Neatness Vs. Order

Neatness and order are not the same.   It is possible to have neatness without order, and order without neatness, but the consequences are different.

Neatness without order

If you have neatness without order, your house will look gorgeous inside and you’ll have lots of bins and drawers and places to put things, but you will still feel like your life is in shambles and like you can’t get a handle on everything.  (Duplicates everywhere. Things getting lost.)

Neatness without order is often what one achieves when you have to clean up the guest room for people coming to visit but you don’t have time to organize it all so you just stash things in boxes and hide them away.

Neatness without order is also what advertisements are selling when you see a picture marketing the newest desk or closet system or garage-rack-hanging-from-the-ceiling.  It’s visually appealing. It makes you think if you only had that thing, then you could be organized and live a less-cluttered life.

What it doesn’t show you is the mental systems that are in place to create order and which maintain order over time. It doesn’t show you the work that people do to keep things looking neat and organized over months and years. (Yes, it is a little bit of work. It’s just spread out and made habitual over time of practice.)

Order without neatness

Order without neatness is not particularly visual appealing, but it works. The consequences of order without neatness is that a person’s life flows pretty well, they are on top of things…but they may have a feeling every so often that they want to escape the complexities of life. Or they might stare longingly at home decorating magazine spreads of minimalistic interiors. Systems are in place to handle things, but they aren’t very pretty.

Sometimes people think that order-without-neatness is not really organized because it doesn’t look nice.  I disagree. The purpose of organization is to help us deal successfully with life and live happily, while not missing appointments or losing things, or neglecting important responsibilities.  If you can do that with your systems, you are living successfully.  The marketers selling the spiffy organization aids don’t want you to think so, but you are.  You don’t have to listen to them.

If you want to try to create more visual appeal for your systems, you can.  If you have order without neatness, odds are you have enough wisdom to see beneath the surface of any object designed to organize and tell whether it is really going to help you or whether it will actually become a hinderance.  (Yeah, hindrances exist, I’m sure you can think of at least a few examples.)

Happy medium

I have a certain amount of order-without-neatness. I have personally noticed that if I try to add too much neatness, I actually create more of a burden for myself.  (Or this could be ADD tendencies...) Specialized containers for odd-shaped things can break and then are hard to replace.  If something breaks from a matching set of containers, it is almost impossible to find a replacement for that either.  If I let categorization can get too granular it can be too unwieldy to maintain.  Bags in boxes in containers in crates make things hard to get to for often-used things, but they are okay for things rarely accessed.

I think the key is to prioritize functionality over style. It is best to find a happy medium. Your home may not look like a Better Homes and Gardens organization issue feature, but it will be attractive and really functional.

Do you really need to seasonally change your décor?

One of the ways that our consumer culture tries to get us to buy more is to attempt to convince us in trendy magazine articles that we must redecorate every time the season changes.  The rationale is that the change gives the house a fresh look.

As a professional organizer, I take exception to this because it multiplies clutter.

• If you are into the seasonal décor thing, that means each season you have 3X more out-of-season décor you have to store someplace! 
• If you feel the need to change your décor every three months, that’s an indication that your décor isn’t meaningful enough or doesn’t have enough of a visual impact for you to want to display it all the time.

I recently saw an article that suggested changing out sofa throw pillows, flowers, table center pieces, wreaths, books, family pictures, and chalkboard quotes.  Here’s my response:

Change out sofa throw pillows—To speak frankly, your couch must be boring if you have to buy throw pillows to make it interesting.  A couch is such a big part of the room and stays there for so long that it really is worth shopping around (or ordering something custom) in order to find a couch that will remain visually fresh to you all the time.   (And if you’re wondering, yes, I did take my own advice on this.  My couch is hyper-actively rainbow-colored.)

Flowers—I’m not complaining here if you use fresh flowers.  But if you rotate through arrangements of fake flowers, it is possible the flowers arrangements aren’t giving you all the visual impact that you need. 

Change out wreaths—Once upon a time, people used to make their own wreaths out of plants they gathered themselves.  Once the wreath decayed, it went into the trash or the compost heap, so there was nothing to clutter storage spaces.   Multiple fake wreaths are just more to store.

Chalkboard quotes—If you do this, don’t do it just because it is the fashion.  Do it because the changing quotes help you stay inspired.  Chalkboards are messy and not inherently attractive.

Change out the books on display—I’m sorry, but rotating books on display just because of the different covers seems so shallow to me.  Books are an ingenious device for transmitting one person’s ideas across time and space to another person, a repository of thought and knowledge.  Aren’t you interested in reading them? 

Changing out family pictures from frames—If you’re changing out the large family pictures, you probably have too many pictures.  If you’re changing out the small pictures, your pictures probably aren’t nice enough to stay up all the time.  If your small pictures are nice enough to stay out all the time, you probably should blow them up larger (but not too large) and frame them so they will have more visual impact. (8” x 10” is just right.) (I'll say more about family pictures soon.)

Changing out table centerpieces—If you’re changing out centerpieces, your centerpiece collection is taking up valuable storage space. 

DO NOT BUY INTO THE ADVICE TO ROTATE YOUR DÉCOR!   It is just a ploy to get you to buy more and it will just fill up your storage with low priority stuff you don’t really need.

Instead, acquire pieces with maximum impact that you will enjoy looking at for years and years.  

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

De-cluttering with Jesus’ parable of the talents

14 ¶For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

 15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

 16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

 17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

 18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.

 19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

 20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

 21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

 22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

 23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

 24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

 25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

 26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

 27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

 28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

 29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

 30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  (Matthew 25:14-30)

This parable from Jesus gives us some really good information and principles about stewardship and the whys and hows and what ifs.  Some may say that it should only be applied to spiritual matters and not the concerns over everyday life.  However, it can really help us de-clutter. 

I like this parable because it teaches me that I am a steward of what I’ve been given and God is the master to whom I will have to report when my life is done.  I see contrasted in this parable the kind of reward different kinds of stewards get depending on how well they’ve done with their stewardship.  I see that stewards who increased their stewardship are rewarded, while those who neglected their stewardship and hid it had their stewardship taken away and given to someone who could use it better.  I like this parable because it gives me strong motivation to do my best.  

The question we might ask ourselves is how this lesson about the importance of increasing our stewardship might apply to us if we are trying to learn to how to de-clutter and get organized. 

First, we can look at it from a perspective of us as the master and the servants as symbolizing the things we own.  It gives us a pretty good strategy to use when we are trying to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.  What if we were to have a conversation with our big pile of Tupperware this way (assuming Tupperware could talk):

You:  So, Tupperware bowl, how have you served me?

Tupperware bowl: Master, I have held 25 meals in the last year.  I haven’t leaked once.

You:  Great.  You stay on.  I may get more of you sometime.  And you, long-narrow-tall piece of Tupperware, how have you served me?  What have you done?

Long-narrow-tall Tupperware: Master, I have been buried in the back of the cupboard for the last year and have not been used once.  I don’t even know where my lid is.

You: (gasping) How is this possible!  (yelling) Begone!  Out of my sight!  To the donation box with you!

Or what if we were to go to our closet and examine our shoes as if they were servants?  Which shoes would we say “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” to and which ones would we cast into outer darkness for having been buried and unused the entire time?  Anything meant to be used that hasn’t been used is fair game for this technique:

Books we haven’t read

Movies we haven’t watched

Music we haven’t listened to

Video games we haven’t played

Clothes and shoes we haven’t worn

Toiletries and makeup we have tried and haven’t liked

Jewelry we haven’t worn

Towels, bedding, and other linens that we haven’t used

Food we haven’t eaten (pantry and refrigerator)

Kitchen appliances and tools we haven’t used or prepared food with

Dishes we haven’t eaten on

Computer parts we haven’t used

Electronics we haven’t used

Decorations we haven’t put up or placed on display

Exercise equipment we haven’t used

Sports equipment we haven’t played with

Office supplies we haven’t used

Another way we can look at it is if we think of ourselves as the master and our talents and skills as the servants.  Which of our skills seem to be developing the most?  Which of our skills seems to be producing the most?  Are there any talents that we claim that seem to be buried and ignored all the time?   

This perspective is helpful because our skills usually require equipment in order for us to use them, so when a skill is buried and ignored, then that means the tools that go with it are not being used as well.  This isn’t saying that we should condemn our unproductive skills; rather, a realistic assessment will help us remove from our lives the things that aren’t serving us.  We don’t have time to do everything in this life, so it is best to focus on the talents that will really make us productive.

 Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

Strategies to see through the marketing in magazines

Magazine marketers love to show their products in the most favorable and attractive context.  They know that consumers aren’t just buying a product, they are trying to buy a “vision” of what they want their lives to be.     Just remember, every vision is made up of individual elements, and if you were to consider the individual pieces alone, you might not care so much about certain parts, and appreciate other parts more. 

When you see a beautiful picture and you want that for yourself, try using your imagination to eliminate elements from the picture in order to discover what about it excites you.  Imagine the walls a different color.  Imagine the piece of furniture without anything on it.  Imagine how your stuff would look there.   Doing this exercise helps you narrow down what exactly you like about the picture.  Incorporate only what excites you and nothing else. 

I was looking at the Container Store’s website and happened to look at their desks.  Their desks were very appealing.  They showed them with magazine storage boxes, little sculptures, a pretty wall color behind them, a laptop open on the working surface, and little flat file boxes in coordinated colors arranged on the shelves above.   I found these pictures so attractive, that I knew it was important to me to figure out what exactly I liked about them because if I was to go ahead and buy any of those desks, if I was buying the vision and not the product, I would be disappointed if I didn’t end up with a setup that looked just like those pictures.  So I used my imagination and pretended that everything on the desks were gone. 

Guess what? Looking at those totally bare desks, I could see they were completely boring!  If I had only bought a desk, I would be disappointed that it didn’t look like the pictures when I got it put together.   If looking at the empty desk was boring, then that meant that I found the stuff on the desk the attractive thing.  But this I found to be completely silly.  After all, it wasn’t my stuff arranged or organized according to my needs, so if I bought that stuff for myself and merged it what I already had, it wouldn’t look anything like that picture at all.  (And I could tell that based on the way I organize stuff, the color-coordinated flat file boxes would be completely useless!) 

I looked at some decorating blogs because I was trying to figure out how to decorate my fireplace mantel.  I saw this one picture that had a really artistic-looking fireplace—it had candles, some plants and topiaries, some pictures, some little knickknacks on pedestals.. I thought, “Now that is cute.”  But then when I started looking at each individual thing, I discovered that not a single one of those things would have been something I would have picked up excitedly in a store and bought.  Not one single thing was cool enough in and of itself to justify my buying it; it was only the artistic arrangement of all the elements that was attractive.   But that’s not the way to buy stuff!  You don’t buy stuff all at once because you have a vision of exactly how you’re going to arrange it (at least I’m not that skilled.  Usually you buy things one thing at a time because each little thing appeals to you somehow.  I still don’t have a decorated mantel, but I expect someday

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

8 Perils of home decorating magazines

I like looking at home decorating magazines as much as anyone, but over time I've noticed that they can be dangerous.  Not dangerous in the sense of bodily harm, but dangerous in the sense of insidious materialism.. 

1 The most important thing to remember--decorating magazines deal in fantasy and they exist to market products for their advertisers.  (Remember, they have to make a living like everybody else, so they have to keep finding things to publish.)  Much of what they sell is cute but is also clutter, and each month they will show you something different.  They may keep you in a perpetual state of discontent with your own home. If your goal is to be happy, then you want to avoid anything that makes you discontented with what you have.

2 They show pretty pictures of STUFF that people can’t afford to buy, nor have time and energy to make or assemble themselves, nor have a need for.

Example #1 – I’ll never forget a picture I saw in Better Homes and Gardens of a series of shelves (big shelves too) entirely devoted to just ribbon.  Very pretty, but who are the people who regularly use shelves and shelves of ribbon?  Not me! 

Example #2  – I also remember a picture of a gift-wrapping corner, complete with desk and ribbon and paper and gift bags and tissue paper and scissors and tape.  But who wraps gifts so often that they need an entire corner devoted to it?  There’s Christmas, birthdays, and the occasional wedding and graduation gifts.  Unless your business is wrapping other peoples’ gifts, there’s no need for a gift-wrapping corner!

3 These magazines are so hypnotizing that frequently women feel like they have to keep them around in case they might need to do a craft in them.  Need?  For when?  If the need hasn’t appeared yet, it is not very likely to appear in the future!   Not only that, but if the need suddenly appeared, it is almost certain that particular magazine would not be found except by a long, arduous search through every single magazine.  Which issue was it in?  (scratching head) What page?  (At the very least, tear out the ads so that you don’t take all your time paging past them!)  Did you know that these magazines repeat content every few months?  You really don’t need to save that magazine.

4 I’ve also noticed in those decorating pictures there is a tendency to overdo it with the knickknacks and the coffee table books.  Try covering up those piles of books or those clusters of knickknacks with your finger and then see what the room looks like.  Does it seem “blah”?  Then the room is only “fake” pretty and not “real life” pretty.  “Real life” pretty is when the things you use all the time contribute beauty.   I recently looked at some pictures of decorated fireplace mantels and I noticed that although the general arrangement of objects on or around the mantel was artistic, when I looked at each individual object, I would never have found it interesting enough to buy for its own sake. 

5 Advertising in magazines (and catalogues) are cunning about showing what I call “add-ons” in the product pictures.  You know what I mean if you’ve ever seen a picture that is supposed to be selling a bookshelf and you get excited about the rug in the picture instead.  You pretty much have to mentally block out all the other stuff in the picture except for the product for sale in order to get an accurate idea of what you would actually buy.  Have you ever seen the wall-desks sold on the Container Store’s website?  If you believe in their pictures, you are buying into this vision that includes color-coordinated boxes for paper, little artsy knick-knacks, a wall painted and patterned in that hip lime green or robin’s egg blue, and a Macbook laptop.  To keep from getting sucked up in that, you have to imagine the object stripped of its add-ons and consider whether it is still interesting by itself.

6 If a real family lives in those houses, you know that the photographed rooms were most likely staged (i.e. the “real life stuff” was moved somewhere else so that it didn’t clutter up the picture).  And afterwards, if the kids were home, things probably got messy again in about 5 minutes.  Where do the cell phones charge?  Where is the homework done?  Where are the art supplies for kids coloring?  Where are the backpacks and coats?  Where are the library books, the musical instruments, the piano music, mom’s purse and dad’s wallet?  Where is the dog’s water and food dish or the pet grooming supplies?  Where are the remote controls, the videos, the video game equipment?  Where are the tissues for blowing your nose?  Decorating magazines do not take into account real life.

7 At some point the decorating magazines started advocating changing décor on a seasonal basis, creating this expectation that we have to have our homes decorated in perfect correspondence to every season or holiday.  Say what?  This creates a burden in one of two ways—either your storage space gets wasted by all the decorations for the seasons, or your money gets wasted buying decorations every season and getting rid of them afterwards.  And furthermore, getting out and putting away all those decorations throughout the year takes time that could be spent on better things.  Whatever happened to just decorating for Christmas? 

8 Decorating magazines always talk about “makeovers,” which are essentially spending lots of money to completely redo everything in a particular room (or house).  What is more practical is “evolution,” which consists of thoughtful purchases made over a period of years in such a way as to create the desired look.  This is the financially sound way to do it, and it allows you to cultivate patience.  Also, the pleasant anticipation of achieving the vision is drawn out over a much longer period.

So next time you look at a decorating magazine, if you must look, look with a critical eye for the reality behind the marketing.  Seeing the reality can help you be content with what you have.  If you are content with what you have, you won’t feel the need to buy more.  You might even find you can purge from your space the décor that means less to you.  Don’t let it stay a minute longer if you don’t absolutely love it.  Decorating magazines can inspire you through their pictures to work toward an uncluttered home, but you just have remember that they don't show the reality of where to store the little things you use in real life.

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services!

Organizing help for writers

On my other blog "Lightning Spice Writing," I posted about how writers can deal with all the papers and hard copies of things they have written throughout their life.  


Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services!

Helping children de-clutter

In Rita Emmett’s excellent book The Clutter-Busting Handbook: Clean It Up, Clear It Out, and Keep Your Life Clutter-Free, she has a great story about how one parent helped her children learn to de-clutter, which I would like to quote and analyze.

Sandra wanted to get her kids on board in clearing their house of clutter.  “I wanted to reduce the clutter in our home, and I knew if the children were not on my side, it would never happen,” she explained.  “Many times before, I tried to ‘raise the bar’ in keeping our home neat, but those kids just limboed right under it.”

So she decided to start by clearing a spare room in the basement, and she asked each of her four children, one at a time, to give her a hand.  Typically, the teenager, Randi, decided to “give her a hand” by applauding, and the others just laughed and made jokes.  Finally, after much joking, begging, and groveling, Sandra persuaded her eight-year-old daughter, Shayna, to take pity on her, and together they sorted and tossed.  They both thought the project would take months and were surprised to be finished after three cleaning sessions.

Sandra was delighted, and to celebrate she took her daughter out to lunch and a shopping spree.  When Shayna showed her siblings her new swimsuit, suddenly they all became interested in helping their mother.

Randi was recruited to help clear Sandra’s closet because she is the oldest of the four and knows the most about clothes and what looks good on Mom.  Sandra made it clear that this wasn’t a job or a punishment; anytime the kids helped, they could simply sit with a soda and just cheer her on.  She explained that she needed a lot of encouragement to get rid of the things that she had no use for and never used, but which she found hard to part with.

After she finished her own clutter-busing, Sandra planned on asking her children if they wanted her help with their clutter, but she wanted to wait at least two weeks.  Otherwise, she feared she’d seem manipulative.  But she was surprised that within days, Randi asked Sandra to go through her closet with her.  They played music (with Randi introducing her mom to her’s), chatted, bickered over decisions, and because Sandra’s attitude was loosy-goosey instead of high pressure, they had a good time.  Again, when the project was completed, Sandra had a celebration with her daughter and a bit of a shopping spree.

When Sandra asked, “Who’s next?” the others just went along with the clutter-busting.  Two of the girls helped each other.  After everyone felt they had de-cluttered their bedrooms and closets as much as possible, the whole family had a garage sale, ending with a pizza party and watching a favorite DVD.

When you have the kids help you with your clutter, make a big deal about saying good-bye to some of your old favorites.  Pretend to cry when throwing out your junky, smelly sneakers or slippers.  Blow kisses, act as if you’re leaving a dear friend.  Let the drama flow.  This helps them understand that even though it’s not easy to say good-bye to old things, it’s still necessary.  Your acting job might open them up to getting rid of their own clutter.

Sandra used that tactic, and even now, years later, her kids will make a big deal out of bidding a fond farewell when they decide to get rid of some of their excess stuff.  The good news is that even though the house still occasionally sinks into a clutter mode, it is never as bad as it once was.”  (p145-147)

A number of important principles can be found at work in this story. 

First, comes the principle, “The parent leads by example.”  Sandra led by focusing her initial efforts on improving her own organization.  This showed her children what it was like to clean, organize, and de-clutter.  They had nothing to lose from helping their mother; their possessions weren’t on the line.  She put them in a supporting role where they could both learn and encourage from a position of safety.  After learning from her, they could begin to do it for themselves and even help each other.

Second comes the principle, “Reward your children for good behavior.”  Sandra rewarded her daughter Shayna for the support she had given by taking her on a little shopping spree.  I bet the reward was especially effective if Shayna didn’t know it was coming.  Also, the reward given to one of her children quickly taught her other children there were benefits to helping their mother de-clutter.  Once they saw a reward was to be had, they learned to do it too.

Third comes the principle, “Explain what you need help with.”  Sandra explained to her kids what she needed help with and why.  This helped them learn what belongs to the duties of a supportive role in organizing.  She taught them about giving encouragement and she taught them about the difficulties that she faced in trying to make de-cluttering decisions.  (It is likely she also verbalized her reasoning about the things she went through so that they could learn from her about what criteria to use to judge whether something should be kept or not.)

Fourth comes the principle, “Express emotions about objects you are letting go of.”  Sandra used this tactic as she let go of old favorites.  It helped her children understand that they could choose to let go of things they were emotionally attached to, even though it might be very difficult.  It showed them they could express their feelings about their attachment and that even playfully exaggerating the drama of the moment while still making the right choice could make it easier to bear.  The effect of this principle is that the playful exaggerations become a fun family tradition that is appreciated more than the stuff that is discarded.  This keeps emotional attachment on people more than things, and builds strong pleasant memories.

After that comes the principle, “Respect the choice of your children.”  Sandra helped her teenaged daughter de-clutter her closet when her daughter asked for her help.  (Sandra’s previous example and opening herself up to her daughter in previous organizing sessions made this possible.)  Even though she could have switched into commanding parent mode, Sandra stayed true to the supporting role and kept her attitude “loosey-goosey” instead of high pressure.  I suppose that Sandra probably asked her daughter different evaluating questions about her stuff if it seemed like her daughter wasn’t considering all the angles that would help her de-junk, yet, at the same time, she allowed her daughter to make her own decisions and didn’t force her.

When you want your children to de-clutter, you need to realize that they don’t know how until you teach them.  They learn best by example, and they need to see into the reasoning process when their stuff is not what is being examined.  They need to see it is possible to make difficult decisions, and they need to be rewarded.  (And so do you for teaching them, so reward yourself too!)

 


Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services!

An example of de-cluttering from Rita Emmett's book The Clutter-Busting Handbook

Right now I’m reading Rita Emmett’s book The Clutter-Busting Handbook: Clean It Up, Clear It Out, and Keep Your Life Clutter-Free. So far one of its strengths is that it is pretty comprehensive in its reasons for getting rid of things. It also has excellent example stories of people who learned to make difficult decisions and how they progressed in their clutter-busting efforts. I’d like to quote one of them and discuss it.

“In getting started with tossing out clutter, the first time is the hardest. Although de-cluttering eventually will leave you feeling lighter, happier, and freer, parting with some items may cause anxiety. Sometimes you need to discard just a few items at first—as sort of a test to see if your world falls apart when that stuff is gone. Then, when it’s been gone awhile and you feel okay to go on, get rid of more things.

“Linda’s challenge was to de-clutter her many jewelry boxes. (She owned only a few pieces of “real” jewelry; everything else was inexpensive costume baubles.) For more than three decades, she had kept the home she shared with her husband fairly clutter-free but had never disposed of even one piece of jewelry. She often bought earring-necklace-bracelet sets to go with a specific outfit, and kept the jewelry long after the clothes were gone. If she lost one earring and had no use for the remaining one, she still kept it. If she broke a necklace that could not be fixed, she kept it. If a bracelet was too snug and uncomfortable to wear, she kept it.

"Every year, for her birthday and holidays, Linda asked for the same gift: a jewelry box. She described her bedroom as “Jewelry Boxes R Us.” Every surface held an assortment of jewelry boxes. When people commented on her collection, she explained that she collected not boxes but jewelry. She just loved buying jewelry. Yet she had so much jewelry—stored in so many boxes—that she couldn’t keep track of what she owned. When she searched for a specific item, she could never find it, so she’d buy another.

"Linda’s clutter-busting strategy was to go through one or two boxes every evening when she was listening to music. All she was able to throw out at first were broken fragments, a few pieces she never liked, and two jewelry boxes that she didn’t need or like any more. That was not much, but it was the best she could do.

"As months went by, she found it easier to locate some of her cherished pieces and was delighted to be reacquainted with a few favorites from the past that she’d forgotten about. So she decided to go through all the jewelry again and get rid of some earring-necklace-bracelet sets that she knew she’d never wear again. It was clear that she could not throw these “old friends” away; after asking around, she learned that one of her coworkers belonged to a church ministry helping welfare recipients land jobs. Clothes and accessories were especially needed. Once Linda knew that her jewelry would be appreciated and used, she found it easy to donate two or three sets at a time through her colleague at work.

"When a neighbor invited Linda to join in a garage sale, she put out lots more jewelry and jewelry boxes. Linda made a few bucks and moved out about half her jewelry. She plans to dispose of more pieces in the future.

"Now that she finds it easier to say good-bye to her gems, she laughs remembering what a struggle she had with her first clutter-busting sessions” (p77-80)

I really like this story because it illustrates a number of truths about de-cluttering.

1) De-cluttering is a process, not necessarily an event, and it can be worked into your daily routine. The more you work it into your daily routine, the more practice you get at it, and the better you will get at it. The better you get at it, the more fun it will be and the more likely you will be to never get into the same terrible predicament again. Linda worked at going through a jewelry box each day. This kept her from getting intimidated, fatigued, or frustrated. It gave her practice making good decisions. It helped her learn that de-cluttering isn’t a mood that you have to wait for; it is a mindset and a set of skills you can practice and perfect.

2) When you start de-cluttering, no matter how overwhelming the task, you start by weeding out the broken, torn, incomplete, and unused items. Linda started by getting rid of broken pieces of jewelry—the single earrings, the broken necklaces, and the items that she had never liked or needed. Starting builds confidence, and it also makes progress.

3) As you weed out the broken, incomplete, and unused, you also get a memory-refresher of what you have. Often, people rediscovering what they have will say, “Oh! I can use this!” “Oh, I was looking for this!” “Oh, I found my favorite__________!”

4) Rediscovering starts a subconscious timer clock in your head, and later (weeks or months), you will eventually recognize, when you are honest with yourself, some things you rediscovered probably still won’t get used even though you now know they exist. The minute you realize this, get rid of it so that you don’t have to think about it any more. This was what happened when Linda decided to go through her jewelry a second time a few months later. She could get to what she wanted, so she was starting to see a pattern to her usage enough that she could start to discern what she wasn’t using. It became easier to part with what she didn’t need because she finally knew by experience that she didn’t need or use it. (This starts a second round of the de-cluttering process.)

5) Even though Linda’s story does not go into detail about how she went about her third round of de-cluttering when she picked out half her jewelry to get rid of at a garage sale, I bet I can extrapolate what happened. I bet that that she started to be more picky about her criteria for keeping something because her ability to get to exactly the jewelry pieces she wanted had increased so much from the first two rounds of de-cluttering. After you gain the ability to let go of what you obviously don’t need, you gain the ability to discern what it is less obvious you don’t need. (Even if it is less obvious that you don’t need it, you still don’t need it, so it is still clutter that needs to be discarded.)

6) In the final stages, de-cluttering becomes more akin to editing and paring down. It is also the point at which others may begin to question your choices (since your reasons will be less obvious to them), but it will also be the point at which you’ll be able to decide with more confidence because of your previous experience. (I think Linda was probably at this stage of confidence when she began to laugh at herself for her previous struggle to let go.)

If you are de-cluttering your jewelry, here are some questions you may want to ask yourself at different stages.

First round of de-cluttering

• Is this broken? (If yes, toss.)
• Is this part of a set that is incomplete? (If yes, toss.)
• Is this something I haven’t ever worn? (If yes, toss.)

Second round of de-cluttering (after several weeks have gone by since the first round of de-cluttering)

• Have I used this since I’ve rediscovered it? (If no, donate to charity)
• Does this go with anything I usually wear? (If no, donate. If it doesn’t go with anything, you obviously won’t have occasion to use it.)

Third round of de-cluttering (after several months have elapsed since the second round)

• Is this something that REALLY makes me happy to wear? (If no, donate.)
• Is this something that is fits with my personal style, or does it make me feel like I am pretending to be someone I’m not? (If don’t fit personal style, donate.)
• Is this something that REALLY looks good on me when I wear it? (If no, donate.)
• Is there anything inconvenient or painful about wearing this? (If so, donate. Wearing jewelry that is inconvenient or painful in any way will not make you as happy as wearing what is comfortable.)

Ultimately, you will come to a point where you are both de-cluttered and comfortable with what you have left. From time to time, you may have to "edit" a little, but "editing" will kept clutter at bay and out of your life.

De-cluttering the guilt-ridden stuff

One of the things that makes it hard for many people to de-clutter is emotional attachment and sentiment. It is hard to get rid of things that trigger positive emotions and pleasant memories.

But there’s another kind of emotional attachment to our stuff that we may develop, almost in spite ourselves. This brand of attachment is negative and it is associated with guilt. A lot of times it is associated with bad gifts we receive from good friends and beloved family. Other times it may be clothes that we haven’t fit in years and we are keeping them to motivate ourselves to lose weight. Or it may be misguided purchases that wasted our money and we just can’t bear to let go because it cost so much. It may be associated with craft projects we never finished.

The best way to overcome guilt is with forgiveness. This means we must practice forgiving ourselves. Here are some examples.

A few Christmases ago, my mother-in-law asked me what I wanted her to get me and I told her I wanted crystal. I was thinking of modifying my dining room light and making it into a sort of crystal chandelier with strings of crystals dripping from it. When I said “crystal”, I had “strings of little crystals” in mind. My mother-in-law interpreted “crystal” to mean “little crystal statue” and sent me a crystal swan. Not only was I disappointed (yes, sorry Leann, nothing personal!),  but I felt guilty for being disappointed, because I realized it was my fault for not being more specific. I didn’t want a crystal swan, because I don't care for knick-knacks, but I felt compelled to keep the swan, because.. well.. because it was beautiful, and my mother-in-law gave it to me, and I love my mother-in-law. Eventually, though, I realized just how silly it was to keep something I didn’t like simply out of guilt. I forgave myself for giving such unspecific directions, and since part of forgiving is forgetting about it, I made sure I’d forget by donating the swan to a thrift store. Because I won’t see it, I won’t remember it.

One thing that might deter us from giving away bad gifts is the fear that our relatives will ask us, “What did you think of the _____ I sent you?” We fear that our desire to please our relatives will overcome our desire to be truthful and that we will have to lie and say it was fabulous when we thought it was horrifically ugly. We all want to be able to please our relatives and say we loved the gift, but if we really don’t, first, we can’t lie with believable enthusiasm, and secondly, we are diluting our ability to express our true appreciation for future good gifts. What’s the worst that can happen if we say, “I thought someone else would enjoy it better than I could, so I gave it away.”? At worst you could mortally offend a rich relative and be cut out of their will. (But that’s still not so bad, because you don’t miss what you never had in the first place.) And what if that gift giver consistently gives terrible gifts? Then it might be to your advantage to be frank so that they will stop giving you gifts. If they are good at giving gifts, it would be to your advantage to be truthful and even help them out with suggestions for good gifts, because it will help them know better what you would like.  Don't expect them to be a mind-reader or a champion guesser.

What about the clothes we keep which we used to fit into and don’t any more? Of course, we keep them because we intend to lose weight some day so that we can fit them again. However, we forget that during the weighty years those clothes we hang onto go out of style, especially the more extreme styles, so even if we did lose weight, we would need a new wardrobe anyway. It is best to forgive yourself for not having lost weight earlier, and get rid of the old, small clothes so you can forget about how long they’ve been sitting under your bed. Then, after you’ve lost weight, rather than thinking you are merely an older version of the thin you once were, it will seem like you’re a new, thinner you.

Another guilt-attachment we may have to our stuff is when we’ve made misguided purchases that wasted our money and we just can’t bear to let go because it cost so much. We have to remember that though there is the money that we paid for it that is being wasted, the longer we keep that something, the more money we waste paying rent on the space it takes up. Forgive yourself for your bad purchase. Getting rid of it both cuts your losses, and allows you to forget about it.

Some may think that it is important to keep those things around in order to remind yourself not to make stupid purchases, but anyone able to learn from their mistakes will naturally become a wiser, more cautious buyer. A wiser buyer doesn’t need reminders of their past stupidity hanging around in order to buy wisely. If anything, hanging on to those purchases has the effect of sapping confidence in one’s self.

What about the craft projects we never finished? Keeping around old, unfinished craft projects not only causes guilt, but it discourages us from getting involved in better, more exciting craft projects. “I can’t do that, because I have a million un-finished things at home.” This locks us into a cycle of “I didn’t finish” guilt and “I can’t do what I want to do” loss and frustration. If the craft projects go unfinished, it is because other things are a higher priority. If you honestly think that there will never come a time when you will be interested enough to finish that cross stitch, then it is time to forgive yourself for not finishing it. Get rid of it so that you can forget about it and be free to get involved in projects that are really important to you. (And don’t feel you are obligated to finish the unfinished craft projects of your dearly departed relatives.) I was finally able to get rid of an old knitting project I had stalled on years ago.

After we do this, it is important to remember that just because that thing seems to define us, it doesn’t mean that it is us. If we get rid of it, we are not getting rid of a physical part of our bodies. We can live and breathe and eat and sleep without that thing. Rather than saying our stuff defines who we are, it would be better to say that it is more an extension of our personality, or an expression of our personality. But even this view is mostly based upon our materialistic culture of “self-expression through possession”. We easily forget that our culture is also based upon freedom of speech, and because of that, the most dynamic and meaningful outlet of self-expression is our words and our deeds. In this way, we can realize that our words and deeds define who we are far better than what we own. (This is a “dangerous” doctrine; it implies a rich person and a poor person define themselves equally well.)

Looking at it this way, we can see that our stuff can define our present personality or our past personality. But to hang on to old stuff seems to be looking backward instead of forward. We need to realize that when we can let go of the things that defined us in the past, we will have room for the future things that come along that define us in the future. It takes real confidence in the future that there are better things waiting for us in the future.

Ten Commandments as a guide for organizing

Yes, the ten commandments--those instructions Moses brought down from the top of Mount Sinai--can help us get organized. The best one, I think, is the very first one:

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:2-3)

From the perspective of trying to get organized and de-cluttered, these verses can give us both hope and direction.

If you feel like you’re drowning in your stuff, then you know you have a “house of bondage.” Verse 2 above gives us hope to know that if we succeed in getting organized and de-cluttered, it is the Lord that has brought us out of our “house of bondage.” It takes a miracle, but the Lord can do miracles.

Verse 3 can give us excellent direction. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is a simple statement about what our top priority should be. If you are determined to keep the Lord as your top priority, then your stuff is a lower priority and you will be able to conquer it.

Ultimately, keeping priorities straight is KEY to conquering clutter. In terms of organizing, priorities are the little invisible rules we have at the back of our minds by which we determine what stuff we buy, what we let go of, what goes where, and more.

Needs are higher priorities than wants. For instance, food, clothing, and shelter are higher priorities than decorations, conveniences, pleasures, or tools. That is pretty well understood, but when it gets down to specifics, it gets trickier. Sometimes the only way we can discover what our priorities really are is to compare them.

What gets higher priority in your house—decorations or tools you use often?

What gets higher priority—the tools you use often or the tools you might use someday?

What gets higher priority—your memories of the past or the things you are involved in now?

Let me give you an example of something I’ve had trouble letting go of. I’ve been hanging on to my college textbooks for years.

As books, they are low on my priority list of things to read; I prefer reading other books more.

As sources of knowledge, they are also low on my priority list because lately I go to the internet first when I have questions.

If I’ve been keeping them because they represent a memory of who I am and what I did, they are also rather low priorities because my journals—I am a copious journal writer—are a much better store of my memory and identity.

Someday I will figure out the priority that is out-of-whack with those textbooks so I can let go of them.

Image: http://www.pankmagazine.com/pankblog/forgive-him-father/moses-and-god-compose-the-10-commandments/

Organizing project: product manuals

Everybody has product manuals for their appliances and gizmos. It gets annoying when you have so many that if you ever have to check them you have to sift through the whole stack to find the one you want. And then, when you find the manual for the dishwasher, you have to find the part that is written in English.

This insanity must stop.

The first thing to do is to go through all your product manuals and remove the parts that are not in English. Lots of times each language will have its own section, so you can just tear those out. On some of my manuals, I actually cut down the middle of the booklet with my heavy-duty scissors and then stapled the edges of the English part, then discarded all the rest.

The second thing to do is look to see if there are any manuals that belong to appliances or devices that you don’t own anymore. You can get rid of those.

The next thing to get rid of is manuals for things you use that are pretty self-explanatory. Do you need a manual for your hair-dryer? No. Do you need a manual for your mouse? Well, that depends on how computer-intimidated you are. (If your mouse is a fancy-dancy thing with 50 million buttons, then you will probably need a manual to learn how to use them, or at least to learn how to install the software drivers for it, but if it is just a normal mouse, most computers seem to recognize them right away without any bother, so you really don’t need a manual for that.) Do you need a manual for your computer keyboard? Again, if it is a normal one, probably not, especially if you are already using it. You probably will never need to look at that manual ever again, so why keep it? Do you need a manual for your toaster? Probably not. Do you need a manual for your blender? Mmmmmm, probably not; it’s pretty self-explanatory. Don’t keep those manuals that insult your intelligence by being obvious.

The next thing to do is sort your manuals. Like goes with like. This can sometimes be tricky because there may be different ways of sorting them. Do you put all the manuals for kitchen items together, or do you put all the manuals for food prep appliances together? The point is to make categories that capture a fair number of manuals, but not so many that it will be agonizing to sift through them all.

If you’re curious about how I sorted our product manuals, had manuals for kitchen appliances and food prep appliances together in one folder. I could have put the manual for our home phone in there too because our phone is in the kitchen, but I also had a manual for my cell phone and a manual for our walkie-talkies, and those are all communication devices, so I made a folder “phone/communication” for them.

The following are other categories I made:

• Camera/web cam
• Entertainment—music/video (mp3 players, TVs, DVD players, tablet computers, and any other devices that make music or play video)
• Organization (PDAs and label makers, etc.)
• Air/water stuff (humidifiers, HEPA filters, AC units, water headers)
• Car accessories (after-market radio, GPS, etc.)
• Bedroom (bed stuff, CPAP machine, clock radio, etc.)
• Tools—garage/outside (power tools, yard maintenance tools)
• Computer (hardware)
• Computer (software)

You may have other categories such as:

• Sports equipment
• Craft equipment

If a particular device you have has multiple manuals, then it should probably have its own folder. Our printer has its own folder. Each computer will need its own folder. Network equipment needs its own folder as well (external hard drives, routers, hubs, external backup servers, etc.)

Some people say that the best thing to do with manuals is to scan them all into the computer. Maybe I will do that someday, but I don’t know that I’ve reached that point quite yet. Maybe if the manuals could be downloaded from online I might consider keeping the soft copy rather than the hard copy.

To be honest, we really don’t use our product manuals. The only time we go looking for them is if something isn’t working and we need to find out why and what to do about it. The other time we need them is when we want to learn how to do something with the device that we can’t figure out by ourselves. When the time comes that all that information can be found online, we’ll know that we really don’t need to keep our paper product manuals at all. But until then, organizing the product manuals can make it a lot easier and faster to find them when we need them.

The 18 commandments of staying decluttered

I tried to make up a list of 10 commandments of staying de-cluttered, but there was too much to say. So, I give you The 18 Commandments of Staying De-cluttered!

1) Thou shalt find excuses to give away thy stuff.

2) Thou shalt carefully consider the poor, consider how thy unneeded stuff may enrich their lives.

3) Thou shalt limit thy supply of all that is not edible.

4) Thou shalt rein in thy sentiment before it reigns over thee.

5) Thou shalt get rid of (or donate) all that thou hatest, and have no respect to waste.

6) Thou shalt not keep more knick-knacks than thou hast room to display. (Ideally, thou shalt have no knick-knacks period, because they only accumulate dust and require special time and care for dusting.)

7) Thou shalt keep no gifts that thou dost not use, but give them away freely.

8) Thou shalt recycle thy boxes immediately.

9) Thou shalt immediately sort thy junk mail and recycle it.

10) Thou shalt immediately file thy important papers.

11) Thou shalt limit thy supply of plastic grocery bags.

12) Thou shalt keep possessions belonging to thy dearly departed relatives ONLY if thou dost use those possessions regularly. (Thou shalt not obligate thyself to finish thy dearly departed relatives’ craft projects.

13) Thou shalt not keep more pictures than thou canst display on walls or in albums. Thou shalt bless others with thy duplicate photos.

14) Thou shalt not keep more bedding or towels than thou canst use for the number of guest thou canst sleep in thy house.

15) Thou shalt speedily rid thyself of baby toys when past the age of childbearing, to bless the lives of new mothers.

16) Thou shalt send the belongings of thy grown children to them; thou shalt not keep them back.

17) Thou shalt rid thyself of kitchen appliances that thou dost not use.

18) Thou shalt throw away all broken possessions that thou hast been putting off repairing.

A post on false projects

On my other blog Scriptorium Blogorium, I just put up a post called "Projects like ravening wolves" in which I discuss how to tell if you have taken on a "false project," or a project that has little chance of benefiting you.

Check it out.

Why are you saving your old bill statements?

There are those of us who save our old monthly statements for all our bills that we have paid. We’re not sure why we do it, but we do it anyway. We have a vague feeling that somehow that information is important and that we may need it someday.

That fuzzy feeling of “I might need it someday” is your ENEMY. The vague feeling of discomfort and uncertainty needs to be confronted and banished, and the best way to do that is with hard facts about what information on the statement is useful and what is not.

I’ll tell you what I have found through experience about what info is useful and what is not.

I used to save all our bills that came in. When I finally got to the point that I and my husband were ready to make and live by a budget, those bills came in handy for determining average amounts that we should put in each of our bill categories each month. Because I had saved our bill statements, I had a history of bill charges that I could use to make a realistic budget. In fact, I went so far as to put all those charges for each month into a spreadsheet which added them all up and found the average for me. Once I put the amounts in the spreadsheet, I could shred my bills.

One other bit of information I put in a spreadsheet was usage information. For water, I put the amount of gallons we used. For electricity I put in the number of kilowatt hours we used. For telephone, I put the number of long-distance minutes we talked. This made it so that I could tell at a glance if there was anything strange in our patterns of usage. When we developed a bad water leak in the sprinkler system of the house that we were renting, I was alerted not just because the charges were higher, but because the water usage amount was three times higher than our usual water usage. (Disclosure: There was comparison information on my bill statement too about usage from a year ago, so I didn’t really get this info from my spreadsheet. But I could have.)

After I collected the dollar amounts and usage info from my bills, I shredded all our old bill statements. YES. I SHREDDED THEM! SHREDDED. Into little. Pieces. Of. Paper. I shredded them. (Insert triumphant cackle of laughter here) It was very satisfying to free all that space up in our files.

In short, the only reason a file full of old bills is important is if you are going to collect dollar amounts and usage amounts out of them for building a budget. But even if you DON’T record that info somewhere, ultimately, there will be no negative consequences to you if you decide to get rid of them anyway. The phone company will not break down your door and haul you off to a little chain-link fenced compound out in the desert if you get rid of your phone statements. Your power company will not charge you extra if it discovers you have discarded your old electrical bill statements. Believe me, it won’t. No consequences!

If you want to know, you only need to keep your most recent bill statement which has your account number information on it and any phone numbers you would call if you have a problem. And heck, if you were to record that information on a spreadsheet with the charges, you wouldn’t even need to keep that statement.

Oh wait, I forgot. Sometimes your city landfill will require you to show a most recent utility bill in order to drop off a load of stuff there, so maybe you should just keep ONE statement, if you take loads to the dump. But if you don't, don't bother.

Now.. if you are thinking about making a spreadsheet and putting years of your bill information on it, but you are intimidated by the size of that project, let me give you a tip. Doing a spreadsheet like this is pretty close to “being too organized” because it adds an extra layer to a work flow that disorganized people find onerous to begin with.

If you have troubles getting through this series of tasks, then don’t bother making a spreadsheet:

· Bring in the mail

· Sort out the bills and discard unneeded mail

· Put bills in a place that they will not be lost.

· Pay bills when they are due.

· File bills.

If you tend to put the bills someplace and then have troubles finding them so you can pay them on time, then making a spreadsheet for your bills is NOT something you should do. In fact, if you have troubles losing your bills, I am telling you now, THROW AWAY ALL YOUR OLD BILL STATEMENTS WHENEVER YOU FIND THEM. They only confuse you. Your concern should be making a consistent home for your unpaid bills so that you will always find them when you need to pay them.

The goal is to be organized enough that you pay your obligations. Anything after that is just extra credit points.