Home » Home & Garden » Housekeeping

Zap your clutter!

Ranked #20,916 in Home & Garden, #358,223 overall

Clear clutter, organize your life in just fifteen minutes a day

Is your world like mine? A bit on the chaotic side? This was my desk on New Year's Day 2009. My closets overflowed with boxes, bags and piles of stuff, including a lot of unsorted, unanswered mail.

Twelve unopened, unpacked boxes sat in our living room, a legacy from our move a year ago. Laundry was piled a mile high in all three household hampers. The kitchen sink was perennially filled with dishes.

I decided I wasn't going to live like that another year. I would zap my clutter for 15 minutes a pop. That's right. I committed 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, to clearing my clutter for one year. How much do you think I cleared? A lot. And not nearly enough. I'm still working on it, but I no longer feel hopelessly buried. I've changed some strategies and honed others.

One thing I learned in the process: I could take time to photograph and write about my progress, or I could do it, but my lifestyle did not leave room to do both. Well, I'm back. I'm going to do my best in the next few weeks and months to carve out some time to update this lens and its companion blog.

If you feel hopelessly buried, join me. Take fifteen minutes a day to zap your clutter and organize your life. I'll give you plenty of chances to share your journey to a saner, tidier personal world, because you gotta know already, success, like misery, thrives in company.
Important!

If you feel hopelessly buried, join me. Take fifteen minutes a day to zap your clutter and organize your life. I'll give you plenty of chances to share your journey to a saner, tidier personal world, because you gotta know already, success, like misery, thrives in company.

Goal: A tidy house by January 1, 2012

Is this your goal? Hop on board!

Richard Bach said, You teach best what you most need to learn. Well, I need to learn how to tidy up my life and keep it that way, so I'm writing this how-to lens as I learn.

Back in 2009, I started with my messy desk. It's much tidier now, but there are moments. My goal then was to have my whole house tidy by the end of 2009--and keep it tidy. I didn't make it, but I'm still working on it. Perseverance matters! Here I share my process and tricks I learn along the way. It's working, just a whole lot slower than I hoped.

If you have clutter in your life and want to zap it, hop on board and take this trip with me.

Is clutter a part of your life?

Loading poll. Please Wait...

Did you say you need this lens?

Start by gathering a few materials (very few), then follow the six easy steps below.

Materials you'll need

1. A timer with a bell or ringer you look forward to hearing (I'm using the duck on my iPhone; it gives me the giggles every time it quacks)
2. Three boxes, 1 each marked Trash, Recycle, Giveaway
3. Markers, self-sticking labels and a sturdy file box or cabinet to file important documents like insurance papers and bank statements

Step 1: Commit to a specific time every day

Set an alarm to remind yourself to drop everything

Commit to a time of day when you can and will stop everything and spend fifteen minutes clearing your clutter. Be realistic about this. Take your habits and personality into account. Are you a morning person? Start your day off with a feeling of success and accomplishment.

For me, the best time is the moment I get home at night. Any delay, and I'm likely to hunker in and fuhgeddaboudit, cause I know for sure I'm not going to get it done in the morning before I leave. Think I should be super disciplined and get up fifteen minutes early to tackle my clutter? Not! This is a major life change for me. I'm going to get some good clutter-clearing habits going first.

One thing at a time

Don't try to make a lot of big life changes at once. If your goal is to de-clutter your life, stick with that for now. If your goal is to change another life pattern, focus on that instead.

Step 2: Pick just one pile and focus on it

Not a room, not an area, one pile

Decide what you are going to focus on first. Surrounded by a sea of clutter? Pick just one spot to begin clearing and ignore the rest. Narrow your vision to that tiny area, and decide right now you will handle it one piece of paper, one greasy pizza box, one wind-up toy at a time.

My first project is to clear the clutter on my desk. My desk is small, so the clutter is about the same as a single pile would be on a larger desk.

Step 3: Handle each object only once

You save nothing by setting an item aside to sort later

Make a commitment to handle each object just once. If it's something you must keep, put it where it belongs. If you can't get to where it belongs because the closet, dresser, cabinet is blocked by clutter, rethink how badly you need to keep it. If it's a must-save, wade carefully through the piles, knock enough of the clutter into a box to make room to put the item away, dust off your hands, pat yourself on the back and walk away, careful not to trip on any of the piles you waded through to get there.

If you don't have to keep the item, put it in one of the three boxes you collected and marked earlier. Every item you are not putting away goes in one of the boxes labeled Trash, Recycling, or Giveaway.

Step 4: Set your timer for fifteen minutes and begin

Here's how to do it. Pick up the first item right on top of the stack. If it's a bill waiting to be paid, write the check, stuff it, seal it, address it, get up and put it with your outgoing mail. If it's dirty sock, carry it to the laundry basket. Careful! Don't get sidetracked with sorting laundry and starting a load of wash! Drop the sock on top of the dirty laundry and return to the pile you're clearing. If it's a moldy chunk of peanut butter and jelly sandwich (at least that's what it looked like--hard to tell), toss it in the box marked Trash and keep going.

Dispose of one item at a time

Put it away
Throw it away
Put it in the recycle bin
Put it in the giveaway bin

Step 5: Stop when the timer goes off

Non-negotiable

If you don't keep your commitment to stop when the timer goes off, you can't count on yourself to stop next time. That can undermine your resolve to continue to spend fifteen minutes every day clearing your clutter.

Once you have the habit down, and I mean you're so used to spending fifteen minutes a day, and so invested in continuing the practice that you know nothing is going to stop you, you can consider renegotiating the time with yourself.

Perhaps you'll decide you can do thirty minutes a day in two fifteen minute segments. Or perhaps you'll be so confident in your ability to keep your commitment, that you'll give yourself an additional two hours every Saturday to tackle the job.

That's up to you. For now, gain confidence in your ability to follow through on this commitment. Fifteen minutes a day. Five days a week. For one year.

Step 6: Congratulate yourself on your progress

When I cleared my desk yesterday, I had two choices. I could get discouraged because I had not completed even that relatively small job in my short fifteen minutes. (The papers in the middle remained untouched.)

What I felt, though, looking at my now tidy workspace with a neat little pile of papers to sort, was a sense of relief far greater in proportion than the tiny bit of clutter clearing I had done. I smiled the rest of the evening. Dare I say it? I felt empowered.

Ta da!

Need help getting motivated?

It helps to understand why we clutter in the first place

I discovered this book a while back. It sat on my bookshelf for a long time, taunting me with its promise of a tidier, well-organized life, but I was a little daunted by the concept of Feng Shui. Sounded like a whole new lifestyle. Before you knew it, I'd be taking Kung Fu and referring to myself as Grasshopper. The other day, surrounded by empty pizza boxes, stacks of unsent Christmas presents (two days before New Years!) and two baskets of unfolded laundry (not sure till I sniffed them if they were dirty or clean), I picked up the little tome. There must have been a reason I doled out the hard cash for it in the first place, right?

Turns out, author Karen Kingston knows lots of people like me. What's more she knows how to help us. The idea for the three boxes came from her.
Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui

Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui

by: Karen Kingston

Amazon Price: $6.27 (as of 02/16/2012)Buy Now

Amazon review:
"Kingston covers the reasons we keep things as well as the amazing stories of people who have cleared their clutter away. More than just junk, clutter is all those things that have negative symbology and that collect stagnant energy. This latter can also apply to bodily, emotional, and spiritual clutter, all of which Kingston describes with characteristic passion."

Tips from a recovering pack rat

I laughed out loud as Rita Emmett described some of the ways she has handled sentimental clutter. Take a break and enjoy this one. Very likely, you'll come away with a new tip or two to lighten your load.
Loading

Starting with the kitchen?

These items can make your organizing tasks much easier

Loading

Stay motivated!

Get a clutter-zapping fix on my ClutterZapper blog

When I can spare the time, I share some of my clutter clearing process on my blog. I don't post every single day, or even every week, but as I clear more clutter from my daily life, I hope to have more time to post my progress.
Loading Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

This is just the beginning

I'll add new tips and stories as I work through my clutter. In the meantime, I need all the encouragement I can get. Give me a shout-out now and then to let me know how I'm doing. More importantly, let me know how your battle with the clutter monster is going.

How do you tame the clutter monster?

Tell us your story here

Share your tips, weirdest clutter stories ever and anything else you'd like to say about the subject.

submit
  • Reply
    AdrienneJenkins Mar 25, 2009 @ 3:50 am | delete
    Good luck with your clutter busting. I like Don Aslett's Book "For Packrats Only" which talks about our emotional attachment to our things in easy to read language. He gives useful tips on de-junking. Also Oprah recently had a show which you might want to link to which had useful tips like flip clothes hangers backwards when you re-set a closet. In a year take a look. Any hangers unflipped mean you haven't worn an item in a year. Time to give it up.
  • Reply
    marsha32 Mar 14, 2009 @ 6:46 pm | delete
    I live with my mother who is the queen of clutter!!!!! It's driving me insane but she won't let us touch her stuff saying we are trying to get rid of like she is dead already. I have my own small amount here and there. I live in my mom's basement but have an entire corner that is piled with boxes of nothing but her stuff as well as the whole utility room is piled high. Sheesh! I won't even mention what it's like upstairs...I try to stay down in my own quarters and not look at.
  • Reply
    frances Jan 14, 2009 @ 8:11 pm | delete
    This is a lens I really need. Whether I will actually do anything is another matter. But lots of good advice.
Show All

by

clutterzapper

Zapping the clutter in my life in just fifteen minutes a day

Feeling creative? Create a Lens!

Related Tags