There’s a bread maker sitting in the back of my kitchen cabinet that I’ve been meaning to get rid of for over a decade.
My sister gave it to me for Christmas. I want to say 2011, but it might have been 2012. I used it twice. The first loaf came out fine. The second one came out like a brick, and I never tried again.
But every time I opened that cabinet, there it sat. Pushed behind the slow cooker, still in the box, still in perfectly good condition.
I pulled it out at least three or four times over the years with every intention of donating it. And each time, I asked myself the question I’d read in every decluttering article I’d ever come across.
“Do I need this?”
And I’d stand there. Because technically it worked. Technically I could use it. And my sister gave it to me, so there was that.
So back in the cabinet it went. Every single time.
It wasn’t just the bread maker, either. It was the fondue set I’ve never once used. The sewing machine I was sure I’d get back to. The exercise bike in the corner of the bedroom that had become a very expensive place to hang my robe.
I kept asking myself “do I need this?” and the answer was always some version of “well, not exactly, but…”
And that “but” was enough to keep everything right where it was.
It took me a long time to figure out that the question wasn’t the problem. It was that I was asking the same question for every situation, and it only worked for the easy stuff.
The expired coupons, the junk drawer, the mystery cables. For anything with even a little weight behind it, “do I need this?” just left me standing there.
Once I started asking different questions (ones that actually matched the reason I was stuck), things finally started moving.
These are the questions I use now. They’re not complicated. But they’re honest. And that’s why they work.