I love to organize both my stuff and other people’s (with their permission, of course.) I have two cardinal rules. Touch items once, and cardboard is not a storage container. (A third rule is that the floor is not for storage, but that is for another post.)
Touch items once should be obvious. If you pick an item up, decide what to do with it at that moment. Please don’t set it back down on the pile. Make a decision. If you do this, the clutter will disappear quickly. Waffling does not get the job done.
When I say cardboard, I mostly mean cardboard boxes. Bankers boxes can be okay, and other cardboard items, like magazine holders or accordion folders, are acceptable, too. But cardboard boxes (like from Amazon) are not made for long-term storage and often are random sizes, making them hard to store, hard to open, and generally ugly.
I had four cardboard accordion files where I stored my paperwork from previous years. Even though they were under my acceptable list of cardboard items, these folders were very thick and beginning to fall apart after twenty years of use.
Thanks to all the decluttering I’ve been doing, I had four empty plastic accordion folders. I didn’t’ think I needed them, so I set them aside for Hubby to use for his law paperwork.
While watching a decluttering video, I saw someone using a plastic accordion folder, and a lightbulb went off in my head. I switched the four cardboard folders for the plastic ones, and boy was that helpful. The plastic ones take up half the space on my shelf and look much better.
I will repeat my second rule. Don’t use cardboard for storage. Use cardboard boxes for donating all the stuff you’re decluttering, but find appropriate containers for items you want to keep. I assume these objects matter to you, so you should store them with care. It might just save you space also.