Your 40th birthday is an excellent time to reevaluate your belongings and purge items that feel immature or inappropriate.
Items like beer funnels are wrong for people over 40 to have in their homes. Some items are acceptable when you’re 20 but aren’t conducive to a mature person’s space.
We want to refrain from lecturing you on what clothes you can wear and what decor you can enjoy. However, I want to offer tips on what items should exit your house after your 40th birthday. Certain items have exceptions, but generally, people over 40 will be better off without these things.
Faux Plants
If you don’t have a green thumb, you may have fake plants in your home to add greenery. We understand the idea, but faux plants have a cold, cheap feel that can ruin your home’s aesthetic.
Something about faux plants is disappointing and immature. Once you’re over 40, ditch the fake plants and fill your home with colorful decor. Vases and wall art will brighten up a space.
Worn Linens
An excellent bath towel can last years but not forever. After a while, even the best towels and linens lose their softness, look ragged, lose color, and otherwise fall apart.
Any linens with loose threads, holes, stains, or discoloration must go in the trash. Trust us, you’ll be happy to have fresh ones in your home. While you’re at it, you could also choose a new color scheme keeping things fun and fresh.
Painful Shoes
Breaking in boots or strutting in stilettos is a young person’s game. We don’t recommend wearing uncomfortable shoes at any age, as shoes that need “breaking in” are probably bad for your feet.
If you still need to adopt this mindset, you must after 40. Do your feet, knees, and back a favor by weathering supportive and comfortable shoes. Any footwear that gives you blisters, bruises, or bunions belongs in the garbage.
Souvenir Shot Glasses
Souvenir shot glasses should be reserved for those under 23, but if you still have yours, this is your sign to say goodbye. These are separate from a cohesive glass collection and often look silly.
Sure, they are cute when you’re young, but how often do you actually take shots? If the answer is “often,” that’s a separate conversation. Look at each souvenir shot glass you have, appreciate the memory, and then drop them off at the thrift store.
Plastic Stemware
Along with tacky shot glasses, you can also throw out plastic stemware and glasses. It’s okay to have a few plastic water cups, but plastic wine glasses, flute glasses, and rocks glasses are unacceptable.
The only exception is if you frequently host outdoor dinner parties, but even then, invest in shatterproof glassware. Plastic glassware won’t keep drinks cold.
Plastic Furniture
Speaking of plastic, do you have any plastic furniture around your home? Plastic furniture is not cute and immediately gives your home a camping trip (we love camping) vibe you probably don’t want.
We can’t think of any exceptions to this rule, so say goodbye to all your plastic furniture. We know plastic is easy to clean, but you deserve better for your home.
IKEA Products
I’m not here to shame IKEA or its customers, but the brand’s basic furniture might not be not ideal for a mature home. From the flimsy side tables to the bean bag chairs, you can live without IKEA items after 40.
We permit you to hang onto one or two IKEA items if you truly love them.
Bridesmaid Dresses
We recommend donating bridesmaid dresses soon after the wedding, but sentimental people might hold onto them longer. Maybe you’ve even fallen for the classic idea that you can “shorten it and wear it again.”
You will only do so if you have shortened and worn it again. We assume you have plenty of pictures from the weddings you wore these to, so it’s okay to donate the dresses and keep the memories.
Fast Food Condiments
Ketchup packets, mayonnaise packets, BBQ cups, salt packets, and other to-go condiments are easy to collect, but you must remember to use them. Yes, we know the McDonald’s sweet and sour sauce is heavenly, but you can always get more at the drive-thru.
Clean out your fridge and pantry of all these small condiments. This will reduce clutter and avoid a messy situation when a packet explodes. Next time you get McDonald’s, don’t hoard the extra sauce cups.
Unframed Art
There are exceptions to this rule, but most unframed wall art is unsuitable for a mature home. Unframed concert posters, movie posters, and photos need to go in frames, or they need to come off your walls.
Some exceptions include canvas artwork, woven art, and other styles that can’t be framed. However, if it can go in a frame, it should go in a frame.
Twinkle String Lights
Twinkle string lights are a must-have for Christmas, but they’re a no-go outside of December. If you have string lights hung in your living room or bedroom, take them down, like yesterday.
Replacing them with more sophisticated string lights is okay, but don’t get anything cheap. Also, don’t hang string lights with broken bulbs; that looks lazy.
Damaged Cookware
If a naive, younger you accidentally used metal on nonstick pans or burned one too many eggs in your pan, those should go in the trash. Cooking with damaged cookware is unpleasant and gross but also bad for your health.
Scratched pans, rusted pots, broken spatulas, and worn casserole dishes should all be purged. Treat yourself to top-quality cookware (not from IKEA), and enjoy cooking with functional, intact items.
Former Phones
An iPhone costs $1,000+, so we understand the compulsion to hold onto your old one when you get a new one. However, doing this has little to no point so that you can move on.
If you want to sell your old phones, why have you yet to do that? It’s because it’s too much effort, and you’ll never do it. That’s okay, we get it, but don’t keep the phones any longer.
Wire or Plastic Hangers
Treat your clothing with love and care, and please stop using wire hangers and cheap plastic hangers. Just because the retail stores and dry cleaners use them doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to.
Wire hangers can damage clothes, and plastic hangers make everything look cheap. So, please remove them and replace them with velvet, satin, or wood hangers.
Expired Cosmetics
Many people need to realize that makeup expires pretty quickly. Eyeshadow only lasts about two years, lipstick lasts roughly one year, and foundation is good for about 18 months.
If you have eyeshadow from the 2010s or lipstick from your college years, do your skin a favor and remove them from your rotation. This applies to all expired products, including lotion, perfume, nail polish, and cleansers.
Stained or Smelly Tupperware
Do we even need to explain this one? Stop holding onto Tupperware containers stained with spaghetti sauce or riddled with the odor of the tuna casserole you made a year ago.
Tupperware is not made to last a lifetime. Even top-quality Tupperware has a limited lifespan. Any questionable containers should go in the trash. I recommend replacing them with glass or ceramic containers that will last longer and don’t hold stains or odor as quickly.
Clothes With Holes
If your favorite concert tee has a hole in the back or your comfiest sweatpants are fraying at the bottom, don’t keep them around. It’s sad when your favorite clothes start to fall apart, but it is what it is.
Don’t keep these clothes — not even as sleepwear. You deserve to wear clothes without holes. If it’s a sentimental item, consider having it fixed.
Paper Clutter
Paper clutter is hard to avoid as we get older. We collect business cards, tax returns, takeout menus, receipts, etc. While it’s wise to hold onto these things in some cases, it’s probably time to eliminate most of it.
First, throw out business cards, takeout menus, old birthday cards, event tickets, and manuals. If you don’t need them now, you won’t need them in the future. Once you’re done, your home will feel so much cleaner.
Disposable Dinnerware
Red solo cups, plastic forks, paper plates, and other disposable dinnerware have no place in an adult home. Unless you’re throwing a picnic next week, trash all these items or give them to your kids.
Is doing dishes the worst? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean you can revert to adolescent habits and eat your home-cooked dinner with a KFC spork. If you want to avoid doing dishes, order takeout.
Single Socks
We’re all guilty of holding onto orphan socks for too long. When you’re folding laundry and realize this pink sock doesn’t have a match, you toss it back into the hamper and tell yourself that you’ll deal with it later.
That was fine for a while, but now it’s time to get honest with yourself and say goodbye to all the single socks you have. Moving forward, set a rule that you can only keep single socks for a maximum of two laundry days — giving you time to find the other sock — before they go in the trash.
Cheap Jewelry
Keep your affordable sterling silver or faux gem costume jewelry. However, eliminate anything made from plastic or similarly cheap materials.
Toss out Mardi Gras beads, jelly bracelets, plastic bangles, metal pieces that turn your skin green, and cheap beaded jewelry. When sifting through your jewelry, consider the material and quality, and use your best judgment to set the bar for what you think needs to be let go.
Neon Art
We don’t want to tell you how to decorate your home, but 99% of neon signs and decor are not cute once you’re over 30, let alone 40. It’s time to say goodbye unless you would die of sadness.
Neon art can be funky and cool in some settings, but only if your whole house has a vaporwave vibe. Is your house a nightclub? A liquor store? No? Okay, then the neon has to go.
Mismatched Kitchenware
When you’re young and trying to build a decent kitchenware collection, it’s easy to settle for anything you can get. You might have two blue plates, six silver spoons, and then gold forks.
Buying new kitchenware is annoying, but having a cohesive collection and decluttering your kitchen is worth it. You can toss everything and start over, or choose your favorite pieces and build around those.
Old Jeans
Some lists, like this one, might say all people (especially women) over 40 must toss their skinny jeans, low-rise jeans, and distressed denim. We won’t gatekeep your jeans styles because that’s no fun.
However, we need you to throw out any old jeans that are falling apart, don’t fit you, or don’t fit your style anymore. We know it’s heartbreaking to say goodbye to your favorite pair of jeans from high school, but everything ends at some point.
Stickers
When you’re 25, it’s fun to put stickers on your laptop and folders in college or on your bulletin board at home. After 40, however, stickers lose their endearing quality and become tacky.
If you have a stack of stickers somewhere and need to know where to stick them, that’s because there is no good place for someone over 40 to put stickers. Please get rid of them and scrape off any stickers on your belongings.
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This post was previously published on Wealth of Geeks.
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