Tools!

Tools are an interesting category because they often do not Spark Joy in and of themselves, but their practicality cannot be denied. Much better to have a decent screwdriver than break a ruler trying to tighten a screw. However, as with so many practical things, they have a tendency to proliferate if you don’t keep an eye on them! How many you will need will depend on the sort of property that you live in and how much maintenance you need to do to it yourself. If you live in a serviced apartment in a city, the chances are that you will need precious little more than a screwdriver (if that), whereas if you live on a large, old, rural property which needs a lot of maintenance, you may find your tool needs to be somewhat higher! We live in the latter and, whilst neither of us pretends to be a whizz at DIY, we do have quite a number of tools.

So how do we declutter? As always, bring ALL of your tools into one place and sort them into categories. Go through each category and work out how many of that type of tool you need and declutter accordingly. When it comes to storage, store like with like. For example, we have two quite large tool boxes in the shed, one which has the spanners and screwdrivers etc in, and one which has various glues and spanners in it. I do make a small exception for like with like in this case. As our main tool boxes are in the garage, I have a mini box in the house which has a hammer, ratchet screwdriver with various heads, tape measure and a small selection of screws and so on. It stops me making the trek out to the garage in the wind and rain and dark! It also means that small jobs are easy to do actually get done as the tools are to hand under the stairs.