Unclutterer

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Archives for The Big Picture

Excerpt: Being a social butterfly

Below is another excerpt from my book Unclutter Your Life in One Week — this time on how to have a social life in this busy world.

This is from the Friday chapter:

“One of my biggest complaints about adulthood is that it’s difficult to simply hang out with friends. In high school, you could call up your friend and say, ‘Hey! A bunch of us are hanging out at Kara’s place. Stop by if you want to hang out.’ No one scheduled ‘hanging out’ on their calendar. No one knew at the start of the night what might transpire by the end of the night. And no one ever left at eight thirty, tapping at her watch, saying she had an early day tomorrow.

When I graduated college, I was completely unprepared for having to schedule time to hang out with friends. The first time one of my friends told me that she had to check her calendar to see when we might be able to grab lunch together, I laughed so hard I made myself cry. Oh, to have so few responsibilities that we could hang out whenever we want!

Review your list from the Foundations chapter that identifies the things that matter to you most. Is spending quality time with friends and family on your list? What else is on your list? Schedule the time now to live the remarkable life you desire.

• Don’t turn your back on your routines. A little time every day spent on basic routines will provide you with more time in your schedule to pursue the things that truly matter.
• Plan at least one social event a week. Make a date with your friends or loved ones and keep that obligation. If the people in your life are really a priority, then you need to respect the time you spend with them. Say no to less important requests for your time and keep your date.
• Plan at least one stay-home event a week. If you’re already a social butterfly, make a commitment to staying home at least one evening a week and taking care of yourself.
• Keep a list of things you want to do, and do them. Have a list on your smart phone or carry a small notebook with you, and record things you want to do. I have lists of wines I want to try, new restaurants that are getting good buzz, day trip locations, bike trails I’ve discovered, and dozens of other things that have caught my attention. When you’re organized and focused on what really matters, you’ll never have the opportunity to say, ‘I’m bored.’
• Pay money to take a class. When you spend money on a class, you’re more likely to make a commitment to attending it. If you want to have more variation in your meal plan, take a cooking class at your local cooking school to give you ideas and confidence. If you have always dreamed of going to Rome, sign up for Italian language classes at the local community college to get you prepared. If you wish that you and your significant other would go out dancing, take a ballroom dance class together. If finances are tight, look for free classes listed in your newspaper and make the extra effort to attend.
• Stop making excuses. You can come up with reasons for why you can’t do something until you’re blue in the face. Instead of wasting the energy coming up with those reasons, use that same energy to find ways to make it happen. You’ll be surprised by your ingenuity.”

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Erin on Oct 29, 2009 | 6 Comments | Tweet This

Making exceptions to your uncluttered standards

We all make exceptions to the uncluttered standards we have in place. In my closet are one or two pieces of clothing that don’t fit me right, but for some reason I haven’t been able to give them away to charity. There is a chipped mug in my kitchen cupboards that we got as a wedding gift and the sentimentality of the object pulls at my heartstrings. Also, there is an enormous Jumperoo in my office that makes me wince every time I walk past it, but all the jump, jump, jumping makes my son so blissfully happy that it stays.

Making exceptions to uncluttered standards, though, can become a slippery slope. If we don’t keep a watchful eye on our stuff, eventually our entire homes and offices are filled with clutter again. This is especially true in places where clutter can easily hide — closets, cupboards, and toy bins.

As a result, I have created a new uncluttered standard for my exceptions. It states:

If getting rid of the object causes more distraction than having the object, I keep it.

If I got rid of the chipped mug in my cupboard, I probably wouldn’t think twice about it once it was gone. So, the mug should go.

However, if I got rid of the Jumperoo, I’d feel extreme guilt. I’d know that I had gotten rid of one of my son’s favorite things and it would continue to distract me for weeks to come. Since there isn’t any other reason he shouldn’t have it except for the fact that I hate how much room it takes up in my office, I’m keeping it. (The minute he gets too big for it, though, that thing is gone.)

Do you make exceptions to your uncluttered standards? If so, how do you keep these exceptions from cluttering up your space?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted by Erin on Oct 28, 2009 | 43 Comments | Tweet This

What is your motivation to be organized?

On Unclutterer, we write a great deal about the benefits of clearing clutter from our lives. Getting rid of these distractions makes it possible to lead a remarkable life.

We also write about how to organize and create routines once the clutter is gone. One aspect of the how-to process that I particularly like to focus on is the motivation, because if you’re not motivated to be organized you’re not going to be. Why become organized? If you don’t own so much stuff that you’re overwhelmed by it, why does what you have need to have a dedicated “home?”

Plain and simple — it doesn’t. If you truly are living or working in a minimalist space, you probably don’t have a big need to organize what few things you have. However, the level most of us are comfortable living in and working in still contains stuff. We’re not ascetics and we enjoy the conveniences of modern living. As a result, being organized is just as important as being uncluttered.

Michelle Bates Deo at [ real neat ] had an inspiring quote on her site yesterday that sparked my thoughts on the “why organize” question:

He who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day … needs to reorganize his life. — George Matthew Adams

I think this quote summarizes exactly why I have chosen an organized life. I want each day to be filled with fun and enjoyment. Searching for my keys isn’t fun. Missing a out on a great opportunity isn’t enjoyable. And having a head full of to-dos that should be on paper instead of in my thoughts is neither fun nor enjoyable.

Sure, not every experience in my life qualifies as fun and enjoyable — loading the dishwasher, deleting spam off the server, paying a parking ticket — but the processes I have in place make certain that these chores don’t weigh on me and cause me unnecessary stress and/or anxiety. Which, leaves room for having as much fun and enjoyment as possible.

This is why I work to be organized — Why do you?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Erin on Oct 22, 2009 | 50 Comments | Tweet This

Blog Action Day: Climate change and personal change

Today is the third-annual Blog Action Day. This year’s theme is climate change, and all participating bloggers are asked to write on the topic from their perspective.

When I first learned about this year’s topic, it was the word change that caught my attention. To make any sort of behavioral change — to help the environment, become uncluttered, stop smoking — is difficult. We’re creatures of habit, and we find ways to rationalize our behavior even when it’s detrimental to ourselves and/or others. Even major life events don’t always motivate us to change our ways.

But, we all know a kid who was a troublemaker in high school who became a law-enforcement officer in adulthood or an alcoholic who is more than 10 years sober. I was a someone who had so much clutter in her home that I had to walk along a pathway of waist-high boxes from my bathroom to my kitchen, and now I’m clutter free and work 40-plus hours a week to help others achieve the same. People can change, but the path to transformation isn’t always easy.

A recent weight-loss study by researchers at the University College London found that it took participants 12 weeks to develop new habits:

… participants gave a figure for how long it had taken to develop habits and the mean was 3.0 months (s.d. 1.8).

The study tracked the participants and discovered that the previously reported statistic that it takes just three weeks to develop a new habit is incorrect. The majority of the participants didn’t even have healthy eating behaviors established by eight weeks, and some of the participants took between 20 and 24 weeks to master the new routines.

In addition to teaching the participants better ways to eat, the study also recommended that people should:

… form ‘implementation intentions’ plans that specify when, where and how the behaviour will be performed because these have been hypothesized to accelerate the habit-formation process.

If changing your behaviors to help save the environment or improve your eating habits or live an uncluttered life is at the top of your priority list, then give yourself time to become accustom to your new routines. Write down your “implementation intentions,” make the changes, and then prepare for it to take 12 weeks before all of your changes start to feel like second nature. For some of you, it may even take twice that amount of time — but it will happen. Change is possible.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Erin on Oct 15, 2009 | 15 Comments | Tweet This

Being a smart furniture consumer

Smart consumerism is based on the principle of buying the best quality of good to meet your needs and budget. Saving up your money and buying a beautifully crafted piece of furniture out of durable materials will ultimately keep you from wasting money and time in the future. Plus, if you research and buy only quality goods, you won’t make impulse purchases.

An unclutterer is a smart consumer.

In September, Karawynn Long (a guest author on the website Get Rich Slowly), posted the informative article “Furniture Shopping Secrets: How To Tell Superior from Shoddy.” This article helps anyone shopping for furniture to be an informed consumer. And, when it comes to being a smart consumer, knowledge is essential.

A brief selection of the text:

Wood furniture — composition
I used to think hardwoods were hard and softwoods were soft. Silly me! Actually, hardwood just means ‘from a deciduous tree’ and softwood means ‘from a coniferous tree’, and some hardwoods (like aspen) are softer than some softwoods. What you want on exposed surfaces is a wood that’s reasonably scratch-resistant. You can test this easily enough by attempting to draw a thin line with your fingernail across the wood; if it makes a visible dent (use a flashlight here if necessary) you know it won’t stand up to much use.

Structurally, any kind of solid wood or sturdy plywood will do the trick. If plywood, look for at least nine layers. Check the wood for knots, even on unexposed pieces; all knots are susceptible to cracks. Some woods, like pine, are ‘knottier’ than others, and therefore less desirable. Avoid particleboard, pressed wood, or fiberboard.

Veneers — a thin piece of premium wood covering a lower-quality piece of wood — are often used even in very high-quality furniture. As long as the base piece is solid wood or plywood, the only drawback to veneer is that it limits the number of times an item can be refinished.

The article discusses composition and construction of wood and upholstered furniture and includes a quick furniture checklist to have with you when shopping. Remember: informed consumers are smart consumers, and unclutterers are smart consumers.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Posted by Erin on Oct 6, 2009 | 8 Comments | Tweet This

Reasons to unclutter

Motivation to get rid of clutter and streamline your space can come in many forms. The September 1 issue of Woman’s Day magazine provides 12 “surprising benefits of getting organized.” Reporter Denise Schipani outlines her reasons in the article “Out with the clutter, in with the calm, the money-saving, and more.” (The article was renamed “12 Reasons to Unclutter Your Space” when it was placed online.)

From the article:

5. Tidy Your Computer
“Treat your computer desktop just as you would your desk, keeping only active files and shortcuts visible,” says Lorie Marrero, author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. A “cluttered” computer screen is harder to look at, making you feel jumbled. Go through folders and delete what you no longer need. Archive older stuff you want to save to backup storage (a CD or external hard drive).

Check out the full article and add your own reasons to the list. You may even spot a few quotes from me in the text!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 28, 2009 | 5 Comments | Tweet This

Determining the perfect amount

In the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the pesky Goldilocks is able to quickly find the bowl of porridge, chair, and semi-firm mattress that all meet her definition of just right. Granted, she has a limited set of options from which to choose, but she loves her choices so much that she is blissfully able to drift off to sleep in a den of BEARS at the end of her decision-making day.

In my life — thankfully without much threat of deadly wildlife mauling me — I struggle to find that point of just right with everything. How many pairs of jeans, shoes, spare rolls of toilet paper, rechargeable batteries, and baby bottles should I own? How much time should I spend working, socializing, sleeping, and exercising to feel my best? Is my house too small for my family’s changing needs?

Determining the just right amount of physical goods has proven to be easier than determining the less concrete attributes of life, and so I wanted to share my methods with you. The following is how I decide the perfect amount of goods for my space and my life:

• How much space can I commit to storing this type of good?
• How much space do I want to commit to storing this type of good?
• Will I use all of it before it expires and/or becomes outdated and/or my brand loyalty changes?
• Do I have enough (or too much) to get me through to my preferred cleaning schedule? (For example: Do I have enough pairs of socks to last me between laundry days? Am I putting off laundry until it gets out of control because I have too many pairs?)
• Do I need or want this item at all?
• How much time, money, and energy will I save in the future if I have more than one of these in my space?
• What will I do if I run out?
• Would having more or less of these items improve my quality of life?

Regardless of how good a deal is, I stick to this method of determining just right. What method(s) do you use? Tell us about it in the comments.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 26, 2009 | 19 Comments | Tweet This

Uncluttering regrets

In the comments section of Tuesday’s post “Asking the better question,” reader Cheryl asked:

Have you ever gotten rid of something about which you later regretted making that choice? What was it? If it’s happened more than once, what object or person or habit was most regrettably gone?

In my personal experience, the only things I’ve regretted getting rid of are things I didn’t know I was tossing. During my first major purging process, I got impatient and just wanted the clutter to be out of my life. So, without opening the lids on some of my boxes and sorting through my things, I just blindly disposed of a few boxes. Included in one of the boxes were my social security card and passport. Both items were able to be replaced, but it would have been much less of a hassle had I not thrown them away in the first place. Rushing through the process is what led to my regrets.

Otherwise, I’ve never regretted getting rid of something. In fact, I’ve always felt better about getting rid of the clutter than I have felt about any of the things I’ve purged.

A couple people responded to Cheryl’s questions in Tuesday’s comments, and I’m interested in reading even more people’s responses here. Have you ever regretted getting rid of something? I think this is a wonderful question to ask. Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 24, 2009 | 93 Comments | Tweet This

Your stuff isn’t you

Over the weekend, writer Andrew Sullivan linked to the findings of a 2003 study on “The role of eyebrows in face recognition.” The study concludes that when a person removes his or her eyebrows (either by shaving them off or digitally removing them in a photograph) it is very difficult to recognize that person.

More than half of the people looking at images of celebrities will fail to name the celebrity when their eyebrows are missing. And, since most of us aren’t as famous as Richard Nixon, it’s safe to bet that if we were to remove our eyebrows that most people wouldn’t recognize us, either.

I’m mentioning this study because it is fascinating to me on two levels. First, I thought it was cool. Who comes up with the idea for testing this sort of thing?

Second, I instantly thought about the human desire to express ourselves through stuff. We buy doo dads and knick knacks and a seemingly unlimited supply of things to proclaim, “this is who I am!” We think our stuff tells the world who we are, but our eyebrows — little bits of hair that nature automatically provides — say more than our possessions ever will.

Remove a favorite chair from your home or toss out your beloved t-shirt and everyone in your life will still recognize you. Shave off your eyebrows, and even your closest circle of friends will have to stare at you for awhile to realize that they know you. I’m not suggesting that you shave off your eyebrows, rather that you remember this strange study as further proof that your stuff isn’t you.

(Images of Richard Nixon and Winona Ryder from the study.)

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 21, 2009 | 19 Comments | Tweet This

Prioritizing uncluttering and organizing projects

Reader Jane wrote in and asked us how she should decide where to begin uncluttering and organizing in her home. I got the feeling from her e-mail that she feels overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of her and doesn’t know where to start.

I always suggest starting in one of three ways:

1. Small. Tackling a drawer or single shelf in a cupboard can be a simple step moving in the right direction. You’ll get a quick boost of motivation and figure out your uncluttering and organizing pace. From something small, you can move onto another small project or gradually enlarge your scope.
2. Grating on you. When you are in your home or office, what is the thing that causes you to grumble the loudest? Whatever is the one thing that irks you the most is where you should begin your uncluttering and organizing project.
3. First thing you see. If the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning is chaotic, your entire day starts off on a bad foot. Organize your closet, your bedroom, or your coffee station if they are where you first focus. At work, organize the first place you see when you walk in the door. Having these Firsts organized will help you move onto the Seconds and Thirds.

I also recommend establishing a minimum of three piles when sorting through your things and creating a plan of action for what you want to accomplish before you dump or pull everything out of your cluttered space. A little preparation will pay off in the long run.

Also, don’t run out and buy organizing supplies before you know what you’ll need. Wait until all of the clutter is gone before deciding how it’s going to be contained. You may find that you don’t need any extra bins, boxes, or doo-dads than what you already own.

How do you prioritize your uncluttering and organizing projects? Add your suggestions for Jane in the comments.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 14, 2009 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Banishing the No Momentum Monster

We want to again welcome guest author Alex Fayle, the writer and professional organizer behind the helpful anti-procrastination website Someday Syndrome. This is his second post of three in a series on fighting procrastination.

In my first post in this series on Unclutterer, I talked about vanquishing the Getting Started Monster and hopefully you were able to defeat your own personal Getting Started Monster.

Great! If it’s an organizing project you’ve started, you’ve probably cleared a surface and streamlined your stuff. Maybe you’ve even managed to clear off the dining room table for the first time in years. Momentum has supposedly kicked in and you’re ready to keep going.

But you don’t.

The rest of the space stays disorganized and the papers start piling up again on the dining room table and you feel totally discouraged. Why bother when it’s just going to get cluttered again?

I’m the same way with my writing. Unless I’m vigilant about my writing, I can let it slide by the wayside and without really noticing I’ve come up with enough excuses not to write for over two weeks.

Not good.

You think I’d want to write every day. After all, it’s my passion and writing every day brings me closer to my goal of being a published author?

Yes, but it’s also work. Hard work. And there’s no immediate pay off. Yes, I have the reward of 200 or 2000 words written, but I get nothing, no gold star, for doing so and my long term goal is still a long way off.

Unfortunately, just like with getting started there’s no trick to continuing. You can use positive enforcement of mini rewards, or picturing how happy you’ll be after you achieve your goal. You could also use negative motivation by imagining how much regret you’ll feel for not doing the thing that you’re procrastinating about.

In the end, however, there’s only the choice to continue.

The Power of Choice

There’s a saying about courage: A brave person feels fear and continues anyway. For getting around to it, a productive person feels like quitting but continues anyway.

Looking at it another way — every single day is a new start so getting back to a task you did the day before is exactly like starting it all over again facing the same Getting Started monster.

Almost every single goal I can think of requires a series of smaller steps to complete. Many times those small steps are repetitive and require a long-term commitment. The longer the commitment the easier it is to lose energy and enthusiasm until you’re moving less than a run-down grandfather clock.

If you’re the sort of person this happens to (I certainly am) all you need to do is make a choice to keep going. When I don’t feel like working, I remind myself that I’ve chosen my goals and if I don’t want to achieve them I don’t have to. Of course I wouldn’t be happy letting most goals fall by the wayside so I say “okay, fine” and get back to work.

With some goals, however, I truly do lose interest and I realize that the goal isn’t for me. By offering myself a choice to continue or not, I sometimes do choose to stop, often with a huge sense of relief.

So, how do you make sure you remember this choice? By repeating it to yourself every day.

I’m not big on affirmations where you stare in the mirror and tell yourself good things that you’re supposed to believe about yourself. The phrase in this exercise is meant as a daily wake up call, reminding you to keep the autopilot turned off and to stay engaged in everything you do.

And just what’s the super fantastic phrase that’s going to keep you motivated and moving forward?

I choose all my actions including what I’m not going to do.

That’s it. By taking responsibility for your actions, every day you’ll make a choice to continue or not, but remember – it’s your choice, no one is making you do or not do anything.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 14, 2009 | 8 Comments | Tweet This

Vanquishing the Getting Started Monster

We want to welcome guest author Alex Fayle, the writer and professional organizer behind the helpful anti-procrastination website Someday Syndrome. This is his first post of three in a series on fighting procrastination.

Has this ever happened to you?

You decide to get your bedroom, kitchen, garage, or whatever organized. You get a book and read about it. You watch an organizing show and take notes. You then plan out how you’re going to tackle the room and what you want it to look like afterward. You know all the steps that it’ll take to go from start to finish. You even know how long it will take and you have resources lined up to help you.

And yet you do nothing.

You know that the block comes from a combination of inertia and a fear of the unknown, failure, success, or whatever. You could probably talk for an hour about why you’re not starting.

And yet you still do nothing.

If you think this post will give you some trick, or little game to play with yourself, I’m sorry to disappoint. There’s only one thing to get yourself started – and that’s getting started.

Yeah, real helpful, I know. Unfortunately it’s the truth. If you aren’t willing take action, take even a small step toward your dreams, then there’s nothing I can do to help you.

Achieving your dreams requires work. Once you get into it you might not think of it as work because you enjoy it so much, but it’s hard work.

My passion is writing and yet every time I go to start a new project, I create a huge monster out of Getting Started and play at running away from it, doing everything but actually typing words into the computer. And then by simply opening up my computer and writing the first sentence the monster disappears and my passion for writing takes over again.

In the meantime, however, I’ve let the Getting Started Monster distract me for huge blocks of time.

Don’t let the Getting Started monster hold you back from your uncluttering projects (or any other project you haven’t got around to yet).

Fortunately it’s easy to beat the Getting Started Monster: simply write down each time you start something and keep a log of all the projects you’ve successfully started. Then post the log wherever you most procrastinate about not moving towards your goals. That might be the living room, the bedroom, the back deck, but I highly doubt it’s the office, so don’t post the log there.

This log celebrates the moments when you started taking action and serves as a reminder of the number of times in the past that you have started something so that when you feel the big scary Getting Started Monster creeping up behind you, you can look at your list of new starts and say “Ha! You don’t scare me! I start things all the time!”

By choosing to get started, you take active control of your life and you don’t let your fears or inertia keep you from achieving your goals.

So tell me – what version of the Getting Started Monster have you vanquished recently?

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted by Alex on Sep 10, 2009 | 42 Comments | Tweet This

The state of self-storage in the U.S.

The New York Times ran an incredibly well-researched and informative article this weekend on the current state of the self-storage industry. The article gives insight into how the downturn in the economy is affecting storage units in terms of capacity and purpose of use. Additionally, the article confirms that the majority of units remain full of clutter, but it paints a vivid picture of people who are using the spaces for other, non-clutter reasons.

Some of the more powerful quotes from the article:

The Self Storage Association, a nonprofit trade group, estimates that since the onset of the recession, occupancies at storage facilities nationwide are down, on average, about 2 or 3 percent. It’s not a cataclysmic drop but enough to disorient an industry that has always considered itself recession-resistant, if not outright recession-proof…

“Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators,” Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, told me. “Because once they’re in, nobody likes to spend all day moving their stuff out of storage. As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they’ll leave that stuff in there forever.”

After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.”)

A Self Storage Association study showed that, by 2007, the once-quintessential client — the family in the middle of a move, using storage to solve a short-term, logistical problem — had lost its majority. Fifty percent of renters were now simply storing what wouldn’t fit in their homes — even though the size of the average American house had almost doubled in the previous 50 years, to 2,300 square feet.

Maybe the recession really is making American consumers serious about scaling back, about decluttering and de-leveraging. But there are upward of 51,000 storage facilities across this country — more than seven times the number of Starbucks. Storage is part of our national infrastructure now. And all it is, is empty space: something Americans have always colonized and capitalized on in good times, and retreated into to regroup when things soured. It’s tough to imagine a product more malleable to whatever turns our individual life stories take, wherever we’re collectively heading.

Be sure to check out the article, which tells a fascinating story.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Posted by Erin on Sep 10, 2009 | 24 Comments | Tweet This

Stuff versus relationships

Professional organizer extraordinaire Monica Ricci returns to Unclutterer to talk to us about the anxieties hoarders experience. You can follow Monica on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog for more organizing tips.

On a recent episode of A&E’s Hoarders a key concept was brought to light by my dear friend and hoarding expert Dorothy Breininger. The important concept is stuff versus relationships. It’s so sad to see individuals choose their stuff over the people in their lives. To those of us watching the show at home, the hoarder’s behavior doesn’t initially seem to make sense.

In my industry, I often encounter clients who have a history of choosing stuff over people. It’s not just hoarders who do it, either. People often choose the comfort of stuff over relationships because relationships can be scary. People can reject you. People are sometimes critical and judgmental. People can be mean, insensitive, and heartless. People can leave you, abandon you, and disappoint you. But your stuff never will.

That is, until your stuff chokes the life out of you.

It could be easy to watch the television show Hoarders and lose sight of the humanity of the people featured. But we shouldn’t. All of us can empathize with the anxiety that the hoarders feel — we’ve all felt abandoned, disappointed, and ridiculed by others. We can understand how someone stopped focusing on the people in their life and turned to their stuff. Hopefully, with time, treatment, and assistance, the hoarders featured on the show can turn again to people and let go of so much of their stuff. I also hope that you continue to make the same choice.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Monica on Sep 9, 2009 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

Are you shopping for chaos?

Professional organizer extraordinaire Monica Ricci returns to Unclutterer to offer us advice on curbing shopaholic practices. You can follow Monica on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog for more organizing tips.

Ahhhhh, the siren song of the mall. Doesn’t it feel nice at the mall? Isn’t it pretty in the mall? Doesn’t the mall smell all yummy and delicious, thanks to Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabon? Doesn’t being at the mall just make you wanna get a Starbucks latte and go buy stuff? AAAARGGGHH STOP IT! That’s what got you in trouble in the first place!

If your clutter issues stem chiefly from shopping, here are a few helpful tips to change that reality so you can conquer your clutter once and for all.

1. Be aware of how you feel. If you use shopping, and specifically BUYING to alter your mood, notice it! If buying something new gives you an emotional high that temporarily takes you away from your troubles, makes you feel safe, worthy, loved, or gives you some other rush, it’s important to be aware of it. Once you’re aware of why you’re buying, you can take other steps to make yourself feel better besides buying. I would recommend a few sessions with a counselor, a hypnotist, or therapist to get to the root of your buying.
2. Imagine yourself at home. When you’re OUT of your cluttered home and inside the gorgeous four walls of Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel, it’s easy to forget how stressed your home makes you. Again, that’s the idea. They WANT you to forget about your house and just open your wallet. And listen, when you really need something, great. Go buy it! But before you do, vividly imagine yourself back at your house with your new “thing”. Where in your already cluttered home will your new thing live? Who will clean it? How much space will it consume? What will it give you back? How long will it be valuable? Asking yourself these questions will help you make better buying decisions.
3. Calculate the TIME cost. If money isn’t a motivator for you, and unnecessary spending doesn’t inspire you to reduce your shopping, think of how much TIME your new “thing” will cost you. Let’s say you make $20 per hour, and your new “thing” costs $100. In time currency, your new thing will cost you FIVE HOURS of your life. Thinking of new purchases in this way will help you decide if you REALLY need it or if you just want it to make yourself feel better.

The next time you’re out shopping, try these simple tips and see if it doesn’t help shift your shopping mindset so you can make better, more powerful choices and reduce the clutter in your life.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted by Monica on Sep 2, 2009 | 11 Comments | Tweet This

Setting goals when you don’t know what you want

Today, Ali Hale has a wonderful post on goal setting over on the blog Dumb Little Man. The post, “How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want,” talks about how to set goals for the less-ambitious things in life.

We’ve written in the past about how determining what matters to you most is an important aspect of uncluttering. Not only does focusing on what matters most to you keep up your motivation, but it also helps you to decide priorities for your time, energy, money, and space. “How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want” is a great resource for getting you thinking about the day-to-day things that are important to you.

A “goal” is simply something which you’d like to do or achieve. It could be buying a house or a car, yes, but it could also be something which might matter to no-one in the world except you — perhaps your goal is to learn to bake cakes as good as the ones your grandma used to make.

Goals aren’t things that you feel you “should” do, and any good life coach will steer you away from goals that have been imposed upon you by other people.

Spend 15, 20, or 60 minutes working on determining what matters most to you. Uncluttering will be easier and more productive when you know why you’re simplifying your life.

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Posted by Erin on Sep 1, 2009 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

Lazy productivity

There are many reasons why I have chosen to live an uncluttered life, and one of those reasons is that I’m lazy. If I need to do something I’m not super excited about doing, I want it to take the least amount of time possible and I want it to cause me little or no stress. I’ve created simple routines for things like cleaning and getting ready in the morning because I need to do these things but don’t want to waste mental energy on them.

An example of this is processing mail when I come home: I instantly shred, recycle, or respond to the mail right when I walk in the door. This routine usually takes me two to three minutes, and then I don’t think about the mail or see it again. I used to just collect it and place it on the dining room table, then I would have to touch it again to move it so that we could sit down to dinner, then I would see it after dinner and think about it again, and then I would have to deal with it after worrying about it some more. In the past, I would spend 15 to 20 minutes thinking about the mail each night. Being “lazy” and organized with my mail saves me quite a bit of time over the course of the year. That, and I never have to worry about paying bills late.

Back in January, Leo Babauta wrote a post on this issue on his blog ZenHabits titled “The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less. Then, Do Even Less.” I like his perspective on doing less to increase productivity:

Do Less: The Ultimate Simple Productivity

It may seem paradoxical that Do Less can mean you’re more productive — and if you define “productive” as meaning “get more done” or “do more”, then no, Do Less won’t lead to that kind of productivity.

But if instead you define “productivity” as a means of making the most of your actions, of the time you spend working (or doing anything), of being as effective as possible, then Do Less is the best way to be productive.

Consider: I can work all day in a flurry of frenetic activity, only to get a little done, especially when it comes to lasting achievement. Or I can do just a couple things that take an hour, but those are key actions that will lead to real achievement. In the second example, you did less, but the time you spent counted for more.

Let’s take the example of a blogger: I can write a dozen posts that really say nothing, mean nothing, but take up my entire day … or I can write one post that affects thousands of people, that really reaches to the heart of my readers’ lives, and takes me 1.5 hours to write. I did less, but made my words and time count for more.

If you’re lazy, as I often am, then the choice is simple. Do Less.

But do it smartly: Do Less, but make every action count. Send fewer emails, but make them important. Write fewer words, but make each word essential. Really consider the impact of every action you take, and see if you can eliminate some actions. See if you can achieve a great impact doing less.

This doesn’t mean “less is more”. It means “less is better”.

I don’t agree with everything in his post, but his viewpoint speaks to the heart of uncluttering. Read his post and then come back here to share in our conversation. I’m interested in reading about what your views are on lazy productivity.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Posted by Erin on Aug 31, 2009 | 22 Comments | Tweet This

Deadheading for the future

Professional organizer extraordinaire Monica Ricci gives a grounded perspective in her guest post on the process of uncluttering and organizing. You can follow Monica on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog for more organizing tips.

Deadheading. It sounds like either a grisly ritual or a summer vacation following your favorite band on tour. But it’s neither. Deadheading is simply the practice of removing the dead flowers from a plant. The reason you deadhead is because if you don’t, the flower will stop blooming, and how disappointing would that be?

All plants have one goal — to go to seed so they can perpetuate their little flower family. Creating flowers is part of that process, and if you leave the dead blooms on the plant, it will stop blooming and concentrate on going to seed. However, when you interrupt that cycle by removing old blooms, the plant then puts its energy into strengthening itself and producing more flowers in a continued effort to go to seed. The more you cut off the dead blooms, the more fresh blooms you’ll get.

This is a lot like organizing your life. The more you clear out and eliminate what’s “dead” in your life, the more space you create for opportunity, love, and success in the future. You have more energy to put toward strengthening yourself and blooming even more gloriously than you did before.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted by Monica on Aug 31, 2009 | 9 Comments | Tweet This

Link week

This week on Unclutterer has been filled with numerous links to helpful articles on other sites. I’ll be honest, the first part of next week is going to be the same. Lots and lots of links — good links, hopefully — but lots of links.

Why all the links? On Monday, my husband and I became parents to a beautiful baby boy.

Our little man is an excellent sleeper, so I’ve been able to find great things around the internet to share with you and comment on while he has been napping, but my mind is a bit overwhelmed and original content isn’t flowing. Since we are adoptive parents, parenthood caught us (pleasantly) a bit off guard.

My first link of the day is to a book review professional organizer Julie Bestry wrote about Everything I Know About Perfectionism I Learned from My Breasts. This book, written by the talented organizer Debbie Jordan Kravitz, has been on my to-read list for months but I haven’t yet reached it in the pile. Julie’s review of Debbie’s book, however, has convinced me to jump it ahead on my list. And, since it persuaded me to read the book, I thought it was a review you might wish to read as well.

From Julie’s review:

As a breast cancer survivor, Debbie’s revelations about the necessity of overcoming her perfectionist tendencies (for her own sake as well as her family’s), informed her desire to write this book. But, to be honest, until I had a copy in my hands, I think I was expecting a memoir, even a breasts’ eye view, as it were, of how her cancer and recovery brought Debbie to some sort of epiphany about the challenges of fighting perfectionism.

In fact, while Debbie does share her own story, this book offers much more, both to those of us who struggle with the ideals of perfection and those of us who have friends, family and co-workers whose perfectionism drives their own behaviors. Everything I Know is informative (indeed, eye-opening) about perfectionism, but also offers practical guidance and motivation to those seeking to become recovering perfectionists.

The subtitle of the book, Secrets and Solutions for Overpowering Perfectionism, explains the direction of the text — and shows that this isn’t a book just for women.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Erin on Aug 27, 2009 | 69 Comments | Tweet This

Staying focused on the big picture

On Friday, my grandmother turned 100 years old. She is an amazing woman, and turning 100 is just one more accomplishment in her incredible life.

My grandmother’s birthday has me thinking about a phrase that I often repeat to myself:

Even if you live to be 100, life is short.

It’s a reminder to me to not procrastinate and to stay focused on what matters most. There are only 24 hours in a day, and I want to spend those hours focused on what is important to me — sharing with others my passion and knowledge of simple living, embarking on new adventures with those I love, and nine other priorities for my life.

Uncluttering is about clearing the distractions that get in the way of your remarkable life. Once the distractions are gone, you can pursue your priorities and make the most of your life.

My life’s motto is to Carpe Vitam — Seize Life — and my grandmother is a testament to this form of living. I’m glad to have such a happy reminder of this concept as we celebrate her birthday.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted by Erin on Aug 24, 2009 | 13 Comments | Tweet This

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