Archives for Decluttering

Ask Unclutterer: Designing a new space that prevents clutter and reduces cleaning time

Reader Howard submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

Do you have any tips for remodeling or building a house that would help prevent clutter or reduce cleaning maintenance in the design of the space?

This is a really fun question, Howard, and I’m so glad you asked it. You have a terrific opportunity in front of you to build a space that can help you achieve and maintain an uncluttered lifestyle.

First things first, thoroughly unclutter your existing possessions so your new space is free of things you don’t want in it. Check out “Start a full-room organizing project with a blank canvas” for tips on uncluttering in this style, but apply it to your entire home.

Now that the obvious is out of the way, I highly recommend designing the space with ample storage that can easily be reconfigured. Use elfa shelving (or the competing product from Rubbermaid) in closets and pantries so shelf heights can be adjusted or clothing rods installed or drawers can be added as necessary. Your needs for storage change over time, and your storage solutions should be able to adapt. If they can’t adapt, at some point they will cease to be helpful.

Also, when it comes to storage, think outside the closet. Have drawers set into the risers of your stairs, recess shelving between the studs of your walls, have window seats double as storage cubes, furnish with ottomans that have interior storage, or whatever fits your design style. The idea here is be creative with the elements you use in the space to improve storage instead of hinder it.

Beyond having ample, reconfigurable and creative storage, there are numerous cosmetic things you can do to help with cleaning and preventing clutter. None of these is a perfect solution, but they’re certainly things I do in my homes when I’m not renting:

Paint the walls with washable flat latex interior paint that contains ceramic microspheres. (You can find these in the washable paint section at most home improvement stores. Check the ingredients on the paint cans. The ceramic microspheres are usually in the higher-end washable paints.) Even if you don’t have pets or young children, it’s still very easy to get marks on your walls. With washable paint that has ceramic microspheres mixed into it, these stray marks come off like you’re washing tile instead of your painted walls.

Lay hardwood floors and use throw rugs instead of wall-to-wall carpeting, especially if you have pets. Cleaning and maintaining hardwood floors is exponentially easier, and it’s much less expensive to replace a throw rug than an entire room of carpeting.

If money is no object, install smart glass windows. You’ll never have to clean blinds again. (But, I guess if you can afford smart glass windows, you could probably also afford a cleaning crew to wash you blinds …)

Finally, I’ve never had one, but I’ve always thought a central home vacuum system would speed up cleaning time. Some of the systems have horizontal intakes (I think they’re technically called “sweep inlets”) so in addition to using the vacuum hose, you can also sweep directly into the suction area and not have to use a dustpan.

Thank you, Howard, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. And, like I mentioned earlier, be sure to check the comments for suggestions from our readers on designing spaces to prevent clutter and reduce cleaning time.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Posted by Erin on May 18, 2012 | 33 Comments | Tweet This

Do your spaces reflect what matters most to you?

My friend Brittany (whom I’ve mentioned so many times on this site that I’m starting to think I need to add her to our About page) sent me a link to the following video, which I’ve found to be incredibly inspiring. As an unclutterer, there are numerous things that caught my attention with this piece and I want you to see it, too. This is a video that fashion icon Anna Dello Russo recently made for the clothing store H&M:

Dello Russo’s home is a perfect example of what I refer to when I say, “it’s important to clear the clutter so you can focus on what is important to you.” What is important to Anna Dello Russo? Fashion and, specifically accessories. Her place has a lot of accessories — more than I’ve ever seen in an individual collection — yet her home is completely uncluttered, simple, elegant. She doesn’t have anything in her home that detracts from her passion for accessories. Even the books on her bookshelf exist to provide her inspiration for new accessories and outfits. And, she is truly organized. Everything has a place, and everything is in its place.

Did you notice the descriptions she has written on her shoe boxes? Did you see how she keeps the packaging for her tights and carefully returns each pair to that packaging when she’s finished wearing them? Did you see how few clothes she actually owns? My guess is that she is a loyal follower of the one-in-one-out rule for her garments. Her purses and clutches are lined up in beautiful rows, and it’s obvious she knows exactly where each piece of jewelry is located in her home.

My favorite thing about this space is how it represents her love for accessories and that love is directly reflected in the decor of each room. She has some artwork on the walls, but mostly she lets the bracelets and hats and other items be the artwork. This is a woman who knows exactly what matters to her and doesn’t let anything distract her from her passion.

What matters most to you? Have you made room in your life for whatever it is you love? Have you cleared the clutter, the distractions, so you can spend more time focused on what matters to you? Do your spaces reflect who you are and what you love as well as Anna Dello Russo’s do?

Posted by Erin on May 7, 2012 | 33 Comments | Tweet This

Start a full-room organizing project with a blank canvas

Earlier this week, our landlord brought in floor layers to pull up the carpet in our master bedroom and replace it with wood flooring. This meant we had to get everything except for the bed frame and mattress out of the room so the flooring guys could work their magic.

Once the crew finished, we moved our dresser, alarm clock, lamps, nightstand, and a bench back into the room. Then, we made the bed, rolled out a new area rug, and stopped moving things back into the space. We didn’t move anything else back into the room because we loved the way it felt with nothing else in there. Without clutter and extraneous furniture, our bedroom felt calm and relaxing again. When talking to each other about the room, my husband and I have used the words refuge and retreat numerous times to describe it. Now, we’re in the process of finding new homes for all the other things that were in the room, such as we moved the hamper to the bathroom, relocated family photographs and books to the bookshelf in the living room, and took a box of charity donations to Goodwill. We were surprised by the amount of stuff that was living in our bedroom that we didn’t want to have in there.

This exercise was a good reminder that there are significant advantages to moving everything out of a space as the first step of a full-room uncluttering and organizing project. When you remove everything, you get to see the bare bones of the room. Additionally, you can bring items one-by-one back into a space to decide if you really want something in that room and be attuned to its presence and its best place. It’s also immediately obvious when a room looks and feels the way you want it to, and you know that everything outside the room needs to be trashed/recycled/donated/relocated because it doesn’t belong in the room.

When you’re uncluttering and organizing a full room, keep these questions in mind once the room is empty:

  • Structurally, does any repair work need to be completed in the room? Do walls need to be painted? Do floorboards need to be cleaned? Do any holes need to be patched or cobwebs vacuumed?
  • What are the purposes of this room? What are my goals for this space?
  • Is the large furniture in its best place? Should the furniture be rearranged?
  • Does all of the furniture need to come back into this space? Why? How does each piece of furniture help me to achieve the goals for this space?
  • Do the decorative elements in this room add or detract from the purposes of this room? Do they inspire me? Do I find them beautiful?
  • Do the other items that are going into this room belong in this room? Is this the best place for these items to live? Do I need these items to meet the goals of this room?
  • Are items placed where I use them? Is there a place for everything, and is everything in its place?
  • Once the room is set, decide if the items that didn’t make it back into the room need to be trashed, recycled, donated, or relocated. Be careful not to let the clutter from one room become clutter in another room.

If you don’t have the space in your home to temporarily hold all the furniture and items of another room, set down a tarp in your yard or driveway and move your things outside (obviously, only do this in good weather). If you’re in an apartment or condo, give your neighbors a head’s up, and then take over the hallway for a few hours. I’ve found that when you use a space outside your home as a temporary holding location, you’re motivated to work quickly and efficiently, which is also a good thing.

The image above is not of our bedroom, but it certainly represents how our room feels to me now.

Posted by Erin on May 3, 2012 | 12 Comments | Tweet This

The dirty truth about messy offices

For good or bad, people make assumptions about you based on the appearance of your office. If they see a framed picture on your desk of you standing on a beach with two children, they instantly assume you like going to the beach on vacation, you have two kids, and you enjoy being reminded of this vacation while you’re at work. If you have a law school diploma and a state bar association certificate framed and hanging on your office walls, people seeing these items assume you’re a lawyer, who graduated from a specific school, who is legal to practice law in your state.

The previously mentioned examples of the family photo and the diploma both resulted in positive assumptions about you and these items were likely placed in the office to elicit the exact responses they received. The bad side of assumptions based solely on appearances is that people can also come to negative conclusions about you. For example, a consistently messy desk (not one that is disrupted for a few hours each day as you plow through a project, but one that is disorganized, dirty, and cluttered over a prolonged period of time) can hurt you professionally because it gives the impression to your coworkers you’re not a good employee, even if your work product proves otherwise.

On April 13, Businessweek published the article “Clean Your Messy Desk, Lest Ye Be Judged.” The article, as you probably assume based on its title, explains the downsides of having a perpetually messy office. From the article:

… according to a survey of U.S. workers by hiring firm Adecco, 57 percent of people have judged a co-worker based on the state of his or her workspace. A clean desk sends the message that you’re organized and accomplished, while a disheveled one implies that the rest of your life is in a similar state.

Katherine Trezise, the president of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (you may know ICD by its former name, the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization) comments on the survey’s findings in the Businessweek article:

Trezise says that a little mess is OK, but that “the problem comes in when it affects other people. Can you do your job? Maintain relationships with colleagues?” If the answer is no, you might need to rethink your habits.

To keep your coworkers from making negative, and probably inaccurate, judgments about your job performance, spend five to ten minutes each day cleaning and straightening your workspace before heading home. Return dirty dishes to the break room, wipe up any spills, process the papers in your inbox, throw away trash, put away current projects to their active file boxes, and set your desk so it is ready for you to work from it immediately when you arrive to your office the next morning. Not only will these simple steps send a positive message to your coworkers, but they will also help you to be more productive. For larger projects, such as waist-high stacks of papers and towers of boxes cluttering up your office, schedule 30 minutes each day to chip away at these piles. Your coworkers will notice your efforts and start to reassess their negative assumptions.

For the rare few of you who work for bosses who believe a messy desk is proof of your competency, I recommend keeping a fake stack of papers on your desk for the purpose of looking disorganized. To create your fake mess: assemble five inches of papers from the office recycling bin and wrap a large rubber band around the stack. The bundling will make the stack of papers simple to pull out of a drawer when you need it to influence your boss, and it will also make sure you don’t get any important papers mixed in with the decoy stack. Think of the stack of papers similar to a potted plant (which, oddly enough, researchers have discovered gives the impression to your coworkers that you’re a team player, so put a single plant in your office if you don’t already have one).

Like most of you, I don’t love that assumptions about job performance are influenced by the appearance of one’s office, but feelings about assumptions aren’t important. If you want a promotion and/or raise, if you want your coworkers and boss to have positive opinions about your work, and you want to give the accurate impression that you value your job and place of employment, then keeping your office organized and clean can’t hurt you in your pursuit of these goals. My opinion is that in this economy you do what you can to keep a job you love, so it’s a good idea to spend the five or ten minutes each day helping yourself in a positive way.

Posted by Erin on Apr 26, 2012 | 36 Comments | Tweet This

Determining if a sentimental item is clutter or a treasure

In January, Bubba Watson bought the General Lee that jumped over the police car at the end of the opening sequence to the television show The Dukes of Hazzard. Watson, who won the Masters golf tournament this weekend, is reported as having said the car was his “dream car” and sought out the car’s auction.

Without a doubt, the General Lee is a sentimental item to Watson. He probably loved the television show. He probably associates the car and The Dukes of Hazzard with very happy memories from his childhood. He treasures it and will likely put it on display and dust it regularly with a cloth diaper. If the mood strikes, he may even drive it.

Conversely, if the General Lee had been in my garage, I would have found it to be sentimental clutter. I have no affinity for the car and never really got into the television show. I wouldn’t want to waste the garage space on it, and I wouldn’t want to pay for its upkeep. I would have eagerly sold it or given it away to get it off my hands.

This example of the car illustrates the most important point with regard to sentimental items — only the owner of the object can determine if something is a treasure or clutter. I’m certain my husband believes my collection of Mold-A-Rama animals is clutter, but to me it’s pure happiness and joy. The animals remind me of the vacations we’ve taken and the fun we’ve had locating the Mold-A-Rama machines. My husband’s favorite stuffed toy from his childhood looks like a germ minefield to me, but to him carries wonderful memories from years past. So what does this point mean for an unclutterer? Only you can sort through your sentimental items. This isn’t a chore you can pass off to someone else.

The second point the car example illustrates is that sentimental treasures are respected and treated as treasures. Watson displays the car, maintains it, pays attention to it, and values it. He doesn’t have it shoved in the back of his garage, under a pile of stuff, collecting dust. If it could fit in a cardboard box, you can bet he wouldn’t store it in such a thing. In fact, he probably has a security system and sprinkler system installed to protect his treasure.

If you’re storing sentimental items in cardboard boxes in your basement or attic or garage, it’s a pretty good sign the items are clutter and not treasures. Cardboard is easily damaged by water, mold, mildew, and pests and doesn’t protect belongings for any length of time. Plus, you can’t see your items or appreciate them through the walls of a box in a corner of a room beneath boxes of holiday decorations. If you truly treasured the items, you would protect them properly and/or display them in your home. It would be clear to a complete stranger what is a sentimental treasure to you. If it’s unclear, it’s likely the item is sentimental clutter.

As you’re sorting through your sentimental items to determine what is a treasure and what is clutter, ask yourself:

  • How will I store this item? If you will store it in a way that shows you value the item (archival quality materials, stored per archival quality recommendations, or cleanly on display to enjoy every day), keep the object as a sentimental treasure. If you plan to store it in a cardboard box in your basement, get rid of the sentimental clutter.
  • Is this item associated with a happy memory? Keep only objects that bring you happiness. Life is too short to surround yourself with sorrow and pain.
  • Is this the best item to evoke the most powerful sentimental memory? If you have five objects associated with the same memory, consider reducing your collection to just the best quality item. When it comes to physical possessions, too many of something can detract from the overall impact. You can stop seeing the proverbial forest for the trees.

Posted by Erin on Apr 10, 2012 | 30 Comments | Tweet This

Build your uncluttering and organizing skills by helping others

After being told by a teacher in high school that my writing was “average, at best,” I set out on a mission to improve my writing skills. I studied and practiced during my free time, which was an odd pastime for a teenager, and I pushed myself to learn whatever I could. I found I really enjoyed writing, and ended up pursuing a journalism degree in college. In graduate school, I kept with the writing theme and produced my master’s thesis on how to help non-native English speakers acquire vocabulary words based on morphemes to improve their writing and reading comprehension. Studying texts, taking classes, researching the brain and how it stores and uses languages were all fine methods for acquiring information about writing, and my writing did improve — but it wasn’t until I stepped into a classroom and taught 15-year-old students how to improve their writing that I truly blossomed as a writer.

My first year of teaching, a student wrote on a worksheet the following misquoted phrase from The Great Gatsby: “the cocktail yellow music.”

I knew “the cocktail yellow music” wasn’t grammatically correct (nor was it how Fitzgerald had penned it), but I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to mark it wrong on my student’s worksheet until I was sure I could explain to her why it was wrong. I tracked down an accomplished linguistics professor, and she explained to me that adjectives in English have a preference order. As a native English speaker, I instinctually used adjectives in the correct order but had never once thought about it. The adjectives simply flowed out of me in the way that sounded correct. Obviously, the phrase should be “the yellow cocktail music,” which is how it appears in the original text. The grammatical reason it should be this way is because color adjectives are listed before purpose adjectives. Yellow (a color) needs to come before the purpose for the music (the cocktail party). (If you’re curious: More information on adjective order in English.)

Three or four times a week, a student would ask me questions I couldn’t yet answer or make mistakes with their writing I knew were wrong but didn’t know why. I was pushed to learn why the word it takes the possessive unlike other words in the English language, why we say beef when talking about eating cows but don’t have separate words for eating fish or vegetables, why our brains go blind to overused words like said when we read, why it’s now acceptable to split infinitives but wasn’t always, how the passive voice can sometimes better convey information than the active voice, why it’s okay to end sentences with prepositions, and thousands of other specific quirks related to English communication. Teaching young adults how to improve their writing significantly improved my writing. Then, practicing these skills daily has helped me to retain what I learned.

I’ve found the exact same thing to be true with uncluttering and organizing. The more I help others to unclutter and organize their spaces, the better I become at doing these tasks in my own home and office. When I help others, my skill set benefits.

If you’re having issues in your own spaces with clutter and disorganization, help friends to unclutter and organize their homes and offices. Share what knowledge you have (which is probably more than you give yourself credit for knowing) and be open to learning through the process and from your friend. Seek out answers and solutions, and also absorb what you can from those around you. Practice, practice, practice your skills with your friends. Then, if you have good friends, they will return the favor and help to mentor you as you go through your uncluttering and organizing projects. You also may feel confident after your experiences to simply take on your projects alone.

If your friends aren’t game for such an activity, donate some of your time to a charity to clean out and organize a soup kitchen pantry or a game room at a women’s shelter or a clothing closet for a group that provides clothes for job interviews. Mentor your children by bringing them with you to sort materials at a charity’s donation site. You don’t have to work with people you know to build your skills, and it’s often easier to work with items void of your sentimental attachments.

Get out there and help others, which will in turn help build your uncluttering and organizing skills.

Posted by Erin on Mar 26, 2012 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Spring is here and cleaning is in the air

Around 1:15 this morning, those of us in the northern hemisphere officially started spring. The local weathermen explained to me as I sipped my coffee that because this is a leap year, spring showed up on the calendar a day early. As we did yard work and waved to our neighbors over the weekend, it was obvious — at least in our part of the country — that winter had ended.

If spring sprung up on you and took you by surprise, the following 10 tasks are what I consider to be the most valuable spring cleaning activities. These are the Firsts, the things to get to before the other activities:

  1. Check fire extinguishers, furnace filters, and batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors (if you didn’t do these tasks when you moved your clocks ahead an hour). Remember, safety first.
  2. Purge all expired food from your refrigerator and pantry. If you’re unsure of an item’s freshness, check StillTasty.com and/or the product’s website (especially good for condiments that take up near-permanent residence in the door of your refrigerator).
  3. Clean gunk out of your gutters if you have gutters.
  4. Rake the last batch of dead leaves out of your yard and pick up sticks and debris that fell during the last few months of winter.
  5. Inspect any lawn maintenance chemicals you had stored for the winter, such as pesticides or fertilizers. Make sure none of these items are leaking or expired.
  6. Have your law mower serviced so it’s ready and working when your yard is ready to mow.
  7. Dust. I like to carry a hand vacuum with me as I go to suck the grime off the cloth.
  8. Move furniture (including your bed and bookshelves) and vacuum or sweep every inch of your floors.
  9. If you have pets, bring out the Furminator and start the regular task of brushing to get rid of that heavy winter coat.
  10. Sort through your clothing and coat closets and donate to charity all items you never plan to wear again. Clean heavy sweaters you intend to keep and take steps to properly store them to prevent pest invasions over the summer. Clean and put away heavy winter boots and shoes. Finally, bring out any stored warmer weather clothes and get your wardrobe ready for the next six months.

What must-do items are on your spring cleaning list? If I don’t do the items listed above, I feel like I’m not ready for spring. How about you?

More spring cleaning tips and advice from our archives:

Posted by Erin on Mar 20, 2012 | 7 Comments | Tweet This

Safety: The most important uncluttering and organizing standard

Safety is a far cry from being the most interesting subject in the uncluttering and organizing realm. However, it is at the heart of every uncluttering and organizing project (or, at least it should be). Even if it isn’t named outright, safety concerns are the first and most important issue to consider when taking on your next project.

Clutter, in many forms, can be a safety hazard. Massive amounts of paper can be fuel for a house or office fire. Undetected black mold behind stacks of clutter in a basement or garage can poison the air your family breathes. Clutter that blocks a door or covers a floor can inhibit safe exit during an emergency, and stacked items can fall on people during natural disasters.

Getting rid of items is usually thought of as a safe step, but isn’t always the case. Hazardous items disposed of improperly can injure waste management workers or harm the environment by accidentally poisoning water supplies or wild animals.

Storage can be a safety hazard, too. If materials you’re keeping are stored improperly, you could be putting yourself and your family at risk. Cleaning supplies can accidentally be mixed and create poisonous gasses or if they’re easily accessed could be lethal to a toddler. There is also the risk of injury if heavy items are stored too high and someone falls or pulls a muscle accessing those items. Putting things in cardboard boxes can be bad because critters and insects can get into the boxes, and so can black mold and mildew if the boxes get wet.

To improve the safety in your home or office, start by identifying all the existing hazards. Are you using a fireproof safe to store your papers? Are you overloading the electrical outlets? Is clutter or arrangement of furniture blocking safe exit from a space? Is there black mold or mildew or anything rotting?

Immediately address all safety concerns and be sure to do so in a way that doesn’t create more hazards. Research ways to safely dispose of any questionable materials.

When uncluttering and organizing, be sure to keep safety as your most important priority. Store items in containers that are safe for what you are storing and pest/critter/mold/mildew resistant. Have all pathways clear of clutter. Arrange items so you aren’t at risk of being injured when accessing or returning items to storage. Do whatever you need to do to keep your home and office safe for you and others.

Posted by Erin on Mar 12, 2012 | 22 Comments | Tweet This

Are the rooms of your house working for your current needs and tastes?

At dinner the other night, my friend Melissa commented about how her family growing up never changed things in their houses once they occupied them. If there was wood panelling on the walls when the family moved into a house, there was wood panelling on the walls when they moved out of it. If her mother hung a picture in the hallway, that same picture was hanging in the same spot the entire time they lived in that house. Couches, chairs, and dressers were never rearranged.

As Melissa explained this frozen-in-time behavior, I realized my grandmother was that way, too. Not a single picture or wall color or piece of carpet changed in her house during my childhood. She added a library onto the house when I was in elementary school, but once that room was decorated, it wasn’t altered in any way.

Since moving into our current house a year ago, we have done the same thing. We unpacked boxes, set up furniture, and hung artwork on the walls, and then let things stay. There are numerous ares of the house that aren’t working for us, but we haven’t attended to them.

It’s time we did. We need nightstands in the master bedroom (a year of putting things on the floor is too long), the pantry needs a makeover, the laundry room has become a storage room (and it needs to be turned back into a laundry room), our living room needs a better arrangement, and the cable panel must be installed on my desk because I’m tired of looking at cables.

The one year mark is a good time to evaluate how you’re living in your space and make changes if you’re dissatisfied with it or if it isn’t supporting your needs. We’re getting ready to embark on this evaluation and improvement process, and I’ll share with you the daily tasks we plan to tackle in March:

  • Room Purpose. Start simply by taking 15 minutes or so to walk through every room and write down all the things you do (and hope to do) in the space. Your kitchen might be a place to prepare food, serve snacks and small meals, and store food and cooking equipment. Your kitchen might also be where your children do homework or you have your home office or where you keep the family calendar.
  • Uncluttering. For most readers, myself included, this part of the process will take more than one evening. We’re dedicating one room per night to uncluttering. We did a good amount of uncluttering in 2011, so we’re not expecting a room to take more than one evening. If you need more time for each room, schedule that on your calendar.
  • Repairs. Walk through each room again, and this time note any structural repairs that need to take place. Is a window cracked? Has the garbage disposal stopped working? Make note of all the repairs that need to take place (not improvements, those will come later).
  • Appointment Setting. Make appointments for all of the must-do repair work that has to be completed to keep your home safe and in good condition. The only exception to this might be if you plan to do major renovation work and want to have a contractor take care of all the odds and ends at the same time as the big work. I’m assuming, however, that most readers aren’t looking to renovate their homes right now and just need to get the broken items fixed.
  • Planning Improvements. Time to take another walk through the rooms of your home and decide all of the changes you wish to make. Consult the list you created on the first day of what exactly takes place in each room. Make sure all of these purposes are addressed in your improvements, if you have any. You may simply want to rearrange furniture to better suit the needs of the room. Or, you may want to organize some shelves or get storage containers or paint the walls. What improvements do you want to make?
  • Budget. Many home improvements, even the small ones, come with a price tag. Sit down and review your budget and see how much money you have to devote to the improvements you’ve listed.
  • Making Improvements. Again, set aside one or more evenings to work on a specific room making the improvements you desire. Change out the artwork or carpet, organize a cabinet, move the furniture or hang new shelves.

Mark on your calendar for a year from now when you will go through this process again. Keep your home from becoming a museum, based on whatever random design you determined on the day you moved into your house (or apartment or office or wherever it is you spend a good chunk of your time). It’s very likely your needs and tastes must have changed a little since you moved into your place, and will continue to change as you are in your home.

Posted by Erin on Mar 1, 2012 | 21 Comments | Tweet This

Organizing your workspace based on function zones

Whether you’re moving into a new office or simply uncluttering and organizing your current space, one of the easiest ways to get your desk in order is to focus on organizing zones according to purpose. When you deal with the items on your desk based on similar function, you can keep the most important items as the focus of your space and put the least important items out of the way. If you’re uncluttering your desk, take a day and work on just one zone — you’ll keep from feeling overwhelmed, and you’ll have a well organized office in less than two weeks.

The following zones are the eight most common areas people have in their offices. You may have more, but don’t skip over these areas when organizing your space –

  1. Equipment: This group likely includes your computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, telephone, pen cup, maybe a hard drive backup system, and any job-specific devices. These are the tools that you have on your desk that help you perform the functions of your work. You access these tools every day and you cannot successfully work if any of these devices is missing or malfunctioning. When setting up your desk (or rearranging it), these items are the first to be placed and should be in the most comfortable, convenient, and ergonomic location. When you’re sitting at your desk (or standing at it if you use a standing desk) you should be able to reach these items without having to move anything other than your arms. Nothing should interfere with your ability to access these items.
  2. Inbox: An inbox is not a place for you to dump stuff you don’t want to deal with right now. The point of an inbox is so people can come into your office, leave materials, and know exactly where to put those materials so you will find them and deal with them upon your return. You can put items in your inbox, but the items in this box should be processed every day. Each evening when you leave work, your inbox should be empty. Similar to the equipment you need to do your job, your inbox should be placed on your desk in an area that is comfortable and convenient to access for you and for anyone coming into your office to leave you things. It should also be clearly marked as an inbox so your coworkers know what it is.
  3. Current Projects: I store each of my current projects in a Flip-Top Document Storage Box. This allows me to have all the files and materials in one location that I can pull out when I need to work on the project, and then easily contain everything for storage when I’m ready to move on to the next project. Magazine files also work well for this. They’re easy to carry into meetings and to keep stacks of paper from overtaking your desk. I recommend storing these projects on a nearby shelf for easy access during your work day.
  4. Active Files: Files you’re accessing multiple times a week can either go in a file drawer of your desk that is convenient to reach, or in a file organizer on your desk. People who are extremely visual should use a file organizer that sits on your desk so you don’t forget the files exist. I suggest using a tiered organizer so you can see all of the file tabs to make retrieval simple. If you’re more of an audio processor, keeping your active files in your desk drawer is terrific because it frees up space on your work surface.
  5. Reference Materials: Most jobs come with notebooks and other materials that are required to be kept in your office. Only have the most current versions of these in close proximity to your desk, and keep them on a bookshelf or in a cupboard where you can access them without too much effort. Since most people don’t reference these items daily, it’s okay to put them further out of reach than those materials you need every day. Be sure to label these items well, however, since you want to be able to find them when you do need them.
  6. Supplies: It can be incredibly simple to hoard office supplies, but you should fight the urge, especially if your workplace has a supply closet. At most, have one extra of everything you use — ream of paper, box of staples, a few pens in various colors, a box of binder clips — but leave it at that. You don’t need five boxes of pens in your desk, but rather more like five pens in your desk drawer. Let the office supply closet store items like it is intended to. There are no awards to be won for having the most office supplies taking up space in your desk.
  7. Archived Files: Many workplaces require you to store files for three or five years before destroying them or shipping them off to a long-term storage facility. All the archived files you are expected to keep should be as far away from your immediate work area as possible in your office. Once a month, you should also sort through your Current Projects and your Active Files to ensure neither of these items are accidentally storing files you no longer reference.
  8. Personal Items: It’s important to have a few personal items in your workspace to signal to your coworkers and boss that you are committed to your job. A small plant, a photograph of your family, and the wallpaper on your computer’s desktop set to a favorite travel destination say that you are a well-rounded person who has a life outside of your job. More personal items than this and your workspace can start to look like a dorm room and unprofessional. Keep your personal items where you can see them but out of the way so as not to impede on your work surface.

Posted by Erin on Feb 28, 2012 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

The second pass

One of our local libraries recently asked for donations for their upcoming used book sale. The revenues from this sale help to supplement their funding over the year and they also go through the donations to see if there are any books in good condition they wish to add to their collection. I love this time of year because it gives me an excuse to go through my bookshelves to see if there are any titles I’m ready to give away for the sale.

In the article, “Keeping book clutter off the bookshelf,” I outlined the standards I use to decide which books to keep and which ones to donate, recycle, or toss. Now that I’m a regular Kindle user, I added a fourth standard to my Donate, Recycle, or Toss list that includes getting rid of books easily accessible in the public domain. If I can find it for free online and easily download it to my e-reader, I donated the book to my library for their used book sale. I use Google Books and my library’s digital checkout system Overdrive (a very large number of public libraries in the US use this service, so check it out to see if yours is included) as my online resources.

Inevitably, as was again the case this year, a week or two after the donation period for the sale I’ll look at my bookshelves and spot even more books I could have donated. It’s as if the first pass was a practice run and helped me to build up courage to be even more thorough with my uncluttering efforts. Instead of letting the books linger on the shelf until the next year, I grab a box and complete the second pass.

The second pass has become a vital step in my uncluttering process, whether I’m getting rid of clutter off my bookshelves or in my kitchen pantry or in the linen closet or my wardrobe. I’ll always find at least one more thing to donate, recycle, or toss, but usually I find enough items to justify a second trip to a local charity. In the case of books, another nearby library has a used book sale a couple months later, so I simply make a drive to the other library to donate the second pass books there.

When completing a second pass, I don’t usually need to go back to reference the standards I used on the first pass. The only question I ask myself during the second pass is, “Do I really want this?” If I have finally admitted to myself I’m never going to finish reading a book on my bookshelf, the second pass is when I’ll pass it along to someone who will read it. If a shirt is a pain to care for, and I don’t get enough enjoyment out of wearing the piece of clothing as I should for the amount of energy I have to invest in it, the second pass is when it’s most likely to get added to the donation pile. Being brutally honest with myself is all the second pass typically requires.

The second pass is also a good time to evaluate the organizing work you did after the uncluttering process. Is everything in its best place? Does everything still have room for storage? Are the items you’re accessing most frequently in the most convenient to reach locations? Are items you’re not accessing very often in the less convenient to reach locations? Is there anything you need to do to improve your initial organizing efforts?

Do you do a second pass on your uncluttering efforts to make sure that you didn’t accidentally leave clutter in your collections? If you haven’t been doing a second pass of the areas of your home and office you’ve uncluttered, I recommend you schedule it on your calendar for a few days or weeks after your first pass in your uncluttering process. My guess is you’ll find one or more items you’re now ready to purge from your bookshelves, or whatever area you’ve recently uncluttered.

Posted by Erin on Feb 27, 2012 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

What aren’t you using this winter?

While the chilly winds blow (at least on those of us in the northern hemisphere), now is a great time to go through your home and see what winter-related items you haven’t used this year and donate the excess to charity. You’ll free up space in your home, and possibly help someone in need make it through the winter more comfortably.

Check out your:

  • Blankets. Are there heavy blankets lingering in your closet that you haven’t used this year or last year or the year before that?
  • Sweaters. If you haven’t worn the sweater by now, are you ever going to wear it again?
  • Hats, gloves, scarves. If you have children, do all the hats and gloves in your closet still fit someone in your home?
  • Coats. Similar to your sweaters, if any of your winter coats haven’t been worn this season, are you ever going to wear them?
  • Boots. If they’re in good condition, someone in need could really benefit from any boots you’re not wearing.
  • Outdoor recreation items. Sleds, toboggans, and skis won’t help someone in need, but if you’re no longer using them, they still shouldn’t be taking up space in your garage.
  • Outdoor care items. Snow shovels, snow blowers, and other outdoor care items should be replaced if they’re broken or unsafe to use. Don’t donate unusable items to charity, but recycle and/or trash pieces as appropriate.
  • Decorations. Any holiday or winter decorations you didn’t put out this year could easily be sold on eBay, Craigslist, or given away through Freecycle. Check with local doctors’ offices, day care centers, and schools to see if they have any interest in the items you didn’t use this year.

Those of you basking in the summer sun in the southern hemisphere, consider doing a similar sweep for unused warm-weather items. If you haven’t used something yet, it’s likely just taking up space in your home unnecessarily.

Posted by Erin on Feb 16, 2012 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

A little homework might help you reach your objectives

Most of us joyfully said goodbye to homework when we left school. I certainly was glad to see it go, especially the busy-work stuff that didn’t serve any point except to waste a lot of time.

Recently, I’ve had a change of heart, at least when it comes to self-imposed homework. I’ve had some success with giving myself homework assignments related to my uncluttering and organizing projects. When I structure the homework more like a lesson plan than a to-do list, I can better remember why I’m doing work and stay focused on the end goal.

What I do:

  • Identify the unit objective. What is a unit objective? In this case, it’s going to be the reasons you want to unclutter and/or organize. Your objective might be that you want to have friends come over unannounced and not have to worry that your place is a mess. Your objective might be that you don’t want to injure yourself constantly tripping over your child’s toys. Your objective might be that you want to downsize to a smaller home to reduce your mortgage and other expenses.
  • Identify your deadline. Do you have a solid goal by when the work needs to be completed? If you don’t have a set deadline, can you create an artificial one to help motivate you?
  • Identify current status. Where are you right now? This is a good time to photograph the room, desk, closet or area you wish to unclutter and/or organize to record your starting point.
  • Identify action items. Analyze your current status and determine all the work that needs to be completed for you to successfully meet your unit objective. Be specific with these actions. “Organize shelf” is not specific enough. Use language that expresses exactly what you plan to do — “Pull all items off shelf, sort items into three piles (keep, purge, other), etc.”
  • Create your timeline. Using your deadline as a guide, distribute action items onto your calendar. Do this in pencil or electronically, so you can easily move items if necessary. Always leave a few nights before the deadline open in case you fall behind schedule. If you stay on schedule, you’ll be rewarded by finishing the unit early.
  • Do your homework. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. Do the homework you’ve set for yourself for each night, and don’t make any excuses. You’re working toward a goal you desire and you want to reach.
  • Assess your progress. Decide if you want to review your work daily, weekly, or only at the end of the unit. Personally, I like to give myself daily grades (my system is simple: A is 4 points=did the work; F is 0 points=didn’t do the work). At the end of the week I’ll see how many points I’ve earned and keep a tally (20 points is an ideal week, only working Monday-Friday).

I’ve started to think of my on-going house routines in this way, too. My objective is to keep the house running smoothly so I think less about chores and the state of the house, and more time on doing fun stuff with my family. To meet this objective, there are certain tasks I must do every day (homework) for this to happen. The chores are spread out over a week, and each day I can easily assess my performance — did the homework, or didn’t.

The reason I believe this method works for me is it keeps me focused on the objectives and it’s easy to see how the work I’m doing is directly related to those objectives. Chores and uncluttering and organizing tasks seem less like busy-work and more as steps to something I really desire in my life.

Could you use a little homework in your life? Share your reactions and methods you employ in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Feb 13, 2012 | 9 Comments | Tweet This

Tracking progress for uncluttering and organizing motivation

After my accident last year, the one where I tore all the muscles off the bones in my foot, my podiatrist banned me from running for months. I had been training to run the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile Race, and being told I couldn’t run was frustrating. I spent a lot of time grumbling to myself as I hobbled around the house in my cast.

The months passed, my cast went away, I did some low-impact physical therapy, and eventually got the go-ahead to start exercising again from my doctor. I took a few more months off for good measure (a.k.a. laziness), but finally returned to the gym when the weather got cooler. In addition to the accident, being away from running for close to a year took its toll on my body. I went from running 10 miles in 1 hour and 17 minutes to jogging-walking 10 miles in 2 hours and 32 minutes.

Over the past couple weeks, my time has been improving, but it is slow going (very, very slow going). One thing I’ve started doing again is tracking my distances and times to see my progression. Since my improvement is so gradual, it would be easy to miss what little advancements I’m making. I won’t be winning any races in the near future (if ever, I’m not yet certain how my injury will affect me over the longterm), but I like seeing the charts showing I’m at least not getting slower.

Tracking your progress isn’t a new concept, and it’s certainly not limited to showing running time improvements. A number of us have to do it for work, to learn if certain endeavors are beneficial to our goals. We took tests in school to determine what information we had acquired over the course of a unit of study. Some people track their gas mileage to see what they can do to improve their fuel efficiency. The systems we use to track our progress also don’t need to be new — your eyes, a digital camera, a pad of paper, a writing utensil, and maybe a program on your computer or application on your phone.

If you’re looking for motivation to keep you working on an uncluttering and organizing project, consider tracking your projects. I’ve found it to be easily done and very rewarding. You take a picture of an area in its cluttered and disorganized state and this image allows you to see how much you improve an area over time. This is an especially good idea if you’re doing only a small piece of the project each day. Keeping a journal or a list of notes about work you do in an area of your home or office can have the same impact. It’s easy to forget where you started when you don’t have a reference point, so keeping track of your work is great motivation to keep you going.

I don’t know why, but when you know you’re keeping track of your uncluttering and organizing, you feel motivated to work on the project. You develop a desire to see the “before” and “after” images side-by-side, with a drastic difference between the two.

Have you ever considered tracking your uncluttering and organizing projects? Did you benefit from seeing how you progressed over time? Share your experiences in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Feb 9, 2012 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can improve your uncluttering and organizing projects

We write a great deal on this site about how knowing what you really need can help you unclutter and organize. Do you like to have paper and pens next to you while you work on the computer? Do you access your hole punch five times a day? Do you like to have music on while you fold the laundry? If so, you should have these tools in places you can easily reach while you work on these tasks. Get rid of the things you don’t need, and have available the things you do.

In addition to knowing what tools you need, though, it’s also a good idea to know your personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to uncluttering and organizing. Are you good at putting items away after you use them? Are you spontaneous or procedural? Do you work better on your own or in groups? When you’re honest with yourself about the things you do well — and not so well — you can be more successful with your uncluttering and organizing efforts.

One of my strengths is I don’t ever get caught up in the “what if” line of thinking. When I look at small slivers of wrapping paper or fabric remnants or empty yogurt containers, I don’t hesitate to recycle these types of things. Conversely, one of my weaknesses is I don’t ever get caught up in the “what if” line of thinking. I have great difficulty imagining how to re-purpose objects. An empty paint can is always an empty paint can to me, it’s not a pen holder or a bin for small toys or a bucket to use to clean paint brushes. As a result, I’ve learned to let my husband look over items I plan to donate to charity or recycle before making final decisions about them. He’s a level-headed guy who usually agrees with my decisions but has rescued a few important objects from my purge piles over the years.

The following list is far from complete, but my hope is that it can get you to think about your strengths and weaknesses so that both can work in your favor when taking on uncluttering and organizing projects:

  • Strength — Idea Generation. In your family or when working in groups at the office, lead the organizing solutions aspects of the project. Research and dream up ways to store the items you decide to keep in ways that best suit all of the people who will access the space and/or items.
  • Weakness — Not Good with Follow Through. If putting things back where they belong is difficult for you, consider having storage space for an item you regularly use in many different rooms. For example, if you take off your shoes sometimes in the living room or by the front door or in your bedroom, have bins to hold your shoes in all three spaces. You’ll easily be able to find your shoes in one of the three bins, and your shoes won’t be cluttering up three rooms.
  • Strength — Motivation. If you’re good at motivating others, use these same skills to motivate yourself and other people on an uncluttering and organizing project. Don’t announce that you’ll be the official cheerleader, simply do what you do best. Play music, get everyone and yourself laughing, and make the most of the situation.
  • Weakness — Wandering Mind and Feet. Work with a buddy when uncluttering and organizing. This person doesn’t need to participate in the process directly, he or she only needs to be in the same room to talk with you and help keep you on task. I like to refer to this person as an accountability partner.
  • Strength — Noticing Patterns. I often refer to this skill as a super power. People who are good at noticing patterns are great at sorting papers, filtering out duplicate items, and grouping like objects with like objects. If this is your strength, roll up your sleeves and let your organizing skills shine. If working in a group, help teach others how you quickly and efficiently make sense of the information you’re processing.

What do you do well? What don’t you do well? How can you get your strengths and weaknesses to help you succeed with your uncluttering and organizing projects?

Posted by Erin on Feb 6, 2012 | 30 Comments | Tweet This

Single socks and how they can help you learn to process what-if clutter

It is rare for all our socks to have mates after we finish folding the laundry. Sometimes a sock will hide inside a fitted sheet and we won’t notice it during folding, but we discover the errant sock when we put the sheet on the bed a few days later. Other times, a sock will have been stuck inside a shirt sleeve or a pant leg. Rarely is the missing sock lost forever, though, so we keep a small basket in the laundry room for single socks and when the mate shows up we immediately know where to find its match.

Even though mates are usually found, invariably one sock will hang out in the lost-mate basket for many months, its mate gone forever. (After seeing Gnomeo and Juliet, I’ve been blaming lawn gnomes for this phenomenon.) If a sock hangs out in the lost-sock basket for more than three months, the sock is moved to the rag pile and recycled for dusting.

I explained our lost-sock basket to a room full of people at a conference recently, and a woman raised her hand and asked, “But what if you find the other sock after you start using its mate as a rag?”

I replied, “It has only happened once, and we just made the newly found sock into a rag, too.”

The woman then let out an audible gasp, almost as if my suggestion had caused her physical pain. My guess is that, like many people, she struggles with making decisions about “what if” items, and these “what if” objects likely cause her difficulty when dealing with clutter.

What if I get rid of this empty yogurt tub and then someone comes over for dinner and I want to send her home with leftovers?

What if I get rid of this piece of wood and then two months from now I need to fix something and this exact piece of wood would have been the perfect solution?

What if I give this coat to charity and then wish I hadn’t?

If you’re someone who regularly plays the “what if” scenario in your mind, try giving this simple lost-sock basket a try in your home. Recycle any sock that remains in the basket for more than three months. Since you know the worst that can happen is you might end up recycling two socks, it’s a relative inexpensive way to practice making these types of uncluttering decisions. You don’t need a single sock hanging around your house for years waiting for a mate.

The more practice you get, the easier it will become to part with things that you do not need that are cluttering up your space. You learn to trust that even if you end up needing an item that you purged that you will be able to buy a replacement or borrow one from a family member or that you will be creative enough to find an alternate solution.

And, if you do find the lost sock in less than three months, you’ll at least know quickly where to find its mate.

Posted by Erin on Jan 30, 2012 | 67 Comments | Tweet This

Stop overlooking the perpetually out-of-place stuff

Objects can easily go on walkabout and then hang out, as if on vacation, in whatever random location you left them. If this happens to you (like it does me from time-to-time), try these five strategies to help you to see and deal with the perpetually out-of-place stuff in your home and office:

  1. Take photographs of all areas of a room and then look intently at the pictures. I’m not sure how it works, but analyzing an image can often help you see clutter you’ve become blind to in person. Dust bunnies under your monitor, stray toys under your dining room buffet, junk mail on your fireplace mantel jump out in photos but blend into the woodwork in person.
  2. Invite people over to your house for a party. Again, I’m not sure how it works, but having non-immediate family in your home can often make you to see clutter you had been previously immune to in your space.
  3. Become a stray stuff collector. Grab an empty laundry basket and see how many stray objects you can find in a room. Record the number, and then repeat the process in exactly one week. Do this task weekly in a room until the number regularly falls below two stray objects. Then, repeat the process in another room.
  4. Notice repeat offenders. If you are constantly finding the same object out of place, you may have the “wrong” storage space for the object. Would you be able to store the object in a more convenient location so that it’s not constantly cluttering up a room?
  5. A place for everything. Be sure everything you own has a permanent storage space. If it doesn’t, the object will always be out of place. This means you should have a permanent home for stamps, rubber bands, paper clips, spare change, bills, gift cards, medicine, etc.

How do you deal with perpetually out-of-place stuff in your spaces? Share your strategies — and your struggles — in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Jan 24, 2012 | 27 Comments | Tweet This

Clear the clutter, build a fort

Pillows, blankets, stacks of books, and dining room chairs are currently the decorations of choice in our living room. My son is going through a fort building stage and we’re lucky we’ve been able to contain it to the living room. If he had his druthers, we would also have fort kitchen, fort bathroom, fort laundry room, and fort front yard.

I loved building forts as a kid, and I am very glad my son has an interest in it, too. My son’s favorite part of fort building is knocking down sections of the fort to do renovation work. A room might have been too small or maybe it had a window he didn’t like or the roof was too saggy. Once the room is down, he declares it to be broken and then begins the rebuilding process. After a room is finished, the whole family is invited to visit the new space, where we discuss the renovation and how it is preferable to its earlier condition and then play drums and harmonicas or pretend to take naps (fort construction is hard work).

My son’s obsession with forts has reminded me how truly simple it can be to pursue the life you desire. My son likes building forts, so he builds forts. He doesn’t talk about building forts or wish he were building forts or make excuses for why he can’t build forts, he simply builds forts. When he is tired of fort building, he will play with trains because he wants to play with trains or whatever interest is next on his agenda. Unless I tell him he can’t do something because it’s unsafe (like building a fort inside the stove), he’ll do whatever it is he wants to do.

Unlike toddlers, as we grow older and mature, we take on more responsibilities, allow unwanted things to come into our life, and living the life of our dreams becomes more difficult. We are easily distracted by things that don’t really matter to us. We also let doubts and worry and negative messages invade our brains so that we stop doing the things we really want to do. Clutter comes in and prevents us from building forts (or whatever it is you enjoy doing).

I’m not suggesting it’s bad that you are responsible for the people and things in your life. Those of us who aren’t insanely wealthy have to work to pay bills and provide for ourselves and our families. Rather, I’m suggesting you get rid of all of the stuff that doesn’t matter. Get rid of the clutter (extraneous physical stuff, negative thoughts, bad relationships, commitments that don’t interest you) so you can have time, energy, and resources to use on what matters to you. If you want to spend more quality time with your family, unclutter the distractions and start spending more quality time with your family. Embrace your inner toddler, and simply do it.

Identify what matters most to you, identify the distractions that are keeping you from the things that matter, and do your best to remove the clutter so you can pursue the life you desire. Life is too short — even if you live to be 102 — not to build forts or laugh with your children or catch up with a dear friend or volunteer at your favorite charity or lend your neighbor a hand in a time of need or meditate or go on an adventure.

Posted by Erin on Jan 19, 2012 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Unfinished business

The inbox on my desk is currently overflowing. I returned from traveling two weeks ago, dumped a stack of must-complete paperwork out of my briefcase and into the inbox, and immediately started to ignore the mess I’d made. The inbox ceased to be an inbox and became a Black Hole of Forgotten Items.

The situation with my inbox is similar to how most messes begin in our house and in my work. When a mess occurs it is usually because:

  1. I’m in the process of doing something and am interrupted before I can finish the action. For example, I’ll be sorting through the mail, the phone will ring, I’ll set the mail down when I go to answer the phone, and a week later I’ll find a stack of old mail sitting in whatever strange location I dumped it.
  2. I don’t take the time to do something properly because I don’t really want to work on the entire task. I’ll do the enjoyable or easy part (dump all the paperwork into the inbox), but stop short of taking care of the problem (processing the paperwork).
  3. I start a task when it’s impossible to finish the task because of time limitations or situation. For example, I’ll check my voicemail when I’m sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office — I might be able to listen to one or two messages before the nurse calls me out of the waiting room, but I certainly don’t have time nor is it appropriate for me to return any of the calls right then.

Once a mess has started, I’ll either become immune to it (stepping over the unpacked luggage each time I go to the washing machine) or feel stress and anxiety about it (I have so much to do! Did I remember to write down that I have to call Margaret back?). My space is cluttered and my thoughts are often cluttered, too, simply because I didn’t finish what I had started.

Over the years, I’ve learned to deal with most of these messes before they happen. A few sneak up from time-to-time, as has happened with my inbox this January, but I tend to have fewer messes in my life because the mess never gets started. Here are many of the things I do to prevent the mess:

  • Limit interruptions. It is impossible to prevent all interruptions, but you can reduce them. Turn off the ringer on your phone or set it to “Do Not Disturb.” Turn off new message notification sounds on your computer and mobile devices. Put a sign on your office door or hang a sign in an obvious place of your cubical requesting that you not be disturbed except for emergencies for a limited time period. If corporate culture permits, wear earphones even if you aren’t listening to music. Hire a babysitter for a few hours to watch your children while you tackle a project that requires focus at home.
  • At work and at home, create standardized to-do lists and routines. In case you have to abandon a project, you’ll at least cycle back through it the following day and finish it then. Also, get in the habit of writing everything down in a central location — on your mobile phone or in a day planner or a notebook.
  • Before starting any important task, ask yourself, “Do I have enough time and is the situation appropriate for me to complete this task?” If you don’t have enough time to finish a project, ask yourself, “Do I at least have enough time to do what I can and clean up before moving onto something else and leave things so the project does get finished?” If you answer “no” to both these questions, don’t start working on something.
  • If you can do something right now, do it. When returning home from vacation, immediately unload your dirty clothes directly into the washing machine and unpack the rest of your luggage within minutes of walking in the door. If you can file a piece of paperwork as quickly as it would take you to drop it into your inbox, simply file the piece of paperwork.
  • Avoid having catch-all drawers, bins, and bags. If you’re going to need something from the catch-all container, it’s best to have the items organized in a way so that dumping all the contents onto the floor isn’t the easiest way to find something. Large toy chests are horrible because kids have to dump out all the toys to find the one item they want.
  • Create kits. Kits can sometimes lead to duplicate items (you may end up owning four pairs of scissors), but they’re extremely useful in that all of the things you need to accomplish a task are easily accessed and easily stored after use. Sewing kits, gift wrapping kits, scrapbooking kits, house-cleaning kits, car-cleaning kits, etc., make doing certain tasks more efficient and less messy.

What do you do to prevent messes from starting in your home and office? How do you always finish what you start? Share your strategies in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Jan 10, 2012 | 21 Comments | Tweet This

Seven routines and guidelines to live as an unclutterer — no super powers necessary

You’re not a superhero? Well, neither am I. No unclutterer I know is a superhero, either. We’re all just non-superheroes doing our uncluttered, non-superhero things.

To an outsider, an unclutterer can appear to have super powers. But, trust me, unclutterers don’t have the ability to wave a magic wand and instantly be clutter free and organized (although, that would be an amazing power to possess). Instead of magic wands, most unclutterers simply do a little work each day and adhere to a few simple guidelines to keep from being overwhelmed by an avalanche of clutter.

These aren’t laws, but these are the routines and guidelines most unclutterers follow to keep clutter at bay:

  1. Have a place for everything. If something you own doesn’t have a place to be stored, it will always be out of place and cluttering up your space. Everything needs a home that is easily accessible so you can find it when you need it.
  2. When you’re finished using something, put it away. You can’t easily find something if it’s not in its proper storage location. Don’t waste time hunting for things, simply put items back when you’re finished using them. If you’re finished using something for good, put it in the trash, recycling, shredder, or donation bin.
  3. The fewer things you own, the fewer things you have to store, maintain, put away, clean, etc. You don’t need to be a minimalist, just focus on getting rid of the clutter so you’re only caring for the things you value.
  4. Only own things with utility and things that bring you happiness. Not everything in your home needs to be useful, but the things that aren’t useful need to at least make you happy. If you have a knickknack that you curse at every time you dust, it’s time for the knickknack to be passed along to someone else. If something that was once useful is no longer useful, it’s time to get rid of it, too.
  5. One in, one out. If you buy a replacement good, get rid of the inferior good you’re replacing.
  6. Everyone does his/her part. Everyone sharing your living space, including you, needs to lend a hand around the house out of respect for the others living in the space. Irrespective of how you choose to divvy up the major load of housework, everyone should: put away items after they use them, put their dirty clothes in the dirty clothes hamper, and clean up all messes he/she makes.
  7. Do a little every day. When you do about 30 minutes of dedicated work on your home each day, you can pretty much cover everything you need to do over the course of a week. How to set up a daily routine is explained in the article, “Ask Unclutterer: Exhausted after work,” and also in more detail in my book, Unclutter Your Life in One Week.

You don’t need to be a superhero to follow these seven routines and guidelines. You, too, can be an unclutterer — no super powers necessary.

Posted by Erin on Jan 3, 2012 | 17 Comments | Tweet This