“Throw it away” is a poor universal rule. First find out what the item does and whether it must be kept.
Separate legal records from convenience copies
Identify the owner and any retention or privacy policy before deleting a record. An invoice, signed agreement or regulated document may have a required period and storage location; the exact rule depends on the organization and jurisdiction. A duplicate download or outdated draft is different. Record the authoritative copy so people do not keep five versions for fear of losing one.
Price the cost of keeping and finding
For physical material, consider space, retrieval and safety. For digital files, consider search, backup, access and privacy exposure. A rarely used template may be cheap to retain in an indexed archive; an obsolete public form may actively mislead users. Choose keep, archive, replace or delete with a reason and review date.
Make decisions reversible where possible
Use an approved archive or trash period for low-risk items, then confirm that links, workflows and colleagues no longer depend on them. For shared files, notify the people who use them and update the index. Measure whether the new arrangement reduces search time or errors; a tidy shelf is not itself the outcome.
Try it in a real workweek
A project folder has six “final” presentations. The owner checks retention rules, selects the signed-off version, marks a source folder for permitted reuse and archives superseded drafts under the team policy.
Do not use a generic article as a records-retention schedule or delete data subject to a hold.
Check the source and the context
For the next step, see this related field guide.