Deciding what stays and goes
You decide by giving every item one of three verdicts — More, Less, or Go — in a single 30-minute pass over one drawer, shelf, or closet section. Anything you hesitate over goes through two 90-day checks instead of an argument with yourself. The go pile leaves the house bagged to the condition standard the tax deduction requires.
| Decision point | What it governs | The number |
|---|---|---|
| Sort session | One drawer, shelf, or closet section | 30 minutes |
| Borderline test | Items you keep hesitating over | 90 days + 90 days |
| Wear pattern | Which clothes actually get worn | 20% of items, 80% of wear |
| Closet reset | Project 333 clothing budget | 33 items for 3 months |
| Donation condition | Deductible used clothing | Good condition or better |
| Noncash paperwork | IRS Form 8283 filing | Over $500 |
| Appraisal trigger | Form 8283 Section B | Over $5,000 |
| Cash gift ceiling | Share of adjusted gross income | 60% |
Pick one drawer, shelf, or closet section, set 30 minutes, and give every item in it one verdict: More, Less, or Go.
The sort works because the unit is small. One drawer or one shelf can be emptied, judged, and closed in half an hour; a whole room cannot. Attempting the whole room is the failure mode known as the whole-room pull: everything comes out, stamina ends around minute forty, and the unsorted remainder goes back undecided.
Each item gets exactly one landing spot. More means it earns its space and you would replace it immediately if lost. Less means it stays but in smaller quantity — three mugs of the twelve, one black sweater of four. Go means it leaves the home. The banned move is the maybe pile, a fourth heap that converts decisions into deferred rent: roughly 1 in 10 US households already pays for self-storage, and unresolved go decisions are how that shelf space fills.
Close the session physically. Bag the go pile and put it by the door or in the car trunk. Box the less items. Return the more items to the now half-empty zone. A sort that ends with piles still on the bed is not finished — it is paused, and paused sorts get re-shelved.
An item earns 'more' only through recent, repeated use; everything else is 'less' or 'go'.
Wardrobe audits keep landing on the same 80/20 pattern: about 20% of garments take 80% of the wear. The practical reading is that most of a closet is a less or go candidate by default, and the sort's job is to find the heavily worn fifth and protect it.
Ask two questions of each item: when did I last use this, and would I choose it again today over its duplicates? Recent, repeated use lands it in More. Use without enthusiasm — the mug you reach past, the shirt worn only when everything else is dirty — lands it in Less. No recent use at all sends it to the 90/90 test before it can argue its way back onto the shelf.
Duplicates are where the Less pile does its work. Keeping the best one or two of anything is a quantity decision, not a betrayal. The Go pile is for items that fail both questions: unused, unmissed, and surviving only because shelving them costs nothing today.
Not worn or used in 90 days and stored untouched for 90 days means the item goes.
The 90/90 rule is a two-part test for the items you keep hesitating over. Part one: has it been worn or used in the last 90 days? Part two: has it sat untouched in a closet, bin, or shelf for 90 days? Fail both and the verdict is Go — no further debate, because the item just demonstrated three months of being neither wanted nor needed.
The test replaces argument with data. 'I might need it someday' is a hypothesis; 90 days of disuse is a measurement. A shirt unworn since the season turned fails part one in real time. A kitchen tool still boxed from the last move fails part two on arrival.
Seasonal gear gets the same test inside its own season: a coat untouched through winter has failed, even if July was the excuse. Items that pass — used within 90 days — still have to beat their duplicates to hold a shelf.
The sort runs on minutes, not milestones — thirty of them, in order, per zone.
Every item in the zone lands in exactly one of these — the procedure forbids a fourth pile.
Each figure on this page traces to a named public source: UCLA's Center for Everyday Lives and Communities, IRS Publication 526, and IRS Form 8283 instructions.