the line and become clutter.
Face the fear! Remind yourself that the world is full of To break the bonds of collection clutter, assess your empty yogurt containers. Your belief that they might all disappear collection with an eye to finding the heart: those three or five is just that—only a fear. Out they go, both the containers and or seven items with a true tie to your affection. Only those items the fear behind them.
with meaning, use, and value deserve a place in your home.
Protecting an investment: “I paid good
All in the family: “It was my grandfather’s.”
money for that.”
Family: it’s the tie that binds—and binds you to unwanted stuff Financial issues often bond us to clutter; a mental refrain of in the form of “heirloom clutter.” Heirloom clutter is any item
“But I paid $20 for that!” can keep us from releasing items you don’t want, don’t need, don’t use, and don’t value, but we no longer need or want. Problem is, yesterday’s purchase which you keep because it once belonged to a family member.
price no longer has much relationship to today’s value. Prime We’re not talking about true heirlooms. I have one: a example? Computer equipment. Three or four years after beautiful quilt hand-made by my great-grandmother Kirchener.
purchase, the actual value of a personal computer is only a Each time I find the tiny squares of “ABC” fabric, salvaged fraction of the original price due to rapid advances in technology.
from a childhood dress of my mother’s, I feel the love of four It’s not what you paid for the item that matters; it’s what generations in my hands. My quilt tells a story, and I will pass it’s worth today—and that is the value you must assess when it—and its story—along to my own grandchildren.
DECLUTTERING YOUR HOME
33
Heirloom clutter is more like Grandpa’s old sofa. It’s tattered.
▲ Be selective. True family heirlooms deserve a place in an It’s ugly. You can’t sit on it for fear that it will fall apart, but you organized home, but not all inherited items qualify. Do keep your can’t get rid of it, either. Why not? “Because it’s an heirloom!”
grandparents’ love letters, but find a shredder for their utility bills.
Learn to distinguish between a true heirloom and heirloom clutter. To help, ask these questions:
its time and place. The macramé wall hanging you made at summer camp. Boxes of music CDs from your college years.
▪ What do I know about this item?
To cut the bonds of identity clutter, remind yourself that
▪ Do I have a memory related to this item?
you are not your stuff. The memories and the growth are the
▪ Does the item have use or value in my everyday life?
true gift of these earlier identities. The leftover stuff no longer has a use, except to tie us down and hamper our current, richer Identity crisis: “Those beer kegs were in
life. To retain the memories, save a symbol of that stage of your my room in college.”
life, and then release the identity clutter. Write a journal entry Identity clutter is possessions we no longer use, but hold onto about your summer at camp and ditch the dusty macramé.
because they symbolize a younger, earlier identity. Identity Frame a selection of your favorite album art, and donate the clutter is easy to spot, because it’s usually branded closely with music CD collection to the local thrift shop.
34
SKILLS FOR A WELL-RUN HOME
Dealing with
other people’s clutter
Clutter issues, like red hair or blue eyes, tend to run in families. While an occasional brown-eyed, naturally organized joker does sometimes enter the pack, chances are that household clutter is a family problem. When you’re taking the first steps down the road to order in your own life, other people’s clutter can create major roadblocks.
What can you do to deal with the clutter created by others?
Where to start? Change begins with you!
You’ve worked for weeks to declutter the family room and There’s no such thing as clutter-free living.
kitchen, and once again, you wake up to wall-to-wall mess.
Even the tidiest among us still tosses clothing
Other people’s mess. Tempting as it may be to call a family on floors from time to time.
meeting and lay down the no-clutter law, resist the urge. Any Accept reality by establishing dedicated
forced regime of clutter-free living will last only as long as clutter preserves. Like wildlife preserves, these
you stand over family members and nag them to pick up their eserves are limited areas where clutter may live freely, socks, newspapers, and toys.
so long as it stays within boundaries.
Instead, recognize that change must begin with you. Only when you have met and mastered your own clutter challenges
▪ In a bedroom, one chair becomes the
can you turn your attention to helping other family members clutter preserve. Clothing may be thrown with
along the path to order. Moreover, their progress will be just abandon, so long as it’s thrown on the chair.
like yours: made in small steps. Just as you must make slow clutter pr ▪ A kitchen junk drawer can house and steady progress toward building new habits, setting up vitamin bottles, rubber bands, clipped recipes,
activity centers, and cutting off new clutter at the source, so expired coupons, and shopping receipts that
with other family members.
are unwelcome outside their clutter preserve.
▪ A large magazine bucket in the living
Tips for the family clutter consultant
room is fair game for catalogs and magazines,
Fighting over disorder and disorganization gets nobody so long as they can fit inside the bucket.
Establish
anywhere—and it doesn’t clear the clutter. Instead, adopt
▪ Crafting, sewing, or hobby projects
the role of clutter consultant to help other family members create instant chaos—but too-rigid pick-up
get a grip on clutter. Acting as a helper takes the heat off rules invade scarce crafting time. Dedicate a
the dispute, and creates a sense of teamwork. Try these tips small folding table or outfit a spare closet for
to inspire others to order in your household:
craftwork to keep inspiration flowing. To keep
the hobby clutter in bounds, close the closet
doors or screen the table between sessions.
▶ Storage areas Create storage in a child’s room: chests are good for tidying away toys, and baskets and containers can slide under the bed. A unit can hold files and books, and more baskets.
DECLUTTERING YOUR HOME
35
Work with the clutterer’s personality “My-way-or-Be flexible Spouses, roommates, or housemates often the-highway” clutter fixes are based on a faulty premise: that disagree on what constitutes clutter. One person’s trash is there’s one right way to cut clutter and get organized. Wrong!
another one’s treasure, and everyone has different tolerance Personality styles dictate the shape of successful clutter levels, so why waste time defining your terms? A successful solutions. A clear-desk strategy that works for a visually family clutter consultant is flexible, and reaches for solutions oriented parent won’t have meaning for a child who prefers rather than confrontation.
his tools in view. Contain his colored markers in a cheerful In my home, husband Steve’s poker materials had become mug on the desktop, rather than in a closed drawer, to respect an unwieldy collection of books, printouts, and scraps of paper his personality style.
that drifted from sofa to table to floor, depending on where Steve had been studying last. To my eyes, it was simply clutter, Attack the problem, not the clutter Clutter is only while to him, it was his poker library: an indispensable a symptom
; the true problem lies within the clutterer’s resource for a man who hopes to compete at a world-class relationship to stuff, space, and order. As a clutter consultant, level some day.
your job is to attack the problem, not the stuff. Picking up a Solution: I designated a small shelf unit to accommodate child’s scattered papers after she returns home from school is a his poker library. By making a home for the poker library, one-time symptom fix; setting up a Launch Pad for the child ( see Steve has easy access to his reference materials—and I no pages 182–183), and teaching her to visit it before and longer have to see them piled across the breakfast table after school offers the true solution.
or heaped on the sofa.
organizing your home
Skills for a well-run home
Getting organized isn’t about how the house
looks: it’s about how it works. How quickly can
you wrap a gift, pay the bills, or change a sick
child’s bedding in the middle of the night? In
an organized home, stuff and surroundings are
arranged to make it easy to carry on the work
of daily life.
Organization is more than simply stowing
items neatly into boxes, cabinets, or drawers.
It’s about storing a household’s supplies,
tools, and materials in a meaningful, logical
pattern—and in a way that makes it easy to
return them after you’re finished with them.
Good organization speeds and simplifies every
daily task.
In this section, we’ll learn the basic principles of home organization, how to create activity
centers to focus everyday tasks, and how to
use containers to create an organized home.
We’ll also look at ways to involve all the family
in organizing the home. Our goal: to create
livable, workable space and storage that makes
daily life flow smoothly.
ORGANIZING YOUR HOME
39
How to
organize a home
Home. It’s where the heart is, where you belong, come to recharge your batteries, and rest your head—and, for most of us, there’s no place like it. Our homes are more than shelter from the elements; they are the stage on which we live our lives.
Sentiment aside, however, just how well does your house work for you?
Think back to the last 24 hours. Were you out the door without unpaid bills and missed appointments. A clean and streamlined delay ... or did you lose the car keys again this morning? At bedroom won’t show the ripped and wadded clothing jammed mealtimes, was it easy for family members to help set the table, into drawers or crammed into closets. By contrast, a busy desk or were the dishes stored too high, too low—or sitting, still may be the best evidence of an organized household: bills paid, unwashed, on the kitchen counter?
papers filed, letters answered.
One can be tidy without being organized. Tidying is the process of returning out-of-place possessions to their homes.
“Getting organized is not
But what if those items don’t have the right homes in the first place? Then you’re back at Chaos Point One, still looking for about how things look: it’s
the house keys, your wallet, or the dog’s leash. “Put away”
about how things work.”
does not necessarily equal “organized.” So don’t fall for the organized look. Go for the organized function—it’s what makes When you went to bed, was it a relaxing transition from a busy the difference between chaos and calm.
day, or did you have to shove aside a pile of clothing and evict the dog from your pillow to rest your weary head? If daily life Think process, not product
is getting you down, it’s time to get organized.
Pick a yard sale, any yard sale. Chances are, some pretty pricey organizing products will be featured for sale: rotating plastic Think function, not appearance
turntables; bathroom shelf units; specialty organizers like can First, we need to get clear about what organizing is, and what holders; tie racks, and shelf extenders. All on sale for a tiny it isn’t. Organization is not a decorating style—it’s about how fraction of their retail price—and all mute witnesses to a well your home functions, not how it looks. A home organized would-be organizer who has confused “getting organized”
with mismatched found-and-made containers can be far better with “buying stuff.”
organized than one fully outfitted with pricey built-in organizing There’s a difference between organization and the products
“systems” that don’t work. The paradox is that tidy houses are you’ll use to achieve that goal. Organization is a process, not a not always organized houses. Neat stacks of paper can hide product. It involves time and thought, effort and motivation—
and you can’t buy these factors in any store. No tangible item, no matter how useful, can set you on the road to better
◀ Getting organized means having everything you need easily to hand so that you can perform the everyday tasks that keep home organization all by itself. The moral is: nobody got organized and life running smoothly.
by buying stuff. Instead, they ended up holding a yard sale.
40
SKILLS FOR A WELL-RUN HOME
The rules of
home
organization
The bottom-line test for organization is function. Does your house work for you?
Can you find things, carry out tasks, and live daily life without stress? To organize a home, follow the three rules of home organization: a place for everything, bring the family on board, and create centers for household activities.
1A place for everything.
items in the kitchen, store plates, bowls, and unbreakable It’s an old saw, but it still cuts: “A place for everything, glasses in low cabinets. Younger family members can set the and everything in its place” is a watchword for true home table only if they can reach the dishware; by storing tableware organization. Possessions, like people, need homes. Find them in an accessible place for them, you’ll be helping all of the that home, defend their turf with labels, dividers, and organizers, family to help you.
and you’ve won most of the battle for an organized home.
“It’s an old saw, but it still
3Create “centers” for household activities.
Looking for a model of a well-organized home?
Head back to preschool! Preschool teachers are
model organizers because they have to be. Without a plan cuts: ‘A place for everything,
for classroom structure, 18 or 20 energetic little people could and everything in its place.’”
create plaything havoc in mere moments.
To keep their schoolroom running smoothly, preschool Be creative when it comes to finding homes for household teachers apply the concept of “centers”: dedicated areas for stuff—and rearrange your thinking. So what if stores sell towels a single activity, like blocks, dress-up, or sand play, with storage in matched sets of three? Break up the trio and store them for all the playthings required by that activity. In the playhouse, where they’re needed: hand towels stacked in washrooms near kitchen toys, pots, and pans encourage role-playing; at the art living areas; bath towels and washcloths in the bathroom where table, paper, paints, and brushes are within easy reach. At they’re most used. Don’t hide pizza coupons and take-out menus pick-up time, children know to return costumes to the dress-away in a kitchen drawer where they’ll get forgotten: store them up pole, and park the trucks in the “parking lot” storage area.
in a folder near the phone where they’ll be most useful.
On the domestic front, you can set up centers that work the same way, to focus and support the everyday activities 2Bring the family on board.
that are carried on in the home. To create them, you’ll designate: Getting organized
is not simply a matter of domestic real estate; it’s an integrated process involving all
▪ A focus. Allocate one focused activity to each center.
members of the household. Any organizing scheme or system
▪ A specified area. Set aside a single place to perform will fail unless all family members understand it and can follow the activity.
it. Bring the family on board as you organize your stuff and your
▪ Storage for tools and supplies. Ensure that all items surroundings. For example, when organizing where to put needed are present and available in the center.
ORGANIZING YOUR HOME
41
Creating
Consider establishing these activity centers for
▪ Reading (comfortable chair, reading light,
your home. Tailor them and their contents to your
small table for beverage, reading glasses, pillow,
family’s needs.
highlighters, and page markers)
▪ Homework (table, good lighting, pens and
▪ Telephone (phone directory, family address
markers, paper, reference books)
book, family calendar, message pad, pens, folder
▪ Entertainment (television, remote controls, centers
containing pizza coupons and take-out menus)
TV schedule, seating, snack trays, placemats)
▪ Grooming (skin-care products, shaving tools,
▪ Fix-it desk (workbench, lighting, toolboxes, cosmetics, and hair care implements near a
organizers for hardware such as nails)
bathroom sink and mirror)
Cut the Clutter Page 4