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Do you waste precious time every single morning searching for your keys, your cell phone, your sunglasses, or the kids' school papers?
Is vacuuming your living room floor an impossibility, since it's so littered with toys, clothes, newspapers and God knows what else?
Does sitting down to dinner first require an excavation of the dining room table?
Are piles, stacks or tumbling messes impairing your ability to quickly clean your home and get back to business of living your life?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then not only do you have clutter, but your clutter is negatively impacting your life. The good news is you're not alone. According to The Wall Street Journal, the average American loses six weeks a year searching for lost or misplaced items at work.
The bad news is that clutter is slowing you down, stressing you out and stealing your precious time. It's probably tempting right about now to launch into an all-out war against clutter. But remember: You need a good plan before going into battle.
This month's Clean Team Newsletter is dedicated to kick-starting your clutter battle plan. Our feature article, Know Thine Enemy, takes a look at the four most common clutter personalities and offers some suggestions for fortifying your forces before getting down and dirty with the sorting, tossing and organizing (which we'll talk about in next month's newsletter).
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Know Thine Enemy
Look Within To Win The War On The Clutter
Know thine enemy. It's the first rule of warfare and the most logical place to start when formulating your clutter battle plan. But what - or rather who - is the enemy?
On very rare occasions, laziness or procrastination is the root of the problem. ("What? That mess in the living room? Those dishes in the sink? That teetering pile of mail? Yeah, I know it's there. I just couldn't find the time to deal with it. I'll get to it next week." Sure you will.)
More often, the clutter enemy is the one staring back at you in the bathroom mirror. (Don't worry, we're not picking on you: If you've got a spouse, kids or even roommates who live with you, then their faces should be right next to yours in the mirror.)
Here's a look at four of the most common clutter personality types. Which one(s) sounds like you?
The Spend-Thrift
Maybe money is tight. Or maybe you're just tight with money. Either way, throwing out (or recylcing, or donating) something you "spent good money on" is antithetical to your personality.
If thrifty is your middle name, then you're probably holding on to a wonderfully eclectic collection of things: From too tight clothes that went out of fashion with Sonny and Cher to countless "this might come in handy" items - like washed-out margarine tubs and empty toilet paper rolls.
While it's true that you might reuse one or some of these items at some point in the future, it's unclear whether keeping them is really saving you money.
Take your closet, for example. Let's say it's over-stuffed with skinny clothing, fat clothing and the few items of clothing that actually fit you right now. You're keeping it all because maybe you'll lose weight - or maybe you'll gain it.
Meanwhile, you probably can't find what you do have. That's why Americans end up wasting thousands of dollars every year on buying duplicate (and triplicate) items.
Even if you decide to organize your closet and move all the off-sized stuff to Rubbermaid tubs, you still face a storage dilemma. You could put those tubs down in the basement or out in the garage, but 10% of you, according to the Self Storage Association, have maxed out your at-home storage and are renting storage units to the tune of $15 billion a year.
The bottom line is this: Holding on to stuff that you may need costs you space, cash and time - three commodities which are far more valuable than your skinny jeans.
The Sentimentalist
Are you holding on to the dress you wore to your senior prom, the movie stub from your first date, and every essay you wrote in college?
If one of your parents has passed away, are you storing all their sentimental items, too, because the thought of disposing of the boxes feels like a betrayal?
We all crave that feeling of personal history - of knowing where we came from and who we once were. But the question is this: Does a room (or a house) full of stuff give you that feeling? When was the last time you actually went through your shoeboxes of mementos?
The stuff alone is not your personal history - it's a placeholder. And if you've got so many placeholders that you don't even have time to look at them, then they're really just space-holders.
The Survivor
If you've survived months of unemployment, a devastating house fire or a really nasty divorce, then holding on to stuff may be giving you a sense of security. You may think that it will insulate you from the hardships lurking outside your door.
This fear-based rationale is very real, and can even cause full-blow anxiety disorders. If you're holding on to stuff because of your survival instincts, the first step to letting go is to reassure yourself.
Remind yourself, gently, that there will always be more stuff to acquire. Even if you can't afford to pay full price, you can read magazines for free at the library, find clothing and shoes at your neighbor's garage sale, and even purchase like-new appliances for pennies on the dollar at the local thrift store.
The Perfectionist
Your friends envy your perfect manicure, your perfect cheesecake, your perfect parties and your perfectly organized handbag.
Sometimes, even your home is in perfect order, too. Not a toy out of place, not a sock mismatched. But other times, life happens (as it tends to do) and work gets crazy, the kids get sick, your husband is away. Suddenly, your perfect home backslides, seemingly overnight, into total disarray. And you become paralyzed.
The problem with being a perfectionist is that anything less than perfect - even the slightest blemish - is worthless in your eyes. Believe it or not, the perfectionist in you would prefer to live in total chaos than accept good-enough.
The organizedhome.com has the perfection clutter solution for perfectionists: the 20-80 rule: 20% of the effort will resolve 80% of the problem. Since you have to start somewhere, give yourself permission to attack the 20% first.
For instance, if your living room is overrun with toys and there's not a storgage solution in sight, quickly sort the toys and toss anything with broken or missing parts. Then throw the loot into whatever bins or baskets you already have at home. Later (much later), you can cruise the aisles of the Container Store and fire up your new label maker.
Whether you're a perfectionist, survivor, sentimentalist or spend-thrift, your clutter personality is hiding behind every stack, pile and mess in your home. But now that you know the enemy, you're halfway to victory in your war on clutter.
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Special Offer: 50% Off Clutter Control
If you can't wait for next month's newsletter to launch your war on clutter, then you'll need the Clean Team's authoritative book on the subject: Clutter Control.
As many of our readers have reminded us, it's hard to clean a cluttered house. Clutter Control offers encouragement as well as step-by-step solutions to help you and your family organize your home and simplify your daily lives.
This month only, you can purchase Clutter Control for 50% off when you enter the code CTNMAY at the check out. (And since we're a little late on getting out this newsletter -- what was that about lost time due to clutter??? -- this coupon code will be good through the 6th of June.)
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If you're getting ready to battle the clutter bug - or you've already won the war - then we want to hear from you! Drop us a line at jeff@thecleanteam.com and let us know what worked for you - and what flopped. We'll share your helpful tips with our readers next month.
Sincerely,
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Jeff Campbell
The Clean Team Catalog |
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