This Hidden Clutter Issue Was Costing Me Hundreds, Until I Found This Trick

Decluttering is one of my favorite ways to make my house feel more peaceful and easier to clean. I love the feeling of seeing a cleared space and being able to put big bags of trash outside and donations in the car to drop off later. Getting rid of things keeps our home from becoming overstuffed and cuts down on household stress. 

But there’s another, secret kind of clutter that would bog me down: unreturned items. For years, I struggled with the clutter created by things I needed to return. These items didn’t have a permanent place in our home because they weren’t meant to stay there, but I also didn’t want to put them somewhere out of sight (I didn’t want to forget to return them!). This meant they’d languish on our mudroom bench, in the car, or by the door while I procrastinated the task or waited for more items to join the pile so I could maximize my errand time. 

Eventually, I realized that the only way to prevent these piles of clutter was to make a definite plan for dealing with them. Having a method in place for getting those returns taken care of eliminates the energy zap they cause, reclaims space in my home, and puts money in my pocket — guaranteed. 

Here is how I’ve learned to get my returns done and manage them in the meantime. 

Although I feel great once I’ve done them, I definitely don’t enjoy making returns, and I try to wait until I have a few so I can do them all at once. For instance, I have regular Amazon returns so I’ll usually wait for more than one to collect before dropping them off. However, if I wait too long to make my returns, then I run the risk of missing the return window. 

This has happened to me — most memorably with a large online order from Old Navy that totaled over $100 in clothes I meant to return. That hurt for sure, but it scarred me enough that I’m terrified of missing return windows now. These days, the longest I’ll let returns pile up is two weeks. I’ve also assigned a return day and time, Monday morning, so that I’m not dreading the task the entire week.

I really don’t like leaving items that need to be returned out where I can see them; they create clutter and stress me out. Because I have an assigned day and time for returns, I feel comfortable putting them behind closed doors so I don’t have to look at them. Our current “returns spot” is the floor of our front hall coat closet, in a canvas bag. When it’s time to make the returns, I can just grab the bag and everything that needs to get taken back is ready to go. 

I do my best to process online returns as soon as possible after I know I don’t want to keep the item. For example, I’ll go through the Amazon prompts and get my QR code before putting the item in the bag in the closet, or I’ll package up clothing orders and print labels beforehand. Doing this backend work ensures that I don’t have any additional barriers to getting those returns out the door and on their way. 

Mentally adding up the money that’s sitting in my returns bag in the form of unreturned items is my biggest motivator to check the task off my list. My last batch of returns, which included clothes from Old Navy, shoes from Target, and various Amazon items, came to a total of about $80. Clearing those things out of our closet and knowing that that money was on its way back to our account was the best reward (in addition to knowing I wouldn’t have to do returns for another two weeks!).