely need to be in your labeling, ok? Then place it in its home.

Everything needs a home. Even a temporary one, but it needs a home. On the couch is not a home. I had a client who told her family: Chairs are for butts, not bags. 


And if you can’t find a home for it, guess what, and I say this lovingly, maybe it shouldn’t be in your home. 

Remember how I said I was OK with a second box of old electronic stuff in my house? It’s because it has an assigned home that’s easy to access. It’s not forced into a spot simply because we want to keep this stuff. And if at some point if something else needs that space that’s higher in priority, then you can bet that I’m going to be advocating loudly to go back to just the one Black Box of Doom, right?

This is where I will tell you, your house? It’s for you to live in. Not for you to store your stuff in. Your memories are the important things. The physical items are not as important. Live your life, connect often and share the stories that you want to share, and let go of the stuff that’s cramping your home, especially if the stuff is causing one member of your family to not want to spend time in that space at home. Sharing stories keeps memories alive. No one probably knows the story of the person who sent Mark that thank you card except for Mark, so he needs to tell the story. That can take priority over keeping every single card.

And the 5th step is Review. Clarify, Limit, Edit, Assign Homes and Review.

After all the hard work of editing is done, the way to not allow clutter to rebuild is a consistent review. It could be once a week that you walk through your house and put things away, toss things you don’t want to keep, donate things you no longer use. The only rule here is to make decisions. Don’t allow things to stay in your house just because you haven’t made decisions about them. That’s how clutter builds up. 

Making these decisions is a skill you have to practice. For some people, it’s easy. For others, it’s incredibly hard. There are a lot of behavioral psychology reasons behind all this, and also your past experiences, how things were done in your childhood home and all that. But know that it’s never too late to learn and to practice making editing decisions, ok?

There are some things I do in a weekly review during my Friday afternoon 30-minute weekly planning, but mostly, in my house, we’re constantly editing. Not sitting for an hour going through our closets or anything like that, but while one of my kids is getting dressed one morning, let’s say, they might notice 2 shirts that don’t fit them anymore, and they bring them out and we decide what to do with those. They don’t stay in the closet. They might get passed down to a younger child, or a cousin, or they might get out in my car already to drop it off during my next donations run.

Now the Black Box of Doom, some of the kids’ favorite stuffed toys that I haven’t been able to part with yet, and I probably never will, and a few boxes of the kids’ childhood memorabilia and likely some things that I will ultimately get from my parents, those things are will likely stay with me long term. Consistent small micro-decluttering, as I call it, things like noticing the shirts that don’t fit and taking them out, that sort of thing happens all the time in our house, and it’s what keeps homes from being cluttered again. Making decisions about your stuff. Consistently.

So the struggles of keeping things that are taking up space in your home, and perhaps causing some friction in the relationships within your family, you can make it better.

Start with naming the principles of Organizing for Beautiful Living for yourself, what they mean to you. Say it out loud or to yourself in your head or write it down, but be coherent. Be able to repeat it to yourself.

So Live Light, Love Your Home, Connect Often, Work to Live Well and Thrive Daily, what’s that look like for you, for your family and in your home?

This is your North Star, that becomes your guide. To get there, you need a map. That’s CLEAR5: Clarify your vision, Limit the spaces to keep things, whether that’s physical stuff, your time, your ideas, and your commitments. Edit deeply and thoroughly at the start. Then Assign Homes into the spaces you identified in the Limit step, and then Review consistently in a way that makes sense for your life.

I hope that through this very real example of Mark and Jane, and some of the things happening in my own house, you can be inspired to see that it can be done. If you need someone to guide you through it, or just to run a thought by, of course you can send me an email or a voice memo. 

In the meantime, please go ahead and send this episode to a friend. Not as a lesson that you have to teach to them, but the way I’m sharing this with you today, as a shared experience. We all go through variations of the same things. And if my experiences can help you, then I’m absolutely happy about that. 

Thank you so, so much for listening and following the podcast, and for sharing it with the people you care about.

Have a beautifully organized week. I’m Zee, and I’ll see you on the next episode.