Decluttering tips from Long Island experts

Sooner or later, lots of clothes, electronics, gadgets and travel souvenirs become outdated or forgotten. And when they are no longer useful or meaningful, they turn into clutter.

Taking up space — on floors, shelves, tables, drawers and in closets, cabinets and drawers — clutter not only brings a sense of chaos, but can impact everything from people’s moods to their relationships, according to mental health and organizing experts.

“The more clutter, the more psychologically unhappy and the more indecisive you are,” said Deacon Joseph Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University in Chicago who studies clutter’s origins and impact on mental health.

Decluttering is a labor that can be fraught with stress, but it’s one that can create a more inviting environment, lower anxiety and improve concentration and mood, according to mental health and organizing experts.

While some individuals resist purging items that they “might need someday or could come back in style,” others are too overwhelmed by their clutter to address it, said Ferrari, the author of “Still Procrastinating: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done.”

If someone lacks space and does not know what to remove, clutter can get in the way of how people want to live, said Diane N. Quintana, the incoming president-elect of the Institute for Changing Disorganization, a research and educational organization in Larchmont, New York. For older adults, balance and limited range of motion challenges can also lead them to clear out items on shelves that are difficult to reach or require a stepladder to access, she said.

Cynthia Braun, owner of Organize Your Life in Lake Grove and the founder of Professional Organizers of Long Island, suggests not going through the decluttering process alone. That means either hiring a professional (fees on Long Island range from $100 to $150 an hour, excluding storage and carting services) or tapping a friend, she said.

“Always have someone with you to help decide what stays and what goes,” Braun said.

It’s OK to acknowledge the process may kick up negative feelings.

Memorabilia, trophies, awards and newspaper articles are “difficult to release because they are a testament to the person’s identity,” said Quintana, who also owns DNQ Solutions in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

Iyasah Cerna, who owns Organize With Iyasah in Huntington, said her phone rings from people who have accumulated clutter, especially if they have gotten a divorce and are emotionally unable to confront objects that spark hurtful memories. They then shove the items “to the back of their closet” or the basement, Cerna said. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

Three Long Islanders with too much stuff they could live without, recount what spurred their purging and what they’ve kept, donated or trashed to eventually achieve a clutter-free home.

TREASURES AND VHS VIDEOS

When Stella Walker, 52, relocated to her current apartment in a two-family house in West Babylon, she transported dozens of filled plastic bags and boxes to her new home’s basement from a leased storage space in Amityville.

“I arranged the upstairs living area but never went downstairs to declutter,” said Walker. “It’s now four years, and I haven’t looked at some of that stuff in two years.”

A home health aide with four children, ages 17 to 27, Walker turned to Iyasah Cerna for guidance and motivation in decluttering. They had known each other for a dozen years through their house of worship, Temple Salvation Deliverance Church, in Wyandanch. Cerna anticipates four, three-hour organizing sessions with Walker, including their first in March.

During that initial effort, the two women came upon a bin with more than 200 DVD and VHS videos, which Walker trashed. She had forgotten about them in the age of movie-streaming apps.

Walker also discarded two artificial Christmas trees but put aside ornaments to donate to the church. Of her estimated 20 board games, some never opened, Walker kept just the classics, like Monopoly, Scrabble and a glass chess set. The rest went to her family, friends and church.

Looking ahead, she still has clothing bags to go through and expects to dispatch unworn shoes and apparel in good condition to her church, the Lupus Foundation of America and other charities. And with her two shredders, Walker plans to destroy four bags with financial and school documents, all more than seven years old.

“I didn’t even know I had those papers down there,” she said.

Walker is holding onto framed pictures of African American life, which were gifts from a favorite aunt. “In the next year-and-a-half I’d like to move to a bigger place so I can enjoy those pictures I have now in the basement,” she said.

Selling STUFF and donating proceeds

As a real estate agent, JoAnn Klein, 63, frequently walks through tidy and spare houses. So, one day in December 2023, when she entered her Miller Place home, she was jolted by the sight of her cluttered living spaces.

“I have too much stuff,” said Klein, the mother of three grown kids. “And I started to declutter.”

At the start, she sold part of her collection of Lizzie High and Little Souls dolls to another collector, which freed up her living room’s couch, cabinet tops and floor. And in the past two years, she has donated her deceased mother’s things as well as her own stuff, including lamps, drinking glasses, kitchen utensils, baskets and dinnerware, to Big Brothers and Sisters of Long Island. The donation could have filled a dumpster, she said.

“I felt like I was giving back to the community,” she said.

Decluttering has driven Klein to start a new tradition — matching the proceeds from sold items and donating the money to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Manhattan, her late father’s favorite charity.

Klein began making those contributions in memory of her father, who died in 2009, and her mother, who died in 2023.

In decluttering, Klein is also heeding her family’s wishes.

“After looking at my mom’s house, my oldest son said, ‘Mom, please don’t leave us with all this stuff to go through,’ and every week my husband says, ‘Did you throw something out or donate anything?’ ” Klein said.

She kept her grandmother’s Christmas bell ornament because of the “loving memories it holds” and her mother’s sewing machine, which brings back warm remembrances of her mother making clothes for her. She has also saved the Simplicity brand patterns.

But Klein is in no rush to sift through and decide the fate of her father’s love letters to her mother. “They go to a place in your heart you don’t want to unlock because it reminds me of how much they loved each other and how much I miss them,” she said.

50 SUITS AND 21 UMBRELLAS

Until two years ago, Steven Schwartz’s basement was a dumping ground for ill-fitting and out-of-date clothes, obsolete electronic games and devices, toys, stuffed animals from carnivals, snow globes, refrigerator magnets, miniature sports arenas and outdoor furniture, among many other items.

“These were all the have-to-haves that turned into clutter,” said the Cold Spring Harbor resident, 62, and father of two sons, ages 34 and 26, and a daughter, 18.

Awards and trophies also helped fill the subterranean 5,000-square-foot space, thanks to his sons’ athleticism and daughter’s theatrical and musical performances including singing the national anthem at the Nassau Coliseum in 2018 for a Long Island Nets game. The performance inspired the proud dad to purchase the team’s memorabilia that day, said Schwartz, a real estate and equities investor.

As part of his paring down labors, he donated 50 suits to churches and 21 rain umbrellas to senior residences. “I want to place the items where I could help people, because it makes you feel better about yourself and the original purchases,” said Schwartz, who has also given myriad stuff to neighborhood kids, churches, veterans groups, Chabad of Northeast Queens in Bayside, Chabad of Mineola and additional nonprofits.

Five years ago, Schwartz kicked off his intensive purging during a serious — and ongoing — search for his ailing father’s 1955 hockey jersey from Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn. Schwartz had wanted to show the jersey to cheer up his hospitalized father, who soon after died from COVID-19 in 2020.

“I couldn’t believe how much junk I had,” Schwartz said, “We had kept buying and boxing.”

With his wife Erica’s help, Schwartz said his decluttering mission remains “to find the jersey.”

“Some days, I can’t find something and I want to declutter right then and there,” he said. “Erica is a great declutterer but has to be in the mood.”

Their basement is now 75% clutter-free.

“It’s still a work in progress, although I can see the rainbow at the end, and I will no longer be the King of Clutter,” Schwartz said.