We unpacked about 42 boxes and bins. Three small boxes, 15 bankers boxes (the white ones that are great for books and heavy things), seven mediums, eight larges, five wardrobe boxes, and four big plastic tubs.

Six boxes are still packed inside our house. Two at the top of the stairs with our family board games and some of my daughter's things. Three in my daughter's room. One in the garage labeled decor.

That doesn't count the bins we keep packed on purpose as storage. Out in the garage I have one labeled outdoor for camping gear, one labeled water for the beach and junior lifeguards and the pool, and one for snow with our snowboarding stuff. Those are supposed to stay packed.

And here's what's leaving:

• A pile of books and Highlights magazines I want to donate somewhere they'll get used.

• Two bags of children's toys.

• Curtains from my daughter's old room.

• Seventeen children's books.

• Sixteen square IKEA mirrors I was supposed to hang in our last garage and never did, so I'm certainly not hanging them here.

• Slippers.

• Glasses and kitchen things I didn't use before and won't use now.

• Four hats.

• Two extension cords.

• Eight articles of clothing.

• Four IKEA food storage containers that never kept anything fresh.

• An under sink organizer.

• Spice racks.

• And a box of electronics to recycle.

A listener tip worth passing on: Lyn wrote in about an electronics recycling place here in San Diego that takes everything. Old computers, phones, cords, batteries. This matters because Staples now has a 10 battery per month limit, and that goes fast. Search for electronics recycling in your own area. Thank you, Lyn.

The honest part is that I don't like things sitting in boxes.

I knew that about myself. I didn't realize how much it would annoy me. Every time I walked past a stack, it felt unfinished. I couldn't stand not knowing what was in there, and I kept wanting to open them.

So I quit. There was no dramatic moment. I didn't throw in the towel. I decided I'd rather unpack, and I started unpacking like a normal person.

For a while I felt bad. I told you I was doing this experiment, so it felt like I was letting you down and letting myself down.

Then I looked at what actually happened and it made sense.

The Packing Party is built to show you what you don't use. You hide everything, you live your life, and whatever you reach for is your answer. That's its whole job.

But I've been doing this work for years. In the last 12 months alone I've probably decluttered a thousand items. We've been watching survival shows, Survivor and now Alone, where people take ten things with them. I have zero desire to live that stark, and I also know I could survive without most of what's in my house. I don't need a Packing Party to prove that to me.

Could I find more to declutter? Absolutely. I probably have more pencils than I need. I counted my Scotch tape and I have four rolls. Is that more tape than I need? Yes. Am I going to use it? Also yes. It came in a pack of four.

Decluttering perfectly good things I'm going to use just doesn't feel good. Owning less for the sake of owning less feels silly to me.

In my office I use Dana K. White's container concept. If everything fits in the space I've given it, I'm okay. And I'm borrowing margin from Dawn at The Minimal Mom, which I'll get to.

So the Packing Party gave me friction without a payoff. For someone whose house is already pretty pared down, it just makes you go dig through a box to find your stapler.

But it absolutely has its place. Which brings me to the swap.

I turned to the Pause Box.

There's one box in our garage I haven't opened since we moved. It says decor on it, and it's everything that lived on our old bookshelves. My husband always wanted a library, so I built those shelves, and they fit perfectly in our last place. We couldn't bring them here.

The things on them told our story. Our cake topper from our wedding. The maraca from our wedding, because we got married in Mexico. A teal glass from my husband's grandparents. Little pieces from my grandparents.

I'm sure I'll keep some of it. I just don't know where any of it goes yet, and some of it may end up in my sentimental box rather than out in the house. So I want a little space between taking it out of the old place and putting it straight into this one.

Decor is a hard category for me because I don't want to get rid of something and then turn around and buy it again. I don't love that consumption cycle. I'm not someone who swaps out seasonal decor at HomeGoods.

So that box gets a date. In six months I'll go through it. I'll probably keep most of it, and that's fine.

My daughter turned into the Packing Party.

She's been so busy with school and activities and sports that her room hasn't been a priority. Three boxes are still unpacked in there.

In six weeks, she's gone into those boxes exactly four times. Notebooks. A fidget item. Her sleeping bag. And a gift from a friend.

We did unpack a lot of her things. All her books, which is where those 17 donated books came from. All her clothes. Her dresser and desk are set up. But she hasn't gotten her Legos out. Once she had what she needed for everyday life, she just stopped.

That's the Packing Party working perfectly. And it's going to work well for her specifically, because she's a sensitive kid with an incredible memory. She can pick up a rock and tell you where it came from. The longer something sits in a box, the easier it gets for her to let it go.

We're not traveling over Thanksgiving, so I'm dedicating that week to getting her room set up the way she wants it.

Our craft area is accidentally doing this too. We've pulled out markers and colored pencils for one activity, and I'm using my sewing machine this weekend. Everything else still has Saran wrap on it from how I packed the drawers. We don't craft much in the summer because we're outside and at the beach. We're told it's going to be a rainy winter here, so I want to see what we actually pull out over the next six months.

My husband stayed right in his lane. Traditional, straight through, decluttering as he went. His office was one of the first rooms finished in the house. Most of the electronics in that pile are his, and so are the clothes.

I assigned three methods to three people. Six weeks later, two of us had switched without even discussing it.

You can't be that prescriptive. If ripping the bandaid off works for you, great. If it doesn't, there's nothing wrong with you. This stuff didn't come into your house overnight and it doesn't have to leave overnight. One room at a time is almost better, because you learn as you go and it gets easier.

It's also fine to use all three methods in different parts of your house. And fine if what works changes along the way.

I want open space on purpose. In every drawer, on every shelf, and definitely on every flat surface.

I used to be the worst offender on flat surfaces. I'd walk in with my hands full, tired, wanting to relax, and dump everything on the first one I saw. Now there's a wicker basket on the console behind our couch, right in the middle of the house, and that's my catch-all. Purse, hat, sunglasses. It's so simple, and it works because it's simple. We don't need to overcomplicate this.

Here's what margin looks like, because people hear that word and picture an empty room.

A drawer with margin still has your stuff in it. There's just air around it.

Start wherever you are. Maybe you want 25% margin. If you're just starting, go for 5%. If there are 100 things in your closet and you take out five, is it a little easier to slide a hanger and see what you have? If not, take out five more. How does that feel? Five more. At some point you'll hit the place where your clothes can move, you know what you have, and it feels good.

That ease is what clutter free actually means. Living your life without friction, rather than owning the least amount possible.

Margin means you don't have to play Tetris to put something away. It means the counter can hold the mail for one afternoon and still look fine. It's the buffer between a house that absorbs a hard week and one that falls apart during one. When work has hard deadlines and the kids get sick and you've got a lot on your plate, things can pile up without everything collapsing.

Margin isn't only physical. I start with physical because it's the most tangible. You can pick something up and make a decision about it and feel it immediately.

Margin in your calendar is the space between activities, so when the school calls you aren't canceling three things.

Margin in your budget is the money you didn't spend, so the car breaking down isn't a crisis.

Margin in your brain is the capacity you didn't use up, so when your kid says "hey mom, guess what happened today," you can actually tune in.

We understand why we need this. Somewhere along the way we stopped applying it to our homes.

If you don't know where to start, start with a nightly 10-minute tidy. It's why I built Tindy. I designed it, my husband built it, and it means I don't have to remember. The timer goes off and my brain gets to let that job go. Set the timer, tidy the space you're in, and when it rings you're done. You don't have to finish. That's the whole point. Do it again tomorrow.

Can I be honest with you?

The room I'm struggling with most is my daughter's. And when I sat with why, here's what I found.

Mom guilt is the single biggest reason I keep things.

I want her to have everything she wants. And I know that's not rational, because we don't buy that much. It accumulated. Things from here and there, especially craft supplies.

Those craft supplies were the biggest surprise of the whole move. I have no idea how it all fit in our old house. Thinking about it now, some was in the living room, some in the linen closet, some in her room, and my sewing machine was in my closet. I took four areas and combined them into one. No wonder it looks like so much.

But here's the real thing underneath it.

My stuff is easy for me. I can look at my own things and decide fast.

Her stuff isn't mine. I don't get to decide, and I don't want to, because she should be the decision maker. That's how a kid learns what matters to her. If she makes a mistake, good. I want her making small mistakes at home now so she isn't making big ones out in the world later.

And part of it is that she's a teenager and the next few years are going to fly by and she'll be out of the house. That's heavy. But stuff is just stuff. My plan is to find the little things that remind me of this time, put those in my sentimental box, and keep them close. That makes it easier to let the rest go when she's ready.

If you're standing in your kid's doorway feeling this, I see you. It's the hardest room in my house too.

Pick one drawer.

Don't empty it down to a certain number or amount. Don't tell yourself you have 50 things and need to get to 30. Just take out enough that you can see some air or space around your items.

Then close it. Do it before bed tonight. Tomorrow, after you've slept, open it and notice how it feels.

That's margin. Once you feel it in one drawer, you'll want it everywhere.

If your house is full, this will be a challenge. That's okay. We can do hard things in small increments. One drawer today, one tomorrow.

I used to think I had to make up for lost time, and I failed constantly because of it. You don't have to make up for anything. Start today, because today is what you have.

My pause box is sitting right here next to me and I'm going to empty it on camera, one item at a time, on YouTube this week. I'm @wannabeclutterfree over there.

In about six months I'm opening that decor box in the garage and I'll tell you exactly what I missed and what I didn't. It's going in my calendar.

And my challenge for myself in this new house is a spending hiatus for at least six months. We don't need anything.

I quit the experiment and I'd do it again, because I don't think I'd have gotten these results any other way. It's okay to try something and not win at it. That's why it's an experiment.

Turns out I just wanted a little more room to breathe.

Follow along in real time on Instagram at @WannabeClutterFree. I am documenting every single day of this.

New episodes every Wednesday. Find all the show notes at wannabeclutterfree.com.

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