Based on localized molecular orbitals, the proposed method reduces large configuration interaction (CI) spaces while maintaining agreement with reference values. Our strategy concentrates the numerical effort on physically pertinent CI-contributions and is to be considered as a tool to tackle large systems including numerous open-shells. To show the efficiency of our method we consider two 4-electron parent systems. First, we illustrate our approach by describing the van der Waals interactions in the (H2)2 system. By systematically including local correlation, dispersion and charge transfer mechanisms, we show that 90% of the reference full CI dissociation energy of the H2 dimer is reproduced using only 3% of the full CI space. Second, the conformational cis/trans rotation barrier of the butadiene molecule is remarkably reproduced (97% of the reference value) with less than 1% of the reference space. This work paves the way to numerical strategies which afford the electronic structure determination of large open-shell systems avoiding the exponential limitation. At the same time, a physical analysis of the contents of the wave function is offered.