The Psychology of Getting Rid of Junk
5 Rules to help you declutter your life
I don’t know about you, but spending so much time stuck inside during the pandemic made me come to value every inch of available space in my small SF Bay Area apartment. To this end, my apartment has undergone several drastic transformations to clear space (and then again to clear more space) to work from home and still feel like I have a home that is not just an office.
One way to make more space for our home lives is to get rid of things we no longer use. Seems simple in theory, but in practice, there are a number of psychological mechanisms that make it difficult for us to make good decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of.
In this article, I will explain some of those concepts from psychology and behavioral economics and describe some rules you can use to overcome them.
The Psychology
When you want to clean up and get rid of things you no longer use, there are two big related psychological principles working against you: Loss Aversion and the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
Loss Aversion
Loss aversion is a psychological principle that refers to the tendency of people to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains. In the context of decluttering, loss…
