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Optimal Finance Daily · Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Author Suggests One-Year Test for Unused Items

To combat the tendency to hoard items for potential future use, an author suggests implementing a one-year timeline for keeping an item. If an item is not used within a year, there's a high probability it will never be needed or missed.

The tape

2 quotes
If this is you, then you should put a timeline of no more than a year on the item. If you don't use it in that timeframe, then there's a big chance that you will never need it or won't even miss it that much.
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner
Instead of buying items that you rarely use, you may want to think about renting them or borrowing them from someone else.
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner
Heard on Optimal Finance Daily — “3661: The Less You Own The Less That Owns You by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of Making Sense of Cents on Minimalist Living, published Tuesday, August 11, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
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