The 10-Items-a-Day Decluttering Challenge Is Genius

Unless you’ve been a dedicated minimalist for years now, you probably have some things around your house that you need to declutter. That could be extra clothes, an abundance of kitchen utensils and small appliances, unnecessary papers and mail, and so many miscellaneous things that don’t even fall into an easy-to-define category. Tackling even just one of these categories, however, can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Take the closet, for example. You may have thought that decluttering the closet would be a quick, easy project, and then hours later you find yourself sitting on the floor, exhausted, with an “undecided” clothing pile that’s twice as big as your “donate” pile.

The decluttering process can be complicated by emotions and memories and decision fatigue, which is why, sometimes, it’s best to break things down into bite-sized, quantitive goals, versus trying to tackle large-scale projects in one go. That’s the appeal that drew us to TikTok creator Emma Marie Hooper’s 10-items-a-day decluttering challenge. Read more about the challenge and why we love the concept, below.

What Is the 10-Items-a-Day Decluttering Challenge?

The 10-items-a-day decluttering challenge is exactly what it sounds like. In Hooper’s first video of her decluttering series (“Day 1 of getting rid of 10 things every day”), she says she started the challenge to hold herself accountable for actually cutting down on clutter.

“I’ve accumulated so much random stuff, and I feel like every time I try to go through and clean it out, I always make an excuse for something,” she says in the video, before going on to show the assortment of 10 things she chose to declutter for the day. The items include an old whisk that’s cracked, a portable charger with cables that are no longer compatible with her electronics, an extra TV remote, and a stranded water bottle lid with no matching bottle.

In the following days of her challenge, Hooper pulled items from just about every room and corner of her home. Some items could be donated, like a curling wand she no longer uses, while others just needed to be trashed, like a broken shower rod. For each collection of 10 items, it’s clear that Hooper chose items that were quick, easy decisions—items that would be easy to pick out when scanning a room, a shelf, or a drawer, and not items that would involve too much deliberation.

While decluttering just 10 items may seem like a small amount, it adds up quick. After all, if you do it for 10 days, that’s 100 items. And if you power through and do it for a whole month? That’s a whopping 300 pieces of clutter that you’ve gotten rid of (or, at the very least, added to a donate pile).

Why We Love the 10-Items-a-Day Idea

It’s customizable

This decluttering challenge can kind of be whatever you want or need it to be. Is an overflowing wardrobe your biggest source of clutter? Try a few days of decluttering 10 items a day from just your closet and see where that gets you.

If the clutter is more of an all-over issue, you can challenge yourself to declutter 10 items a day from around your home for a full week, 10 days, or even a month if you’re up for it. Or, you can use the method sporadically, one day here and one day there, anytime you’re feeling like doing a quick edit of your space.

It’s manageable

Decluttering just 10 random items from anywhere in your home feels so much easier than tackling a more involved decluttering project in a single space. As soon as you get going, you’ll probably be surprised at how quickly you can find 10 items to declutter, while more focused decluttering projects, on the other hand, often end up taking much longer than expected.

It’s rewarding

As mentioned, 10 items a day quickly adds up and it gives you a real, quantifiable way to track your decluttering progress. Being able to put a number to the amount of things you’ve decluttered in just a few days can be motivating, encouraging you to keep up the progress.