pare down
Cut the excess
To pare down is to reduce something to its essentials by cutting away excess.
The phrase draws on the literal sense of paring—trimming with a knife—but applies to abstractions: We need to pare down the guest list, She pared down her possessions before moving.
The emphasis is on gradual, deliberate reduction rather than wholesale elimination.
- reduceMake smaller in degree
- whittleCarve by shaving layers
- trimRemove unwanted edges
- lessenReduce in degree
- clipCut or attach
shave off · streamline · distill · strip away · winnow · thin out · weed out · declutter · prune · minimize · cull · diminish · economize · decrease · cut back · minify · condense · edit
- declutteringdecluttering, organizing, donating, purging, discarding
- narrowing downnarrow, focus, pinpoint, zero in, home in
- Reduceshrink, diminish, decrease, lessen, reduce
- reduce/lessenreduce, shrink, lessen, decrease, diminish
- scaling downscale back, cut back, dial back, taper off, roll back
- tidyingtidying, tidy, tidying up, declutter, cleaning
down, pare, paring, pared, pares, parer, parers, paring knife, paring knives