Don’t let things on their way to the thrift store or the dump hang around too long. Apart from the fact that the boxes of stuff are clutter in themselves, it’s too easy to change your mind and decide to pull something back out of the box.
If you have a lot of boxes, or large furniture, some organizations will pick them up, so take advantage of that. Does your community have a day for putting out large items at the curb for pickup? Make sure you use it!
Instead of piling boxes by the door to take outside, take them all the way out to the car so that next time you pass the thrift store they are ready and waiting to be dropped off.
Create a “landing zone” by the exterior door you use the most, whether that’s the front, kitchen or garage door. Use it to hold all the things you put down as you come in the door (keys, wallet, purse, car door opener… ) and the stuff waiting to go out next time you go (library books, video rentals, dry cleaning, thrift store donations…).
Size and type depends on your family and lifestyle: it could be anything from a single shelf to a set of cubbies, hooks, bins and shelves for each family member.
Security tip: make sure keys and wallet are not visible or reachable through a window or mail slot.
There’s a great article on this subject in the Jan 2007 issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine, which you can probably find at your local library (unfortunately this particular article is not online). “The Drop-Off Zone” on page 122 covers building several kinds of landing zones, especially oriented to households with lots of electronic devices which need homes and recharging areas.
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Fine Homebuilding
Turn your attic into a long-desired personal haven. Build an addition onto your house. Renovate that rickety old staircase. Fine Homebuilding brings you professional-level building and remodeling information. Some of today’s best carpenters, masons, architects and cabinetmakers share tips, techniques and trade secrets.
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If you’re buried in clutter, a goal to declutter even one room can take a long time to reach. Small daily or weekly goals can be a lot more reachable and give you motivation to keep going. They can be of the “spend x minutes””type, or the “toss n items” type. For example:
Declutter for 15 minutes every day
Declutter for 2 hours each week
Toss 7 items every day
Get rid of 50 items this week
Donate 100 items by the end of the month
For ongoing goals, you can set up a wall chart to track your progress – even give yourself a colored star every day you meet your goal, and a gold star at the end of the week.
…try some of these techniques.
- Stop rescuing them as far as practical - don’t find their keys when they lose them, or wait for them when they can’t find a clean pair of pants. Maybe, just maybe, they may get motivated to deal with their own stuff.
- Detach your stuff from theirs – declutter your own stuff, and have spaces which are “yours” (clear and organised) and “theirs” (cluttered)
- Be pro-active – agree ahead of time whose spaces are whose, how you can deal with their mess (bag or box it up, throw it out, move to a specific room…)
- Prepare for chaos – decide how you’ll deal with it when their clutter encroaches on your space, or causes you problems.
- “Model” decluttering but don’t force it on the other person – when they see how positive the effects are for you, they may join in.
If you design for low maintenance from the beginning, or spend time making a few changes designed for low maintenance, you can reduce your regular chores for years into the future, a great way to get a really huge time-savings payback!
Reduce the amount of mess and dirt coming into the house
This is your first line of defense. Mats should be placed outside and inside all doors. The kind of mats you want are the ones which really remove dirt from shoes, not the kind which are decorative only. If your family tends to have REALLY muddy shoes and boots, a bootscraper outside the door is an old-fashioned item which still works well.
To cut down on airborne dirt, seal and caulk all gaps round windows and doors and other building penetrations like pipes and wires. This will help with heating and cooling bills too. If you need to in your area, use insect screens on your windows and doors too.
Inside, corral the mess and limit its spread
Assuming you do actually want to LIVE in this house, not just exist, it’s impossible not to create any mess at all mess but you can take steps to make it easier to clean up.
Do mess-creating activities in one specific area, preferably with a closable door. If you’re doing something that makes dust, shavings, funes etc, close the door to keep them out of the rest of the house. Make sure to clean your filters frequently if you have a forced-air heating or cooling system, to stop dust and dirt being spread around the house.
Simplify everything:
- create built-in seating and storage (no spaces underneath or behind to clean)
- reduce the number of decorative objects and twiddly bits
- keep window coverings to the fewest, simplest number of layers that will do the job
- limit open display to only those objects you really love, and keep everything else behind closed doors
- reduce the amount of stuff you own (declutter!)
Choose easy-to-maintain finishes:
- brushed plumbing fitting finishes instead of shiny.
- easily-cleaned paint finishes (usually gloss, satin or eggshell rather than flat)
- hard floors with few joints (avoid the hardwood or laminate floors with chamfered groove joints between every plank!)
- wall-to-wall carpets instead of area rugs
- smooth kitchen finishes instead of textured
I’ve just added three new decluttering and organizing articles to the articles page which I hope you’ll enjoy:
How to Get Started on Decluttering Your Home
How to Declutter the Kitchen
Decorator-Style Organizing
Don’t miss the existing articles by Stephanie Roberts, author of Clutter-free Forever, also available on the articles page.
- Keep one main central calendar for the whole family, where everyone can see it and write on it. Each person can have their own personal calendar too, of course, but EVERYTHING should go on the central calendar as soon as someone knows about it.
- Only time-dependent activities and tasks should go on your calendar. If it’s something that could be done on any day, put it on a to-do or action list, not on the calendar. Why not? Because a mixture of time-critical and non-time-critical tasks on a calendar day obscures the tasks which HAVE TO be done that day.
- At the end of the week, look back on your calendar and what you did during the week, and consider any activities or tasks which may have arisen which haven’t yet been written down. Record them now!
- Look ahead to the calendar entries for next week. What do you need to do beforehand to prepare? Those need to get written down too!
Recommended Resources
DIY Planner: printable planner and calendar pages in multiple sizes and layouts. PDF format files can be read by any computer.
Clutter-Free Forever e-book by Stephanie Roberts
Toys with lots of small parts (like LEGO and other construction toys) are a ongoing storage and organization problem. The pieces tend to spread themselves about during play, and then it takes a long time to gather them all up to put them away. And if you’ve ever stepped on a LEGO brick on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you know why I headed this post “Ouch!” (The actual words used in this situation are not suitable for a family-friendly blog… )
The LEGO company used to produce an item which is perfect for this situation - a large circular playmat with a drawstring round the edge.
When it’s time to play, the pieces (well, most of them!) stay on the mat, then at the end of the session, it’s easy to scoot any strays back onto the mat, draw up the edge string to turn it into a bag, and hang the bag from a hook.
You could easily make one of these from a bedsheet cut into a circle, with a casing sewn around the edge, and a looooong string run through the casing.
If your kids need to keep some parts separate from the rest of the collection, use clear screw-top plastic jars (like peanut butter jars) or other sturdy containers with lids that won’t come off inside the bag. The kind of plastic boxes with multiple compartments inside are really great for storing lots of tiny detail parts, or LEGO people - look for well-made fishing tackle or tool boxes with positive locking clips instead of just a lip to hold the lid closed.
Resources:
The LEGO Company’s Shop-at-home service: more LEGO pieces than you could ever need (don’t show your kids this site!)
Lions Gate Models custom LEGO city and town models – free building instructions for a huge hospital, and many more instructions to buy.
No matter how much you love books, eventually you’ll have too many (unless you plan to move them into their own house and found a library!).
Good places to donate books are: your local library (make sure they can use them), shelters, schools, daycare programs, literacy programs, hospitals, hostels, and of course used book stores.
Ways to accumulate fewer books: use the library (including inter-library loan if your local library doesn’t have what you want), trade books with friends, create a special interest library for club members, institute a “one in, one out” rule.
Merlin Mann of 43folders has an excellent thread on ways of getting rid of clutter - not just throwing it away, but recycling and reusing in ways that are environmentally responsible and useful to others.
http://www.43folders.com/2007/07/04/clutter-reuse-vox-pop/
very definitely worth a read!
