Refactored Life — A 30-day room-by-room | refactoredlife.com
How to decide what to do with any single pile: three boxes, one timer and the 90/90 test.
The method needs three containers labelled keep, donate and discard, plus a 20-minute timer. The fourth box — 'maybe' — is deliberately missing, because every undecided item is a decision that has to be made twice.
Step one: pick one pile or one drawer, never a whole room. Step two: start the timer and take items one at a time, top of the pile first, with no re-ordering. Step three: apply the 90/90 test to each item — used in the last 90 days or needed in the next 90 means keep; otherwise donate if it is usable, discard if it is not. Step four: when the timer ends, stop, even mid-pile.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
The 90/90 test does most of the work. If an item has not been used in the last 90 days and is not needed in the next 90 days, it leaves. Seasonal gear is measured from its season: the winter coat is tested against the coming winter, not against August.
Closing the loop is part of the sort. The keep box goes straight to its measured home — 20–25 hangers per metre of rail, 30–40 utensils per 60 cm drawer, 400–600 sheets per A4 drawer. The discard bag goes out with the day's rubbish, and the donate box is scheduled to leave in the day-28 run, because donations still sitting in the hallway have not reduced anything.
The most common stall is re-deciding: picking up an item already sorted and reopening the question. The counter-rule is that an item leaves its box only when new information appears — a discovered part, a changed season — never because the original decision felt uncomfortable.
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