The easiest way to keep your home full is by not filtering what comes in. An impulse buy on Saturday, a freebie from a neighbour, the company Christmas gift, promo bags from a shop — none of it you went out to find, but all of it shows up. Ask yourself one question with every new item: ‘where will this live, and what’s there now?’ No spot, or the spot’s already taken? Don’t assume it’ll sort itself out. When in doubt: don’t bring it in, or toss something to make room (the one-in-one-out rule).

One person can’t keep a house tidy. If you clean up every Saturday and your partner or kids have no clue where things go, it’s upside down again within a week. Make rules: which space is whose, what does and doesn’t belong in the living room, how often you do a joint thrift-shop run. Start small — for example, ‘everyone tidies their own stuff from the living room before bed.’ Sounds simple, but it prevents 80% of the clutter that otherwise builds up over a week.

Some things you can’t throw out because they mean something — fair. But if everything means something, nothing really does. The porcelain vase from an aunt you barely knew, the bead bracelet from a 2008 holiday, coursework from a finished degree — we attach stories that feel more important than they are. Test: would you call someone to talk about this object? No? Then it probably matters less than you think. Photos often replace the object — the memory stays, the dust in the cupboard goes.

The irony: the real junk — broken stuff, things that don’t work anymore, outdated electronics, empty boxes ‘for when we ever move’ — sits there because you think ‘I’ll look at it again sometime’. But you don’t. A charger for a phone you got rid of 8 years ago, a coffee machine that leaks, 30 plastic shopping bags. That’s not ‘maybe-useful’, that’s junk. Two categories to bin today: (1) anything that doesn’t work or no longer fits, and (2) anything you haven’t thought about in 6+ months. To the dump, not the thrift shop — real junk doesn’t belong in a ‘donation’ pile.