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Improve your decision-making skills and reduce the clutter in your home and office

Clutter can collect in homes and offices for multiple reasons, and avoidance is a common cause for clutter collection. Avoidance is not laziness (laziness can be a cause for clutter, but it’s very rare). Rather, avoidance is what happens when you choose not to make a decision and it is one of the top reasons for clutter accumulation, if not the top reason. Instead of deciding how to deal with a mess, you decide instead to avoid making a decision and (try your best) to ignore the mess.

I do this every few months with my inbox on my desk. I’ll be great for weeks at processing and making decisions about the paperwork that comes onto my desk. Then, a piece of paper I don’t want to deal with appears, and the paper hangs out in my inbox for days while I avoid making a decision. Other papers eventually pile up on top of the paper I’m avoiding (in theory: out of sight, out of mind) and eventually my inbox is a stack of papers cluttering up my desk. The pile causes me anxiety, and no matter how much I’m trying to avoid making a decision about that piece of paper at the bottom of the pile, I know it’s still there. It hangs over me like a cloud of darkness. I’ll waste so much time and energy thinking about that piece of paper, which is ridiculous because almost always it only takes a few minutes to process it when I finally stop avoiding it.

Does this scenario resonate with you? My guess is that it does.

Being a good decision-maker doesn’t mean that you always make the right decision. It’s impossible to always make the “right” decision (and since “right” is subjective, what you believe to be right may not be considered right by others, anyway). Rather, good decision makers are people who can make well-informed decisions efficiently and then respond appropriately to the outcome. For example, if the decision turns out to have a negative outcome, good decision makers quickly respond and rectify the situation. They also learn from all decisions they make.

Decision-making is a skill, same as tying one’s shoes or typing on a keyboard. It’s something that can be taught and improved over time. Just because you’re not-so-great at making decisions today doesn’t mean you’re doomed to spend the rest of your life surrounded by clutter. Thankfully, there is typically a cumulative effect, so the more decisions you make the better you usually get at making decisions.

Theories abound on how to help people become better decision-makers, and the following is what I’ve cobbled together over the years as the best method for making decisions about clutter. These tips may work for you in other areas, but my intention is to focus on helping you make better decisions about processing your stuff:

Acknowledge you need to make a decision. This seems ridiculously obvious, but you would be surprised how easy it is to ignore this step. If you have ever thought, “I don’t want to deal with this right now,” as you set down whatever it was you were holding, you have skipped this step in the decision-making process. Instead of thinking, “I don’t want to deal with this right now,” practice thinking, “I need to make a decision about this right now.” Then, move on to the second step in the decision-making process. If you don’t have the proper time to make a good decision right then, identify exactly when you will have the time and schedule it immediately on your calendar. As David Allen advises, you don’t want any “open loops” — something that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is.
Identify actions you can take. When processing clutter, your possible actions might be as simple as: keep or purge? Your list might be longer or it might be full of all good options (or, conversely, all bad options) or you may not even be aware of what your options are. Be creative here and work to give yourself at least two actions you can take.
Decide the value of the decision. Is making this decision something that could impact your life in a significant way? Or, is it a minor decision that will have very little impact on the way you live? Minor decisions need to take the least amount of time to decide which action you wish to take. Major decisions should take longer, but not any longer than it would take to rectify the situation if the choice has a negative outcome. For instance, if you spend four days making a decision about something that would take you just 10 minutes to fix, you have spent way too long making the decision. By knowing the value of the decision, you can determine how much time to spend researching and weighing actions and possible outcomes.
Research and weigh realistic possible outcomes. People who struggle with decision-making usually get held up on this step. They cycle through fears and unrealistic emotions (“… but what if …” or “I could miss it”) instead of concrete possibilities. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the what-if cycle, and instead list out actual outcomes and how you will handle each of those outcomes. If it’s a major decision, you may wish to use a piece of paper and write out each outcome. If it’s a minor decision, all you’ll need to do is quickly list the outcomes in your mind. When you list real possibilities, it helps reduce your fears and confront how you will respond. If you decide to get rid of a shirt that no longer fits, you know you’ll be able to get a new shirt if the time comes.
Make a decision. After going through the previous steps, you’re prepared to make a decision. Remind yourself that no one makes the right decision every time, and you’re doing the best with the information you’ve collected. Remind yourself of possible outcomes and how you will be able to handle the outcome. Finally, remind yourself that with each decision you make, you’re becoming a better decision-maker and the process will become easier.

Do you need to work on becoming a better decision-maker? Will doing so help you process your clutter and keep you surrounded by only the things you need and that you truly value? What decision can you make today that will help you alleviate some clutter from your life? What have you been avoiding that has created more clutter?

Posted by Erin on May 22, 2012 | 15 Comments | Tweet This

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 | 38 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

Overwhelmed? Eight steps to help you regain control of your time

It is easy to feel overwhelmed and anxious when you have too many responsibilities, too many things on your to-do list, and/or too many emotionally-draining situations going on in your life. It’s also easy to believe that if you could just be more organized, you could stop feeling so exhausted and stressed about these things.

Improved organization may be part of the solution, but rarely is it the entire answer. Similar to when organizing a physical space, you usually have to clear clutter before you can organize what remains. You’ll need to eliminate or delegate activities before you can be more organized and regain control of your time.

Start saying “no.” At least for the short term, you need to say “no” to as many new responsibilities as possible. Obviously, you can’t say “no” to every request that comes your way, but try your best to keep from adding to your already massive to-do list. For advice on how to decline incoming requests for your time, check out the article “Saying ‘no’” from 2008.
Get it out of your head. The next thing you need to do is get everything out of your mind and onto a sheet of paper. If you’re like me, you’re not going to remember everything you need to do in a matter of minutes. Carry the paper with you throughout the course of an entire day, and write down things as you remember them. Leave the paper next to your bed as you sleep, and you may even find you wake up with five or ten more items to add to the list the next morning.
Prioritize your list. Sort your list into four groups: 1. Must get done for risk of losing job/life/significant income; 2. Would be nice to get done and I would enjoy doing the task; 3. Would be nice to get done but I don’t really want to do it; 4. Doesn’t need to get done right now/ever and I don’t really want to do it.
Eliminate and delegate. Immediately cross everything in group 4 off your list and clear these tasks from your mind. After letting those items go, get to work on all the items in group 3. You’ll want to create exit strategies for all these items, and the more heavy the responsibility the more detailed your exit strategy will need to be. For the heavier items: Wrap up any parts of the project you can easily (and willingly) do, identify someone who might benefit from taking over this responsibility or is better equipped to handle it, delegate this responsibility to that person or request their help with the responsibility, and graciously resign the responsibility to that person. For the lighter items: Simply cross them off your list like you did with items in group 4.
Create, schedule, and complete action items. Look at the items in group 1 and break them into specific action items. “Clean the house” is a bad action item because it is vague. You want individual items with detailed actions that can be scheduled and completed. For example, “Call Bob the exterminator at (555) 555-5555 to set up an appointment for the afternoon of Saturday, April 21″ or “Scrub the bathtub in the guest room.” Put the action items on your schedule so you know when you will complete the tasks. Be realistic with yourself about how much you can accomplish in one day. Finally, do the action items as they appear on your schedule.
Sleep and spend 30 minutes in the sun. It’s scientifically proven that it’s more difficult to handle stress when you’re exhausted. For advice on getting the sleep you need, check out the article “A good night’s sleep improves productivity.” Also, get outside for 30 minutes every day to absorb a little Vitamin D and take a mental break from your responsibilities. If the weather is dismal, sit still for 30 minutes and do absolutely nothing.
Review your progress. After you get some of the group 1 items crossed off your to-do list, you can review your progress and see if you’re at a place to begin adding items from group 2 to your schedule. If you feel significantly less anxious than you did two weeks ago, you may be ready to address one or two items from group 2. If your anxiety levels are still running high, continue to only work on group 1 responsibilities.
Ask for help. If a month passes, you’ve fully implemented the previous steps, and you’re still overwhelmed, it might be time to call in a professional. Only you will know what type of a professional you need — you could need the help of a time management consultant, a professional organizer, a mental health professional, or something as simple as hiring a neighborhood kid to mow your lawn. Get the help you need to regain control of your time.

Posted by Erin on Apr 16, 2012 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Simple stress reduction to improve your productivity, focus, and sanity

Last night officially marked the start of the Major League Baseball season. To celebrate, I drove around town running errands with the windows down, the Cardinals-Marlins game playing on the AM radio, and a ridiculously silly smile across my face.

As I went from location to location, I was blissfully content and stress free. There is something incredibly relaxing about listening to baseball games on the radio. I don’t know if it’s the sound of the announcer’s voice, the crack of the bat, the pops of the radio signal over the AM waves, memories of listening to games as a kid, or a mixture of these four things and more that work their magic to calm me. Whatever the reason, a baseball game on the radio has the same restorative result on me as a day at the spa.

My morning coffee-making ritual affects me in a similar way. And, there is a stretch of the Kansas Turnpike when you’re heading south out of Emporia, about 10 miles before passing the Cassoday exit, where the view of the Flint Hills is so breathtaking it’s impossible to experience anxiety until you reach Wichita. These common moments of pure relaxation may seem rare, but their ability to bring calm in an otherwise stressful day are essential to your productivity, competence, and sanity.

When clients mention they are having difficulty focusing because of a stress-filled mind, I ask them what ordinary activities relax them and allow them to regain a sense of calm. Many have no idea. They can name beach vacations, entire days at the spa, and other extraordinary experiences that calm them, but it’s difficult to name simple activities in their regular routines that reduce stress.

If you’re someone who has difficulty finding common activities that help to reduce your stress level, start paying attention to when you have a ridiculously silly smile on your face. Are you listening to a baseball game on the radio? Are you on a short walk back to your office after getting lunch? Are you writing with a favorite pen? When you identify these actions, try your best to incorporate them into your everyday schedule. Take a short walk away from your desk when frustrations flare. Replace the pens in your desk drawer that you dislike with only your favorite brand. Or, if you’re like me, keep a radio app on your smartphone to listen to a baseball game whenever you need to.

I’ll be tuning my radio to the Nationals-Cubs game today at 2:20 pm EDT. What small activity will you do today recharge, regain focus, and relax?

Posted by Erin on Apr 5, 2012 | 25 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

Looking back on five years at Unclutterer.com

March 2012 marks my fifth year working for Unclutterer.com. My first post didn’t appear on the site until April 6, 2007, “Solving the Imelda Marcos Problem,” but I actually started a few weeks before that doing work on other areas of the site. Honestly, I’m shocked it has been five years. It is amazing how quickly time flies when you have a job you love. I am truly blessed to have the opportunity to write for such an amazing site and such a terrific group of readers.

I already knew a fair amount about uncluttering and organizing before I started working here, but over the past five years I’ve learned so much more from our readership and researching the topic. The following are a handful of things I have learned about the world of simple living and writing about this topic every week day for five years that I thought you might enjoy:

Paper is the gateway issue. More new readers come to the site seeking advice on how to process paper than any other topic. I would have thought in the digital age that paper wouldn’t be such a priority, but it is. Search after search after search drive people here who are looking to get rid of the stacks of paper in their homes and office. But, while paper is the gateway issue, our “Creating a Weekly Meal Plan” post gets more hits than any other single page on our site.
Relationship advice. The most common question asked of me in emails is along the lines of “How do I live with someone who is cluttered?” The second most common question concerns dealing with clutter kept by elderly family members — fears that the family member will die and leave the mess or worries about how to help the family member downsize to a retirement home. When people are frustrated with their family members, they turn to email.
Fear, conflicting priorities, and lack of good time management and decision-making skills are significantly more likely to be the causes of clutter than laziness or lack of motivation. As a former clutterer, I knew a lack of organizing skills was to blame in my case. However, I wasn’t exactly sure why so many others fought clutter, too. Writing for the site has taught me physical disabilities, attention disorder, sentimental personalities, a desire not to be forgotten, structural prohibitions, death of a loved one, shopping addictions, and dozens more reasons also cause clutter.
We keep a list of topics to avoid because of the awful comments people leave on the site in response to posts containing them. We have written about these topics a few times after they made the “do not discuss” list, but we always do it when we know we’ll be at our desks all day to monitor the comments. In case you’re curious, this list includes Sandra Lee and her show Semi-Homemade Cooking, Pottery Barn, baby formula, and Saran Wrap. The list is longer than these four items, these are just the four that baffle me the most and I never knew they were hot-button issues before writing for the site.
A good number of readers buy unitaskers after we feature them. Numerous manufacturers, after we featured their products as unitaskers, have reached out to us to say thank you for spiking their sales with links from our site. I’ve even received emails from manufacturers asking if we might feature their items as unitaskers. We’ve never featured a product a manufacturer wanted us to, but I admire the risk they take for reaching out to me. This all speaks to the adage that all news is good news. I don’t have any issues with people buying the unitaskers (as I’ve said before, I have a few of them), but I just find it interesting that our unitasker posts increase product sales. I never would have expected this when we started the feature. After learning this information, we stopped reviewing products that we don’t recommend because we would rather nothing be said about them instead of drawing attention to bad products.
A few people have asked me over the years about the systems I use to write. Every post I’ve ever written has been constructed in TextEdit, I hand code or use preset snippets I’ve logged into TextExpander for all the links and formatting, and then I import the whole thing all at once into our content management system (WordPress). All images are edited in PhotoShop and I use a MacBook Pro. In addition to the MacBook screen, I also have a second Dell flat-screen monitor that looms over the left edge of my laptop. I type about 105 words a minute. I get ideas for posts from our staff, professional organizers I talk to at industry functions, and questions or suggestions from readers. Very, very few ideas come from press releases that constantly bombard my email account (maybe four or five a year).
Routines are the answer for chores you hate to do. I’m someone who hated routines five years ago — I thought they killed creativity and stifled my life enjoyment. What I have grown to learn from reader suggestions over the past five years is that putting daily chores into a set routine actually provides me with more time to focus on the things I love to do and I enjoy the fun stuff more because I don’t have any responsibilities weighing on me. Routines are amazing and save me incredible amounts of time. I hope they work for you, too.
Life is short, even if you live to be 102, and clutter shouldn’t keep you from enjoying the adventure. If something isn’t distracting you or causing you worry or frustration or making life unnecessarily complicated, it’s probably not clutter or disorganized. There isn’t a single standard for what is uncluttered and what isn’t. Only you know what is in the way of you achieving the life of your dreams.

Posted by Erin on Mar 15, 2012 | 28 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

Daily routines: What time of the day works best for you?

In my experience, routines are an essential component to an uncluttered life. Without a few minutes of dedicated work each day, housework and clutter quickly build up and create stress. Small steps each day keep everything under control and ultimately give you more free time to focus on the things that matter most to you.

Fifteen years ago, I was someone who let things fall apart during the week and then spent a good portion of my Saturdays cleaning up all the messes I had made during the week. This meant that every Saturday morning and some afternoons were wasted. I couldn’t meet friends for brunch or read a book or whatever relaxing task I would have rather been doing. When I traveled over a weekend, it meant that I returned home to a place as messed up as I had left it and then I would have two weeks’ worth of cleanup to do the next Saturday. It also meant I would never have people over during the week because dirty dishes would be on the kitchen counter, dirty clothes would be spilling out of my hamper, and so many other things would be in disarray. During the week, everything was not in its place.

After my initial uncluttering and organizing spree, I knew I had to change my ways and figure out new daily routines to keep my home and office organized. I won’t lie to you, it took a lot of practice, and there are times now when I’ll miss a day here and there. Overall, though, daily routines have made maintaining an organized life incredibly simple and I no longer carry stress about the state of my home. That feeling of calm is very important to me now, and I have no desire to abandon it.

Since we’ve talked a great deal on the site about creating routines (e.g. articles 1, 2, 3), I won’t go into too much detail in this post about that stage of the process. However, I do want to discuss when to do the actions on your routines list.

We all have different times of the day when we have energy to do chores and when we don’t. Our motivation levels change throughout the day, too. Knowing yourself and when you are most likely to get daily chores done is key to choosing when to do your routines.

Before work. I function my best in the morning, and only want to do relaxing stuff after the sun goes down. As a result, I have to do the majority of my housework in the morning before sitting down at my desk to work. The same is true for my husband, so we unload the dishwasher, put a load of laundry into the washer, and put away stray items from around the house before we start work. We do these chores in addition to bathing and getting ready, getting our son fed and ready for his day, and eating breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen afterward. It means we have early mornings, but it also means our evenings are relaxing and light on chores. (Since we both work from home, we put the laundry in the dryer around 10:00 a.m. and then fold it and put it away during our lunch break.)
Throughout the day. If you work from home, you can set up chores to take place for 10 minutes every couple hours to give you a break from work. This is much more difficult to do if you work in an office.
Immediately after work. If you’re not a morning person, I strongly recommend doing your daily routines right when you get home from work. This way, once you’re done with dinner, you can relax and focus on doing what matters to you. Plus, you’re more likely to have energy at 5:30 p.m. (or whenever you get home) than you are closer to when you go to bed.
After dinner. If everyone in your family comes home at different times, daily routines might have to be completed after dinner when everyone is in the house and can lend a hand. You’re more likely to avoid your routines because you’re tired, but if you have the motivation you can still get them done. My friend Julie reports that she will incorporate her daily chores into her nightly television watching. Instead of fast-forwarding through commercials with her DVR, she lets them play and races to get a chore done while the commercials play.

Try doing your daily routines at different times to determine which one works best for you. When do you have the most energy and motivation to do the little stuff you need to do every day, so you can spend the majority of your time doing what matters to you?

Posted by Erin on Feb 23, 2012 | 17 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

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

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:

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.
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).
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

An unclutterer’s perspective

In Tuesday’s post, we discussed the seven routines and guidelines most unclutterers follow. These aren’t laws, they’re just actions that unclutterers often have in common. In a comparable vein, unclutterers seem to repeat similar statements about physical possessions.

The vast majority of unclutterers I know are not ascetics who eschew physical possessions or consumerism. There are a few minimalists in our ranks and some anti-consumers, but the majority of us like the conveniences of modern life, have some sentimental items in our homes, and think of ourselves as smart consumers — we spend less than we earn, research purchases before we make them, and mostly buy only things we need but with a few fun things thrown in to keep life interesting.

Not surprisingly, the statements that tend to unite unclutterers are straightforward and practical. Again, these aren’t laws, no one ceases to be an unclutterer if he or she doesn’t agree with one or more of these ideas. Rather, these are the eight concepts unclutterers often use when evaluating and discussing their stuff and their uncluttered and organized lives:

You are not your things. If your home were to burn down in a tragic accident, you wouldn’t stop being you. People would still recognize you in the office and in the grocery store. On a less dire level, if you part with an object, you’ll still be whole. The physical stuff in your life is not your life.
Physical possessions are not alive, they do not contain souls. Your grandmother is not inside the quilt/rocking chair/ring she gave you. Objects remind you of the person who gave them to you. Objects stir up sentimental memories associated with happy times. However, if you were to recycle a rusty and damaged knife your grandfather gave you, you would not be recycling your grandfather. If an object were accidentally destroyed, you would still have the joyful memories of the person and/or event associated with the object.
Know yourself, have less clutter. When you know who you are and what your priorities are in life, it’s easier to get rid of the things that don’t belong. It’s also easier to keep from acquiring things that distract you from what matters most to you. If you don’t know who you are and what matters to you, there will always be “what if” and “just in case” clutter in your life.
Read the manual. Knowing what you own and all of the things these items can do prevents owning items that have duplicate purposes. Obviously, this applies to electronic equipment, but it can also apply to low-tech equipment. A three-hour knife skills class can help you to know how to properly use knives so you no longer need extremely specific kitchen tools that do the same things knives can do.
Quality over quantity. Although this advice applies to purchases (a $50 toaster that lasts 50 years is a better deal than a $10 toaster that only lasts 5), it’s more about editing the things in your home. Instead of owning five pairs of pants you don’t like and don’t fit well, try owning two pairs that are the perfect fit and style. Instead of hoarding all your grandmother’s possessions in your garage, choose the one or two items that you truly value and use them in your home.
Anyone can learn to unclutter and be organized. As long as a person is in good mental and physical health, he or she can learn the skills to being uncluttered and organized. Everyone learns at a different rate — heck, I’m still learning — but everyone can learn. And, everyone should expect to have bumps in the road and failures as they learn, as this is part of the skills acquisition process.
Being an unclutterer is a choice, and it’s not for everyone. A person has to want to be an unclutterer to be one. You can’t force anyone against their will to adopt an uncluttered lifestyle. (You can teach them, talk with them, and show how it has improved your life, but that is where it ends.) More importantly, being an unclutterer isn’t for everyone. Uncluttered living is great, but there are multiple paths to living a remarkable life. Being intolerant of how other people have chosen to pursue what matters most to them only clutters up your time.
Uncluttered and organized is not the goal, it is a path to a better goal. What matters most to you are the goals; being uncluttered and organized merely allows you a smoother path to reach your other goals.

In addition to these common perspectives, individuals will have other ideas they bring to their uncluttered life. What perspectives do you hold that help you communicate with yourself and others about your uncluttering and organizing adventures?

Posted by Erin on Jan 5, 2012 | 33 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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
One in, one out. If you buy a replacement good, get rid of the inferior good you’re replacing.
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.
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

Ask Unclutterer: How do you create resolutions when you’re coming up on a major life change?

Reader Amanda submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

How do you define goals or resolutions when you know your life is about to change dramatically? I am due with our firstborn, a son, in early 2012 (our due date is February 4th) … I don’t know how to plan my life around such a big addition. I would like to lose the baby weight (plus some), but I have no idea what that will look like with a baby in the mix. My friends and family are not goal-setters like I am, so I don’t know who to ask for help setting goals around the unknown. Any advice?

Congratulations on your upcoming new addition!

Since you enjoy setting goals and resolutions, I suggest you go ahead and make the ones you wish to make. You won’t stop being you when you become a parent (or when you experience any major life change), so go for it. Do some soul searching, make your lists, and create a 2012 Resolution Action Plan. Resolution enforcement police won’t come and arrest you if you don’t cross all your resolutions off your list by December 31, 2012. Worst case scenario, you won’t achieve any of your resolutions by the end of the year, and you’ll save yourself some time coming up with resolutions for 2013.

Plus, after your son is born and you become accustom to being a parent, you can always revise your resolutions. Think of it as a bonus opportunity — a goal-setter’s dream — to come up with a new plan in the middle of the year! Irrespective of parenting, anyone can revise resolutions and goals as necessary. Your 2012 Resolution Action Plan isn’t law, but rather a living document you can reassess as you wish.

The first two months of parenting, at least in my experience, are very similar to the first two months of a new dating relationship. You’re head-over-heels for this new person in your life and you withdraw from your friends and responsibilities for awhile while you get to know the new person. After two months, you start to enter back into a normal routine, but with this new person in the mix.

Since our son was healthy and a good sleeper, being a new parent was actually pretty easy until he learned to walk. I could strap him in a stroller and go for a run or put him in a carrier and go to the grocery store. When he started walking at 9-1/2 months is when life as a parent got more complicated for us. Luckily for you, most boys don’t walk until around their first birthday, so you could get 2-1/2 more months of the easy life than we did.

All this being said, every child is different and your son’s temperament, health, sleeping and eating patterns, and preferences will dictate how much time you can spend doing things not immediately related to caring for your son. Go ahead and make the resolutions, but don’t feel bad if you don’t achieve all of your goals by the end of 2012. You’ll at least have been loving and doting on your child instead, which is still a wonderful accomplishment.

Thank you, Amanda, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Once again, congratulations on your forthcoming adventure in parenting.

Posted by Erin on Dec 30, 2011 | 19 Comments | Tweet This

Making resolutions and creating a 2012 Resolution Action Plan

According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, the phrase “get organized” is one of the top 10 resolutions people make every year. I’m not really sure how to validate this information, but my guess is that some version of “get organized” falls on the majority of resolution lists (“get the basement organized” or “have better time management”). If you add uncluttering into the “get organized” category, it’s likely a top 5 resolution.

If you fall into the group of resolution makers who wants to be better organized in 2012, the first thing to do is specifically identify why you want to be organized. Being organized isn’t usually a goal. Being organized is merely a path to achieving another goal. For instance, you might want to be better organized with your time after work so you finally get your business idea off the ground. You might want to be more organized with meal planning so you have less stress surrounding mealtimes with your family. Knowing why you want to be organized will help you with the remaining steps of the resolution-making process and with ultimately achieving your goals.

While brainstorming resolutions and the reasons you wish to make your resolutions, keep in mind that change is difficult and that research has found that it is easiest to achieve a goal when you’re only focusing on one at a time. This means you need to have 12 or fewer personal resolutions for 2012, giving yourself at least one month to focus on each resolution. If you have a resolution such as weight loss, and you want to be better organized with your meal planning to help you achieve that resolution, consider making your weight-loss resolution a six month or even an entire year-long resolution. You can focus on each step to help you achieve the weight loss each month — research and doctor’s visit in January, journaling food consumed and daily weight in February, meal planning in March, twice-a-week workouts with a personal trainer in April, four-times-a-week workouts on your own in May, etc.

After you have identified why you want to be more organized and have a rough idea of the resolutions you wish to achieve, your next step is to create a detailed plan of action. This Resolution Action Plan should include very specific language and planning. You need to identify exactly what you want to do in concrete terms and then the exact steps of how you plan to achieve these steps. Create milestones — small goals — for each resolution and rewards you will give to yourself when you reach each milestone.

Similar to last year, I will be taking on 12 monthly resolutions in 2012. Some of the resolutions are organizing and uncluttering related, but most are personal in nature, so I won’t be writing about them the way I did in 2011. I will check in with you over the course of the year, however, to see how you are doing with your resolutions and to provide tips for making and keeping your 2012 Resolution Action Plan. What resolutions do you have on your Plan for 2012? Good luck, and I wish you great resolution success in the coming year.

Posted by Erin on Dec 29, 2011 | 11 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutter stress from your holiday season

With Christmas just a few days away, Hanukkah already in full swing, and New Year’s Eve a little more than a week away, this time of year can be stressful for everyone. A simple trip to the grocery store to buy milk and bread can easily become an hour-long affair as you navigate your way through hordes of turkey buyers. Need a new shirt? The mob at the mall will easily make that trip an anxiety-filled adventure. In addition to all the shoppers, people’s fuses are short and folks are ready for an argument. So much for holiday cheer …

To help keep your stress at bay this time of year, I strongly recommend employing the following three strategies:

Keep perspective. If the present doesn’t arrive until after the holidays, the ornaments aren’t hung on the tree, or the gravy never makes it on the table — you will be okay. In fact, you’ll probably have a funny story to tell for years to come about the year you didn’t serve ham because it was frozen solid and Uncle Jerry broke his knife trying to cut it.
Adopt a mantra. I’m not really one for mantras (especially after watching Annie Hall: “I forgot my mantra!”), but this time of year I’m willing to give any stress-reduction method a try. I like to repeat, “What is really important?” It helps to keep me focused on what matters instead of what doesn’t. Whatever positive saying works for you, use it. Often.
Let it go. You are not a superhero. Perfection is unattainable. Buy a smoked turkey if you’re nervous about cooking the bird. Throw all your clutter into a closet and deal with it after the holidays when you’re more level-headed. Purchase a gift card instead of hunting for the exact gift you think you might discover at the last minute. A happy holiday celebrant is much more enjoyable to be around than someone who is miserable and curt with everyone around him.

Happy holidays from all of us at Unclutterer! We wish you and yours a stress-free and joyful season.

P.S. Check out our 2011 Unclutterer Holiday Gift Giving Guide for ideas if you still have shopping to do. There are many gifts on these lists you can get online and never have to set foot in a store.

Posted by Erin on Dec 22, 2011 | 25 Comments | Tweet This

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