- There are surprising ways of defining what clutter is.
Clutter is not necessarily disorganization. Things can be organized but cluttered. Clutter is about what’s stagnant and stuck. That’s a big a-ha for people. Everybody who reads my book SHED says, “I never even thought about it this way.” They found clutter in their lives they had never expected. - Clutter can be wasted time.
There’s such a a thing as time-clutter. Things on your schedule that are no longer relevant but you’re still doing them. Shed this time clutter.My old book [about not using email early in the day] was all about counter-intuitive ways to become more productive by rearranging the way you do things. Just not checking email for the first hour of the day made a big difference. It was not about organizing – it’s about releasing an attachment to something else. -
Clutter can be unproductive habits. Habit-clutter is another realm, taking up space with very low value – de-energizing activities, a habit that used to serve you but no longer does.Habit-clutter costs you 5 hours a day. If you lose a daily habit that is obsolete, that no longer works for you – perfectionism, procrastination, obsessive email checking or television watching – every client I ever talked to has told me that 30% of their day was stolen by this habit. It’s what you spend the time on and then beating yourself up, and then not energized to do anything else. If you shed that habit, you can regain 5 hours a day of quality, productive, meaningful time to pursue your next adventure. You need the time and the energy to take on change. Where is it going to come from? There are a lot of habits that were useful in your 20s 30s and 40s – you don’t need them anymore. - Your clutter really holds clues to who you are and what you love and where to go from here. There are treasures and info there. Don’t just think of it as junk. You will learn a lot about yourself as you go through that process.
- Go through your house and find 5 very stagnant areas. With each one, ask yourself, “If all this were gone what would I miss?” Instantly you will recognize the treasures. Heave everything that’s not on the list. The answers are in your stuff. One client had a utility closet outside her kitchen. In that closet she found all kinds of things, but 80% of it was not used. I asked what would she miss. A sewing machine that her grandmother had given her. Why? First, it came from her grandmother – but it was much more than that, it was the symbol of the creativity that she used to thrive on – the happiness she found in making clothes and creating things. That emerged. Everywhere we went, the treasures were the things that represented her creativity and her joy. She was able to reactivate. She’s lost 50 pounds, has started her own business. We didn’t know what she was going to do with that information. But she cleared out the clutter and it allowed her to pursue that creativity.
- Measure as you go.
It’s always fun to measure your progress since you’re really trying to create real space. I worked with one client who had 2 file drawers with 50 inches of files, and for years and years she could not go near those drawers. Every time she came near them she got down and took a nap. There were unfinished products, to-dos, information about her past. She couldn’t face it. We went folder by folder and asked, What is this? She wrote down “If all this were going, what would I miss?” She put a Post-It on each folder. Once we did that, then she went through with the list and in a matter of under 4 hours she went from 50 inches of files to 5. It’s remarkably easy to shed. - Don’t go one item at a time.
People are afraid that they don’t know how to choose what’s important and not without a process. Before you dive in, ask the question “What would I miss?” and write it down before you start shedding. My clients are amazed at how incredibly easy it is then to get rid of things. - In my book there’s a neat exercise called “Look in the Mirror.”
After you de-clutter there’s this big open space and the wall of panic sets in. You can look in your own space for clues as to who you are, but you can also look out to your circle of friends. I recommend looking out to a pretty diverse group of people who know you to email you 7 adjectives about what they see in you. It’s remarkable what patterns emerge- the patterns that other see in you that you yourself can’t see. - Know where you want to go.
I can’t design your system if you don’t know where you’re going. That’s organizing from the outside in – which just doesn’t work. I’ve always worked from the inside out. Then there were people who couldn’t sustain it – not because there was a flaw in the system but because they had an attachment to their old ways of doing things. - Shedding never really stops.
There’s always going to be something. Even when you’re in your new life, you’ll find new things. You never get to the complete bottom of the container where there’s not anything in your life that isn’t a little obsolete. Life keeps changing. If you get to at least one plateau, it energizes you.
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I can sure relate to these conversations. I got divorced when my kids were small and met friends through my kids daycare and we have kept in touch over the years. They are good friends but I don't get to see them as much as I'd like to. This past mon
Very beautiful. I meditate when I get home from work. I get up at 5:30 and just can't get motivated to get up any earlier. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I immediately go to prayer. It's comforting. Teresa
I have a serious clutter problem. I am a pack rat. I recently started dealing with this because I’m tired of it and realize that it represents my perfectionism and obsessive/compulsive behavior. Unfortunately, my life partner, who is younger than I am, is not at the clutter-ridding stage yet so he tends to see what I want to get rid of and hang on to it. I do seem to manage to get rid of about half of what I want to and it’s very freeing but I’m not sure how to deal with him so that we are both happier with our surroundings.
This post couldn’t have come into my life at a better time!!! Recently moved, again, and started taking a hard look at all that I have accumulated. Got rid – shed- some things and felt good about it….but I had no plan to it. I have been following a friend, whose recent separation has given her the inspiration to put her life “in 2 suitcases”. Simplfying her old life to start her new life. It’s difficult for me. I have been married 36 years, moved around a lot and still carry things my adult children left in my care! Still, her determination and now your post have inspired me. I’m journaling this and will keep you and my friend posted….THANK YOU!!!!
De-cluttering is going well….Have to say that it really gives you a sense of freedom you’ll love. Not only that, but I am now buying only when replacing something that broke (not something that I gave away!!!).
The 7 adjectives excercise has gone well too. I have received some very nice ones, some unexpected and others very interesting. It has shown me a side of me I didn’t know: how my friends see me. Thanks again!!!!
De-Cluttering is still going on…I have now a couple of friends doing this with me. One, Prati Durga, has organized a “purge” with her friends: downsizing your life, upgrading your living. She blogs about it and people from Mumbai to Miami to London to The Hague are taking part! It is so exciting…We were even interviewed by a newspaper in India and we are seriously considering writing a book about the experience.
My dad died several years ago. He had a 3-BR house with a full basement and it was almost literally impossible to walk through the place. That was a wakeup call for me but I still have more than my share of piles o’ stuff. I just really don’t want my kids to have to face a house full of junk some day and I’m trying to start a habit now of getting rid of stuff. Paper is my biggest nemesis. It arrives in the mail every day. Bank stuff and bill stuff and all those things that are “important” and “must be kept for x amount of time.” The problem comes when that time has passed and I still don’t get rid of it. Just getting started can be really hard for me. These are excellent ideas to help me!
I agree – Very timely! I have a goal to retire in 2 years and move from my 3 br house to shared housing with friends. Whenever I think about the daunting task to strip my house basement to attic, I am immediately exhausted and go do something else. Julia’s “5 stagnant areas” helps a ton – even though I quickly thought of seven areas. But hitting one area at a time, keeping “What would I miss?” in mind, is almost exciting! And meanwhile I would have 2 years of living in a de-cluttered space. I’m sure you all know the feeling when things yammer at you…”Yoo-hoo!! Over here! I need putting away/throwing away /SOMETHING!” Insistent, irritating subliminal voices that drain you. Ahhh, shutting them up always gives me renewed energy and happiness.
I am also intrigued with the “7 adjectives” idea. Going to ask my friends about this today, and be open to learning, understanding more about who I am.
Thanks for the good ideas!
This is a nice article!
I was forced kicking and screaming into “stuff reduction” when we lost our home to foreclosure after 9/11 double job layoffs and no one moving to our city. We had to move from our 3/2 with 2-car garage into a storage unit and a suburban! We gave a lot of things away, sold a lot of things and walked away from a lot of things. We currently live in a 900 sq ft 2/1 townhouse, and space is something of which we never have enough.
Some of them, I still miss! Some of them, I don’t miss. Some have been in storage so long we’ve replaced them. (That is my biggest irritation at the moment – the untamed storage issue.) After a year of fighting it, I had to admit that for the most part, I didn’t miss a lot of the schtuff in my life. I DO miss being able to walk to the garage and get something out of a box that I need, or having two bathrooms, etc etc. If it was just the two of us, this little place might work, but with four of us, it strains the boundaries of sanity.
Much like your article suggests, however, I had an epiphany this new year about how I really had wasted so much time dealing with things that I really never used, didn’t want, et continued to pack, move and pay storage for. I believe that could be a sub-definition of insanity! Ha! We’ve made it a goal to get all those mystery boxes (packed in haste shortly after I’d been in the hospital – I can’t tell you what is in most of them at the moment – I can only hazard a guess at what I intended to pack!) organized.
For those who do use storage units for whatever reason, we can across a plan that is actually working!
We bought boxes from UHaul (also Ace Hardware carries most of those too.) We chose a size we could handle. You buy them in bundles, and UHaul buys back what you do not use – nice deal. All of those mis-matched, broken-down junky boxes from the grocery store, Wal Mart etc etc that have survived three moves (or maybe didn’t survive quite so well) are being inventoried. The reason is they are so much easier to move, to stack and to deal with in general. Hubby doesn’t need a degree in spatial management to fill the storage unit with all the odd sized boxes, and things aren’t falling over. It is nice!
Sure, we don’t have a house at the moment, but I hope to have one again some day. We are going through them one box at a time, repacking the things we actually still want, carefully labeling the boxes (I have my own system, but whatever works for you), and making a master list of the contents so we can refer to it. (I can see it now – “Honey, will you go get the green tablecloth out of box K82?” LOL! But it does work!) Some things didn’t survive the moving company and were broken. They were discarded. We’ve condensed things quite a bit, gotten rid of a lot of odd boxes.
The only flaw in my system is my ever-changing energy levels. Being partially disabled now, I don’t always have the drive to go over to storage and work! (Note to those wanting to tackle something similar – work at the storage unit. If the boxes have been there a while, there are 8-legged beasties in the boxes sometimes. I had Hubby bringing boxes home for me to work on, until the discovery of long black legs coming out of an area my hand had just been in. After the screaming stopped, I quickly revised my decision of working on them at home.
There is great freedom in not having so darned many possessions for possession’s sake.
I do miss some things – for example, I want the end table back that we left in Texas! But overall,
lightening the load is mentally cleansing as well. After all, most of us have houses that were started with donations from both families’ discards! The other big hurdle is that my hubby grew upon a farm. They saved EVERYTHING so it could be used again somewhere. He loves to putter and make new junk out of old junk. He used to drive through the neighborhood on trash nights to see what “good stuff” people were throwing away! LOL! Sometimes, he’d bring home a treasure, but usually just more schtuff.
Right now, I find myself tuning out the clutter in this crowded abode by focusing on the computer screen. I can ignore a lot of things that way! LOL!
Now, if only I could find someone to hold a garage sale for us. I hate having them, watching folks try to bargain that 25-cent item down to 10 cents! Argh! But, we could use the cash for a moving fund. (We want to move to another state next year for my daughter’s college.)
Anyway, I’m very windy, but it all adds up to agreement. There is mental freedom in de-cluttering and de-junking. It is worth the time it takes to do it!
I am having trouble emailing this to myself…it so speaks to me right now and I wanted a copy
Had to stop reading to say Whoa! You hit it on the head with this one, right at the “unproductive habits” line.
I call you “Clutter Whisperer.”
I’m hanging onto this list! I admit to having an advantage - I’ve moved about 30 times in my adult life, so I got rid of “stuff” each time. Since I’m a natural pack rat (thanks, Dad!) it’s a darned good thing I moved so often. In my last move, I got rid of a lot more stuff, but still have too much. Some days I look around and get an urge to just toss piles of stuff into the garbage. Maybe this will help me finally decide what should go and what should stay. Thanks! ♥
I’m a preschool teacher so everything I see it a future child’s project. I also come from a family of pack rats. My mom and dad keep all kinds of junk they will use later. My mom’s older sister,who worked at a 5 and 10 years ago, has a collection of yarn,yardage bolts,sewing stuff. She has had this stuff for years now she has called my mom and said she is having to clear this stuff out and told my mom to come get what she wants. My mom sews,crochets,needlepoints so she is/will go get this stuff.
As a teacher I am always “collecting” stuff for projects.
But I am getting rid of a lot of junk,thanks to hubby. And I am not sad about it. I feel releived and free.