“I’ll keep that, just-in-case …”

How many times have you held on to an item just-in-case you need it later. Perhaps it was some extra band-aids in your travel bag, or an Allen wrench from that bookshelf you built, or an old phone charger that might fit another device. All these things seem useful to keep about just-in-case, but are they worth the space they take up in your cabinets or drawers?

The Minimalists are Emmy-nominated Netflix stars and New York Times–bestselling authors Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. They describe the category of just-in-case items this way:

We often hold on to things just in case we need them: We don’t let go because we might need something in some far-off, nonexistent, hypothetical future. We pack too much stuff in the remotest chance we might need something for trips and vacations.

We needn’t hold on to these things just in case: We rarely use our just-in-case items—they sit there, take up space, get in the way, weigh us down. Most of the time they aren’t items we need at all.

So how do we decide what to keep and what may be thrown away? The Minimalists developing a simple test that they call the 20/20 rule.

Anything we get rid of that we truly need, we can replace for less than $20 in less than 20 minutes from our current location. … This theory likely works 99% of the time for 99% of all items and 99% of all people—including you.

To their point of view, this means that most just-in-case items don’t earn their keep. In their own experience, almost none of the items they have thrown away have ever been needed again!

I invite you to take up their challenge and see how many of your just-in-case items are truly clutter.