The Four Box Method: A Simple Sorting Technique

"Make the work as simple as possible"

The best way to successfully declutter is to focus on a single thing at any time. That could mean only to deal with a manageable number of items, not mixing making choices with considering what follows next, making sure that each decision only has to be made once (“touch it once” strategy), and others.

The most common way to sort through a category is using four boxes...

That is one box for each: keep, maybe, donate, discard. If you want to keep it even simpler and streamline the decision process, you could go with: keep, maybe, let go. In this setup, you’ll have a second go with the “let go” category to decide if you can donate some of this, if it can be recycled, or if it goes into the bin.

Either way, this workflow is a useful one for most decluttering projects. It’s also worth pointing out that, depending on the items you are sorting out, boxes may not be the best option. If you are sorting through paperwork, paper piles may be better for the stuff you keep while you chuck recycling in a bin straight away. Choose your containers wisely each time, according to what’s most useful.

Make sure to handle each item only once and make a choice about the available box categories only, nothing else. It will save time, and also limit your interactions with each item so you are less likely to get bogged down with revisiting your choices more than once. Tip: if you’re going through clothes and intend to donate to charity, it’s helpful to place these items in a black bag to keep temptation to reconsider at a minimum.

• Once you have gone through your whole pile of items and sorted them correctly, review the “maybe” items one more time, reassign to other categories if you can, and leave the rest for now.
• You then start packing things away again: take the items in the “keep” box, organise and store in the correct place. This tends to be the most straightforward element of the process.
• Any remaining “maybe” items should be kept separate for now. For the next period of time, keep revisiting them and try using them. If you never pick them up, donate or discard them!
• The remaining “discard” and “donate” items should leave your premises at the earliest possible time. Make sure of that.

It’s a pretty simple process, but you are still doing two things at once: making (hard) decisions AND sorting. Also, if you are running out of space, you’ll have to interrupt the work to take things away or bring new stuff in. Each time you have to do this, you’ll be distracted from the main job “choosing”, and that is where a second pair of hands can be helpful (call a professional organiser?), quite besides keeping you on track when you get distracted!