Take A Minimalist Approach To Decluttering Your Home With This Viral TikTok Trend

Scrolling the socials lately, you may have been asking yourself this question: What is underconsumption core and why is it all over my TikTok feed?  Well, the movement is about conscious consumerism, fueled in part by the economy. It's also morphed into a viral method for decluttering, a refresh of Marie Kondo's KonMari organizing method. Only this time, it encourages you to keep only what you need and what still works. And TikTokers are showing us exactly how to do it. 

The approach is as straightforward as using up things you own until they run out. The idea is a great approach for stationery in the office or creams in the medicine cabinet. But don't try to do everything at once, which is one of the most important things you have to stop doing when decluttering. 

Embracing this year's underconsumption philosophy, TikToker @shannenhill_ is focusing on areas of her life that matter most to her. She tackled her bathroom's storage areas, paring down her makeup (day and night!) to a small drawer. "That's all I own," she says as viewers get a peek inside the drawer. "I don't need to own a million different things." In this case, that's eyeliners, brushes, and other products that take up major real estate in bathrooms, a decluttering hotspot in the trend.

Underconsumption decluttering also works really well in the kitchen, where another TikToker @platedwell got some major hearts for what she did in her apartment. She and her husband now have only four water bottles, and put beaten-up cutting boards and hand-me-down utensils to work. They fill the walls with pieces of art that were either free or cost less than $10, and also cover their refrigerator doors with their favorite magnets, some of which they made by repurposing beer bottle caps. Declutter bonus: Only one cabinet now contains food, because they opened up that much space.

Closets are another happy place for those who embrace underconsumption and want to declutter. Identify what item you seem to purchase repeatedly. For instance, it may be a particular brown corduroy jacket. Some like to organize clothing and other contents into three piles: stuff to keep, stuff to sell, and stuff to give away. On TikTok, @juliapmoody creates a spreadsheet where she identifies items that she has worn less than five times to track her "cost per wear" to decide what she should chuck, opening up room in her closets for pieces that will be removed.

Also hashtagged as "overconsumption recovery," the method is said to be freeing because some feel as though clutter has taken over their lives and causes anxiety, and once gone, even declutters their lives. People are posting videos not just to share their own decluttering journeys, but to ask for help. The advice is to attack one drawer or cabinet at a time, and even employ the method only five or 10 minutes a day as long as you're not bringing more things in and focused on getting things out. 

The approach might have you using your grandfather's old canning jars for drinkware, passing dog bowls down through generations, learning to live with scratched furniture, and tossing expired and empty spice jars. With each effort, the trend will likely also have you heading to the donation drop at your local thrift shop. In addition to feeling better in yourself, this trend has also helped some to save money. In line with the purpose, make sure to declutter sustainably, especially in the closets because 84% of donated clothing ends up in landfills and incinerators, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.