Three of my besties are single men living together in one home. Let’s call them… Jesse, Joey, and Danny.
When I help people declutter, I’m generally working with someone who lives alone, or the head of the household with their own family. That’s a simple job when compared to decluttering a space shared by non-relative roommates.
Let’s talk about why it can be so hard to declutter a shared space, what strategies actually work, and a low-stakes way you can approach decluttering with your own roommates.
Why it’s so hard to declutter with roommates.
I think there are three main reasons it’s difficult to keep a tidy space while living with roommates.
1. Who’s in charge?
A major element that makes things more complicated is the lack of clear responsibility. When there are separate people living together, but not as a unit, it becomes more difficult to know who’s doing what.
Who’s cleaning this? Who left this out? Should you toss your roommate’s food when it’s moldy, or is that over-stepping?
When there’s no one assigned to make decisions, or no system in place to consider the mundane household goings-ons, everyone kinda goes with the flow and doesn’t stop to examine the issues.
Since these are my friends, I spend a lot of time in their house and have a set of outsider eyes to see what’s annoying. Their most annoying kitchen system for me was their knives–the knives have plastic covers, and every time you use one, you have to unsheath it, wash both the knife and the sheath, put them both to dry, then replace the sheath before you put it back in the drawer.
As an outsider, I said, “Hey, I’m gonna throw these sheaths in the back of the drawer if anyone needs them, okay?” And all three of them said some version of: “Oh, good. Those are so annoying.”
ALL of them hated the arbitrary knife sheath system. But no one said, “Hey, what if we, like, stopped doing this?”
And that’s just a common curse of roommate living! It’s so hard to even notice something’s a solvable issue, because you’re just a guy living in a house of other guys. We assume the other guys love the sheath system. They don’t. All guys hate the sheath system.
2. Roommates suck
Jesse, Joey, and Danny are all good friends and, in my professional opinion, little sweetie pies. But living in a shared space is a difficult skill that most of us struggle to master.
Even when you’re friendly/in love with your housemates, there’s a lot of communication, compromise, and sacrifice that comes with living peacefully with others. And that’s tough.
Most roommate pairings aren’t as lucky as our trio to be friends outside of the living situation, and that can make things even harder. Decluttering is a stressful activity under the best of circumstances–add on that you have to collaborate with the dork who leaves wet towels on the floor and steals your milk, and you’ve got quite an uphill climb on your hands.
3. Dust in the wind
Roommates are usually temporary, meaning they’re thinking about the future–yeah, we have six spatulas, but if we declutter down to one, that means five of us are going to have to repurchase spatulas when we eventually move out. It adds some complication.
It’s not a permanent living situation. Dealing with a shared space when the people living there don’t consider themselves to be a permanent or long-term unit together is a more dynamic issue than decluttering with a traditional household.
When I went into helping my three friends declutter their kitchen, I was ready for it to be complicated, but it actually went really well! Here’s what I learned.
What works
Here are some of the methods that seem to work best for a group of non-family roommates.
1. “Choose your favorite”
Opening the first drawer and asking our trio: “What do you want to get rid of?” didn’t get us very far.
There isn’t a motivation TO let go of things. If it’s all technically fitting in the drawer (with some jostling), why should we get rid of anything?
INSTEAD what I asked them was: “Which of these do you grab first?”
All three boys grabbed their favorite spatula, spoon, etc. Some had the same favorites. After they’d taken the most frequently used items, they realized that the rest of the drawer was just…stuff. No one really used any of it. With the favorites set aside, they were totally fine ditching what was left.
Here’s the before-and-after of their cooking utensil drawer:
Instead of looking at your stuff and deciding what to get rid of, try this:
- Remove everything from the drawer/cabinet
- Wipe it out
- Replace only the items you love and use frequently
- Declutter the rest
Choosing what you love enough to keep–instead of what you’re okay with getting rid of–is MUCH easier, and it requires far fewer decisions.
I recommend this post for a ridiculously in-depth tutorial: How To Declutter Kitchen Cabinets.
2. The Maybe Box
A Maybe box is a great way to soothe anxiety, especially when working with several people to declutter their home.
When you have an item you THINK you’d like to declutter, but you’re worried that you’ll need it, or you’re just not quite sure, set it aside in its own box. When the box is full, close it, date it, and store it somewhere out of sight.
Over the next 1-3 months, you can retrieve items from the box AS YOU NEED THEM. And while you’re in there, you’re not allowed to “shop” and take extra items.
If you don’t happen upon the need for it in your daily life, leave it in the box.
At the end of the designated trial period, you can donate the box without going through it again.
This takes the pressure off of the decision and allows us to practice living life without those things.
3. The 20/20 Rule
The 20/20 rule is simple: If you can replace an item you’re unsure of parting with in under 20 minutes for under $20, toss it!
I found this rule to be incredibly helpful for roommates. They know eventually they’ll move out and part ways, so it can seem daunting to “start over” when they’re in their own place.
But if you know you can easily replace those items, they’re not sentimental, and they’re not super expensive, it’s easier to let them go.
4. Long-term storage
Use this SPARINGLY!! With roommates, if they are worried about having to restock their home when they move out, they can set aside a certain amount of storage space for SOME of that stuff.
If they have expensive pieces, heirlooms, etc., that they’re not willing to part with but that don’t have a space in the common area, then is there space for a few boxes under their bed? In the garage or attic?
Carefully label and CURATE those boxes before storing them away. Don’t just store everything you could possibly need in the future–that will get out of hand quickly.
But if there are pieces that you aren’t willing to part with, keep those items limited and store them out of the way so they aren’t clogging up the everyday routes in the household.
5. Get it out of the common space
Jesse owns three gorgeous bowls that are strangely shallow, very bulky, and a weird shape somewhere between round and square. They’re so impractical to eat from (I know this because I am the previous owner of the three gorgeous and useless bowls). I asked Jesse if he’d like to get rid of them.
“No! They’re so pretty!”
“But have you ever eaten out of them?”
“No…”
“Well, what if you kept ONE and put it in your bedroom as decor?”
That felt like a great option, because Jesse’s room is a bit maximalist (incredibly cute), and the ornate bowl would fit right in, the shallow shape providing a great display area for other knick-knacks.
He agreed to take them to his room…all three of them…sigh. BUT, they’re out of the common area, and that’s a win! My job was decluttering their kitchen. Jesse’s room is Jesse’s prerogative. 🫡
Joey has a collection of grilling implements that he didn’t want to let go of. He rarely grills these days, but he’s still quite passionate about it. We were able to narrow his tools down to the best of each, then we stored them in a tray in the garage. This got them out of the way of everyday kitchen traffic without forcing him to part with a beloved activity.
If an item isn’t used regularly in the area that it lives, consider where else it could go.
Here’s that drawer before and after we minimized and removed Joey’s grilling tools:
6. Don’t rush it
Decluttering with roommates is often a long game. Not everyone is in the same headspace, and you will likely be met with resistance. Let’s talk about Danny.
Danny is a sentimental, tender-hearted fellow. A couple years back, I helped him “declutter” for the first time. I put that in quotation marks because we didn’t get very far. I’d suggest getting rid of something that was objectively garbage, then watch his eyes well up with hesitation.
So we went pretty easy on that first round.
The second time I helped Danny declutter, he’d loosened up a bit. He was willing to part with more stuff. We’ve done several rounds of little declutters in his room, and he’s gotten better at it every time.
Decluttering is a learned skill. With practice, we learn that letting go of things doesn’t hurt as much as we think it will. We feel better with the extra space we have to breathe, we appreciate the things we DO keep even more, and we learn that decluttering is overall a positive process.
When we dug into their kitchen this weekend, Danny was a decluttering machine. He and I did most of the work, and we really flew through the process.
The only thing he didn’t let me toss right away, for some reason, were the NINETEEN copies of their house key that I found in a drawer.
“I don’t think we need all of them, but we should ask Joey first,” he said.
Just in case Joey needed nineteen of the same key, I guess? (Joey was fine with letting them go, though he did gasp loudly when I simply tossed them in the trash can–what is it about keys that make them feel illegal to throw out? It’s not illegal! Throw out your useless keys!)
Anyway, the point is: People become ready in their own time. Most of us have to start small, realize the benefit of decluttering, and learn that our fears–what if I need this, what if I regret decluttering it, what if, what if, what if–rarely, if ever, come to fruition.
So be patient! With yourself and with your housemates. You might not get it all done in one go. Take it slow and give yourselves time to adjust.
Break the ice: 100 Items To Declutter Checklist
If you’re just warming your roommates up to the idea of decluttering, you can try something low-stakes and straightforward like this list of 100 items to declutter:
Good luck, and happy decluttering!
