It Took 2 Decluttering Tricks to Declutter My Closet, and the Results Were Amazing

If you were to come over, you’d never guess that my closet is a total disaster. Generally speaking, the common spaces of my home are kept tidy, but my walk-in closet is another story. The tipping point came when I resolutely climbed up on a precarious pile of various bins, boxes, and clothing to reach some shoes and down I went, backwards, careening in slow motion towards the hardwood floor. As I was lying there in the moments that followed, assessing the damage, I realized this had to stop.

As luck had it, I had recently read on Apartment Therapy about two decluttering tricks that are all about making the process way more approachable: the “domino” decluttering trick and “doom diamond” method. While taking on all of my closet at once would certainly be too much, starting small and having a clear plan seemed doable. Here’s what happened when I gave these tricks a try.

Coined by Houston home organizer Beth Venable, the “decluttering domino effect,” or “domino” for short, involves the idea of building decluttering momentum by starting off small. You do one simple thing, complete it, and move on to another. Like a row of dominoes falling down, one action leads to the next. On the other hand, the “doom diamond” method, as seen in this video by creator Abigail Roe, suggests tackling your doom box or a manageable pile of items by placing them into four categories — trash, items with a home, items without a home, and action items — in a diamond shape around you.

As I approached doing the “domino” trick, tackling one small task at a time, I incorporated the “doom diamond” method to get each task done in an organized fashion. Here’s how I used these two decluttering tricks together in a smart way.

Because the domino method suggests starting with something small, I went for my junk drawer first. This drawer houses anything from airplane ear buds and phone chargers to loose change and even binoculars. Using the doom diamond method, I extracted everything, pulling out each item and placing it in its designated space, one by one, with a sense of urgency and purpose. 

Next, there was no avoiding the epic task of clearing out my floor, which had become a catch-all spot. This needed to happen before I could even approach the rest of my closet. I collected, dumped, separated, and decided on each item on the floor using the doom diamond approach. The truly liberating part of this method is being able to identify items that no longer serve me, whether in function or in significance. Decluttering piecemeal like this allowed my closet to become less of a doom spiral, and more of a manageable challenge.

My pile of items to donate grew in size over time into a veritable mountain, and the trash bins were filled and emptied repeatedly. I admit, I sat crosslegged on my floor in agony over certain trinkets from exes and pieces of indecipherable children’s art (which niece or nephew had created this masterpiece?) but eventually each item was deposited into the right category and dealt with. There were good moments, too — like when I waxed ecstatic over a favorite T-shirt that I had all but forgotten about, or the discovery of that long-ago misplaced book I was reading, tucked into a handbag for running errands. 

But the best moment of all was entering my closet, after many doom piles had been disassembled and dealt with, and looking around at the pleasing and surprising order of my belongings. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, ease. And I’ve noticed that this ease breeds confidence. It is indeed a domino effect, as each positive movement and sensation begets another. Now that same sensation occurs each morning when I enter my closet. The dread is gone. In its place is a quiet, sweet anticipation of the day ahead and of all of its possibilities.