The things that defeat a clear-out are rarely the obvious keeps or the obvious rubbish. They are the middle: the jacket that might come back into use, the spare kettle, the folder of papers that might matter. Each one individually is a two-minute deliberation, and forty of them is why a morning's job takes all day and ends unfinished.
A date solves this, and it solves it without requiring you to be decisive, which is the appeal.
How the dated box works
Anything undecided goes in a box. Write a date on the side, three or six months out, and put it somewhere out of the way but not out of the house. Then carry on with the job, because the decision has been deferred rather than avoided and the difference is that this one has an end.
When the date arrives, you open it knowing something you could not possibly know on the day you packed it: whether you went looking for any of it.
What the waiting period actually measures
It measures use, not sentiment, and use is the thing nobody can predict about their own possessions. People are confidently wrong about what they will reach for, in both directions. Three months of evidence settles it in a way that three minutes of staring at the object never will.
It also removes the object from view, which quietly dissolves a good deal of the attachment that made it difficult in the first place.
Pick a period that suits the category
Kitchen equipment and tools want six months, because seasonal cooking and seasonal jobs both need a run. Clothing wants a full year to cover every season, or you will discard a coat in June and regret it in November. Paperwork follows its own retention rules and does not belong in a maybe box at all.
The rule that makes it honest
You are allowed to take things out during the waiting period. That is the whole experiment. What you may not do is open the box to reassure yourself about the contents, because browsing it resets the attachment and the box becomes a storage unit with a nice label on it.
When the date comes round
Open it, and anything you have not touched goes, without a second round of deliberation. If you cannot face that, the compromise is one honest sweep: keep up to three things, let the rest go, and do not extend the date. An extended deadline is no deadline at all, and a box on its third date has become permanent storage that happens to have a number written on it.
Put the date in a calendar
Written on the box alone, it will not be noticed for two years. The date needs to exist somewhere that interrupts you, which is a reminder on whatever you actually check. This is the step people skip, and it is the step the whole method depends on.