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Here are 13 rules or guidelines to control your clutter, and ultimately, your life:
- When in doubt, throw it out. Nothing can have a more liberating effect on your life. And of course, when we say “throw it out” we are including giving it away, selling it or recycling it. Confront popular excuses for keeping things forever: If you have a desk drawer with several dozen pens, but have one or two favorites, toss the rest of them. Old glasses with old prescriptions, ditto. Give your grown kids' things back to them. Don’t say it’s too nice—that’s the oldest excuse in the book. If it’s so nice why aren’t you using it? If it’s broken, fix it or toss it. And don’t save things just because you don’t know what they are!
- Use it or lose it. Sensible - it you don’t use it why keep it? This does not allow you to plan on using it tomorrow. Remember, “Tomorrow never comes.” For example, if you haven’t put up strawberry preserves since 1985, you can safely give away your mason jars and lids. Rule Two is also a solution to another household problem. When you reduce clutter you make housecleaning that much easier.
- Efficiency counts, so store things accordingly. This also means that things you use most often are stored in “hot” places. Hot items differ but probably include things like keys, measuring spoons, the good scissors, the corkscrew, etc. Don’t put seldom used things in hot spaces - which of course are places easily reachable, ones such as top drawers and eye-level cupboard shelves. Store similar things together - such as all the different sizes and shapes of flower vases you own. When you need one, you only need to look in one place. This gives you a fighting chance of finding what you’re looking for since it’s where it belongs. That can be a surprisingly gratifying experience.
- Handle some things once. This rule is because of the excuse, “for now.” For example, “I’ll put this jacket here, for now.” Or “I’ll put these papers here, for now.” “For now” should not be part of the vocabulary of a known clutterer. Once you say “for now” you’re admitting that you will handle whatever it is more than once. This seemingly innocuous decision increases clutter and at least doubles your workload. My own mother had a particularly bad case. She had a repair drawer where we were instructed to put clothes to be mended. Problem was, once they were in that drawer, they never, ever emerged from it.
- Recycle it. Not just paper, aluminum, glass and plastic. Some people have a difficult time tossing glass pickle bottles or plastic Cool Whip containers with their irresistible resealing lids. Pretty soon they take up an entire cabinet. Don’t forget clothes, old sweaters and shoes. What about books that overflow the capacity of your book shelves? The same goes for unused linen, baby clothes, diapers, ties, belts, purses, wallets, plastic plants, or bikes. In fact, almost any inanimate object in your house is a candidate for reuse by someone else.
- Pick a number and stick with it. If you intend to save boxes for packaging future gifts, pick a number. If you’re convinced you must save a box of each of the different potential sizes of gifts, you really ought to call a spade a spade and just open a store. It has to be a sensible number, and don’t exceed it. If you come across another irresistible box, then toss one when you add the new one to your collection. Purses can be a good example. It you now have 30 of them and your sensible number is seven, that means the other purses are now clutter. Rank your top seven purses, give the others to charity, and don’t buy another one until you’re willing to let one go.
- Use a file cabinet. Even if you don’t have a desk, get a file cabinet. You can always use the dining table as a desk. Make sure your file cabinet (two drawers is often enough) has the hardware so you have hanging files in the cabinet drawers. Hanging files can have easily viewed labels. Besides being perfect for such obvious choices as bills, important papers and correspondence, the file cabinet is just right for warranty cards, product information, instruction booklets, stationery, photos, stamps, your kids important schoolwork, report cards, spare batteries, diskettes, pens, pencils, tax returns, receipts, invoices and telephone books. Other non-traditional items can be stored in files to your advantage.
- Do something. This isn’t as flip as it sounds. We encourage you to proceed to action to solve or fix something that’s bothering you. Most of us have some idea of what needs to be done, but we may not know exactly what to do, or exactly where to start, or what to toss and what to save, or what we need to buy in the way of shelves or storage baskets. So we mull it over and are stuck by our own indecision and inertia. Embrace your imperfections. No matter what you decide to do, you will feel better. Besides, it’s quite unlikely your efforts will make things worse!
- A place for every thing and everything in its place. Obviously our parents thought of this rule before we did, but a lot of clutter is just stuff that belongs someplace else. Kids clothes, newspapers piled in a corner and paper stacked on a desk are examples. The flip side of this rule means that if everything is in its place, you can find an item precisely when you want it. That event in and of itself can sometimes make your day.
- Items displayed in the house have to pass a test. This seems only fair. After all, you have only so much space and the items in that space should justify themselves. It’s not a complicated test. The reason can involve function or form. For example, an antique clock may no longer work, but it may pass the test because it’s beautiful, but not because someone put it there “for now” five years ago and it’s never been moved since, or because someone gave it to you who might notice if it’s gone, or because you don’t know where else to put it. Walk through your house mentally testing things. Ask: Why am I keeping this? What is it doing there? If it has a function, does it work? Am I sick and tired of dusting or cleaning it? Do I have others like it stored elsewhere. For the form side, ask if you enjoy seeing it as you enter the room. How does this item really look sitting there for the entire world to see or use? Use your critical eye.
- Don’t do things “later.” Do things right away. See the partial list below to get you started.
- Label things. This is beyond labeling the kids' gym shorts. How often have you gone to a closet to retrieve something from a box. Now there are six boxes and they look pretty much the same. You select one box and after searching fruitlessly for your item, you halfway reseal the box with the old tape and try the next box. You do eventually find whatever it was—it’s just 45 min. and six boxes later.
Label all storage boxes. Try hard to avoid the label “Miscellaneous.” Other choices that may come back to haunt you are “Garage Sale” or “Charity.” Use a label that’s just complete enough so you can tell what’s in the box without actually opening it. And label everything going into the freezer! It all looks the same in a week or so. Labeling cupboards can help you keep them organized and can be helpful with small kids, although you may need to use pictures instead. - Call in a professional. There are so many clutterers that there is now a group of noble people who make their living solving other people’s clutter and organizational problems. Look in the Yellow Pages under “Organizing.” There’s a catch to this rule, however: We insist that you use it only if you promise to follow all the other rules once the professional has come and gone. Otherwise, he or she will leave, and the clutter will return almost immediately unless you modify your behavior. Implementing this rule does not reduce the number of rules to just this one, in other words.
13 Ideas to Control Household Clutter: Created on June 22nd, 2009. Last Modified on January 21st, 2014
