Country homes have a way of collecting things. A dresser inherited from an aunt, a stack of terracotta pots that "might come in useful", the wellies by every door. None of it is clutter in the cruel sense — most of it is loved, or at least laden with memory. But a cottage only feels restful when each room can breathe. The trick is not to empty the house in a single heroic weekend. It is to work through it one space at a time, asking of every object a simple question: does this earn its place here? If not, it goes to a charity shop, a labelled box, or a neighbour who will actually use it.

Start with the room you avoid

Begin where the discomfort is greatest. That is usually the spare bedroom, the boot room, or the back of the pantry. Choose a room you can finish in a single day, because a half-sorted space becomes a discouragement rather than a project.

Before you touch anything, decide where things will go when they leave. Set out three containers and a bin liner: one for donations, one for items belonging in another room, and one for storage. Clear a table for the things that stay. Then work clockwise from the door, so you never double back.

The test is not "do I like it?" — nearly everything in a country home is liked. The test is whether it has a job. A spare bed earns its place. Twelve spare blankets do not, however pretty the tartan.

The kitchen dresser and pantry

Kitchens gather duplicates faster than anywhere else. Three vegetable peelers, six wooden spoons, a drawer of takeaway chopsticks. Empty one shelf at a time and lay everything out where you can see it.

• Keep one of each useful tool, plus a genuine spare for the ones you use daily.
• Decant dry goods into glass jars and date them — if you cannot remember buying the flour, it has probably been there since a previous tenant.
• Retire chipped enamel and cracked crockery. A country kitchen can be rustic without being hazardous.
• Send decorative tins and spare jam jars to the storage pile, keeping only what you will genuinely fill this season.

Wipe the shelves as you go and line them with fresh paper. You will want to keep the pantry tidy once it smells of beeswax rather than old spice jars.

Living rooms and the sentimental shelf

The sitting room is where sentimentality does its best work. Family photographs, a jar of beach pebbles, a chair nobody sits in. Rather than fighting it, give sentiment a home of its own.

Choose one shelf or one sideboard and make it the memory shelf. Everything else comes off. A single well-lit shelf of treasures reads as a collection; the same objects scattered across the mantelpiece read as noise. Photographs that are not framed, boxed, or in an album are doing no one any good — sort them into labelled envelopes and store them together in a dry cupboard.

Furniture needs the same honesty. A cottage can hold one comfortable chair that is genuinely sat in and one heirloom piece you love. It cannot hold four. If a piece is only kept because it belonged to someone, ask whether that person would want it standing in the way of your fire.

Bedrooms and the linen cupboard

Bedrooms are storage rooms in disguise. Start with the wardrobe: if a garment has not been worn for two winters, it is not clothing, it is decoration. Take everything out, hang back only what fits and flatters, and turn the hangers the wrong way round for the coming season so you can see what you actually reach for.

Then tackle the linen cupboard, which in most country homes is a small museum of mismatched sets.

• Keep two complete sets per bed, plus one guest set if you have guests.
• Fold sets inside their own pillowcase so nothing gets separated.
• Retire anything thin, stained, or belonging to a bed size you no longer own.
• Label the shelves with the bed size — double, king, single — so nobody hunts at midnight.

Old towels that have gone stiff make excellent boot-drying rags and dog towels. Keep a modest stack in the utility room and let the rest go.

Outbuildings, sheds and the garden table

Gardens and outbuildings reward the same discipline, though nobody wants to hear it in June. Do this job in late winter, when nothing is growing and the shed is cold enough to discourage lingering.

Group everything by function: propagating, pruning, mowing, watering. Anything broken beyond repair goes. Anything duplicated goes to a neighbour or a tool-share scheme. Terracotta pots stack by size, and any pot with a crack becomes drainage crockery for the bottom of a new one. Empty seed packets should go into a labelled tin or straight into the compost.

Give every remaining tool a home on a hook or a shelf, so the wheelbarrow can be wheeled in without a fight. A shed where everything has a place is a small daily pleasure.

Labelling, storing and the six-month rule

What you keep should be findable. Store seasonal items — Christmas china, summer cushions, seed trays — in clear boxes with a written label on the short side, and keep a simple list on the inside of the cupboard door. Label the storage pile with a date as well as a category.

Then apply the six-month rule. If a stored box has not been opened by the time its date comes round, it does not need to live in your house. Donate it unopened. The point of all this is not a showroom. It is a cottage where the kettle goes on easily, the mud comes in without ceremony, and every object you own has quietly agreed to be here.