Prompt Card Example from Declutter Deck®: Organize Your Mugs
Organize your mugs. It helps get you moving toward decluttering your kitchen.
Set your timer for 60 minutes and take a before photo.
How to Declutter Mugs -- Starting with the Pile
The first thing to do when sorting through your mug collection is to make the pile. Pull every mug out of the cabinet and line them up in single file on the countertop so you can see exactly what you own.
Keep Your Favorites, Let Go of the Rest
This should be a relatively quick prompt, unless you have accumulated a lot of mismatched or broken mugs over the years. Mug collections are a lot like t-shirt collections -- most are picked up on a whim and embellished with something sentimental. I am a lover of less and a Zen lifestyle, and even I am attached to my mug collection. It is not extensive, but it has real meaning to me. Marie Kondo would approve of what I have kept. My mugs spark joy when I drink from them, which is exactly the standard she would apply.
What Makes a Perfect Mug?
To me, the perfect mug is slightly heavy, deep enough to leave room near the brim so the coffee does not spill when I walk from room to room in the morning, and most often white or a pale color.
At my house, I love my cow mug. It has a simple drawing of a cow on the outside, a slightly curved lip, and a weight that feels right in my hand. I reach for it first thing every morning. When it is in the dishwasher, my stand-in is a blue and white mug my mom gave me. My recent holiday favorite -- an oddly shaped cat-reference mug called Santa Claws -- has started to pull a close second. Between the cow mug and the holiday mugs, I am set for the week.
I also keep a favorite mug at my mom's house -- a Capricorn mug in white with black writing I found at a Pottery Barn outlet for $3.99. It holds a lot and works just as well for tea. It is my go-to when I visit.
Logo Mugs and Sentimental Collections
My husband, on the other hand, loves his logo mug collection. It is full of mugs from colleges our kids attended, companies where he worked, and places we have been together. He also loves the mug our daughter made him for Father's Day with pictures of our grandson on it. That one is his clear favorite now, and seeing him reach for it more and more frequently tells me everything about the place it holds in his life.
All our most-used mugs sit on the first, easy-to-reach shelf above the coffee maker. Ones that are less frequently used, like a set from our favorite breakfast spot in Napa, sit on the second shelf. On the top shelf are a few with hairline cracks -- too meaningful to toss but no longer safe to use daily.
Step 2: Group Your Mugs -- Your Favorites Become Immediately Clear
Group mugs by owner. At our house, we do not share mugs because each one is meaningful to one of us specifically. Following the KonMari Method® principle that you only tidy what is yours except in common spaces, I treat our mug collection as personal. My husband's favorites are off-limits to me, and mine are off-limits to him. When our kids were younger and lived at home, the same unspoken rule applied. No one touched the ones dad loved.
How to Declutter Mugs -- the Editing Step
Chips, coffee stains that cannot be removed no matter how much scrubbing you do, and mugs that have simply lost their meaning are all reasons to let go. Gifts from friends or relatives that are just taking up space are fair game to donate.
Chipped mugs deserve particular attention. When hot coffee is poured into a chipped mug day after day, eventually the crack will deepen and the coffee will spill. Let them go. If a chipped mug is truly meaningful, take a picture of it. If it has a significant crack, do not donate it. Put it in the trash rather than risk someone else getting hurt. The only exception is if you want to repurpose it as a planter or a pencil holder. If neither of those ideas resonates, let it go.
Last step: wipe the keepers off and check for stains. Bar Keepers Friend will handle most tough stains. If a stain will not budge after that, the mug becomes fair game to release.
Step 4: Return Everything to Its Place
I once worked with a client who had kept every mug she had ever received -- more than fifty in total. Each time I asked whether one sparked joy, she said yes. She had a tiny kitchen, very little storage space, and a genuine difficulty letting go of anything in her home. Mugs were no exception.
As a compromise, we packed the less meaningful ones into a box in the garage and agreed that after six months, if she had not wanted or needed any of them, she would donate the lot. A week later she called to tell me she had already let them go -- and that in doing so, she had been able to release a few other things as well. She was becoming unstuck. Letting go of the everyday mugs had been the breakthrough item. Although we were sorting komono -- the fourth category in the KonMari Method® -- she was finally beginning to see how the weight of the past was holding her back. Eventually she revisited clothing and paper, the first and third categories in the method, which was a major step forward.
You never know what is tied up in an object that has been living in your home. Learning how to declutter mugs sounds small. Sometimes it is the thing that moves everything else.
Once everything is back in place, take an after photo. Then you are done for the day.
(Instructions provided by professional organizers at The Uncluttered Life, Inc.)
About Declutter Deck®
Declutter Deck® is a set of 52 prompt cards that break home organization into focused, completable tasks -- one space at a time. Pull a card, set a timer, and go. Each prompt is sized for a real day, so you always know exactly where to start. Tag us at @lifehackdecks with your before-and-after photos.
If clutter keeps creeping back no matter how many times you clear it, our guide to reducing decision fatigue is a good place to understand why -- and what to do about it.
