Organizing the
House the Bare
Bones Way
The Sacred Art of De-accumulation
De-accumulating can be a daunting task. It requires decisions. If we limit our decision-making energy by breaking down the task, we will be less likely to sabotage our project.
Begin by looking for the obvious “no decision-making energy required” items such as:
If you can’t decide about an item in six seconds, move on to the next. This “I don’t know pile” is usually about 20 percent of the task. Now do the math. You have reduced the items to actually organize to 40 percent, a manageable task.
Sue Marie Bowling
Prescription for Order
Brooke, Virginia
www.rx4order.com
Encouragement While Decluttering
Letting go is the first and biggest step in decluttering your life. Most people need the cool head of an interested but disengaged outsider to do it.
A lot of people try to do this with a sister, mother, or best friend. It may be that people whose lives are emotionally tied to yours aren’t going to let you see your stuff with the clear eyes that the unsentimental journey of organizing your life requires. They’ll say things that encourage you to keep your clutter without realizing it: “You’re not going to get rid of that, are you? Didn’t Mom give that to you? If you’re not going to keep that, I want it.”
Choose carefully a sympathetic but unentangled friend or hire outside help. You need someone who is not wrapped up with what you own or have in order to move forward without unnecessary roadblocks.
Cyndy Ratcliffe
Organizing Solutions, Inc.
Raleigh, North Carolina
www.organizingsolutions.biz
“Smart Lazy”
“If you are going to be lazy, be smart lazy. That’s what my dad told me,” said the waiter as he pulled out his neatly folded bills to give change. “So I stay organized. I always put my shoes in the same spot. I separate my money, the pennies from the other change. I keep my money from tips all in order while I work. That way I don’t need to spend time looking for change. The other servers stick their money in any pocket. I tell them they are going to lose their tips,” he said, hands flapping to show how the money would fly away. He continued telling how being organized works for him. “I stay organized so I don’t have to work so hard. I don’t let problems develop.”
Unbeknownst to him, he was verbalizing the basic Bare Bones principle. Be lazy. That is, don’t expend unnecessary energy. But be smart lazy. Set up your life for success. As we saw in the last chapter, this involves choosing a simple system that works for you and simply working that system—consistently.
You are not being asked to make big changes or take vows to live life totally differently from the way you are living now. That is unrealistic. You are being asked to make only a few consistent changes, the 20 percent that will make a significant impact on your organizational life. With less effort, you will upgrade your level of living.
Remember, the power to effect change can be found here:
What Do You Want?
Evaluate yourself to determine your present style. Mark where you are on the lines.
Look at the characteristics that you evaluated as close to 5. Begin with the one that is farthest to the right of the continuum, and challenge yourself to make changes in this area that will move you toward the left side. When you see progress, begin working on the others.
Steps of the Bare Bones Way
Change in any area of life occurs when the discomfort of remaining the same becomes greater than the discomfort of changing. Becoming organized is not complicated. It takes only three steps to bring order to your house.
Each step is equally important. There is no way to cut out any part of the three classic steps for organizing:
These steps get the house under control. When these are followed by the two routines for maintenance, it will stay that way.
Consolidate
To consolidate means to bring things together or to join things into a whole. Look around your house. Your job, should you choose to accept it—and I sure hope you do—is to gather each and every one of your belongings into a group of similar things. For example, all of your gift-wrapping items, such as paper, ribbon, tape, and scissors (yes, scissors, even though you will need other pairs for other groupings) go together. Other groups are
Put these groupings in temporary boxes or containers that you label with bold signs. Nice white banker’s boxes, about 12 × 18 inches, bought in office supply stores, seem to work much better than used cartons you can pick up in grocery stores. Nice-looking white boxes signal your commitment to doing things the right way. When the tops are on the boxes, the things inside can’t be seen, which eliminates the cluttered feel. If you use boxes from the grocery store, the house will look more junky while you are trying to create order. Put the boxes as near as possible to the place you think their contents belong. It may be on the shelf, in the proper cabinet, or close to the cabinet.
Doing this will bring reality into focus. Suddenly you notice that along with the regular tools you have five hammers of the same size and weight. Thirteen bottles of glue, a whole lot of snapshots, and many duplications of other things appear along with lost or forgotten items.
You will also realize that some things are junk that you will want to discard. Containerize these in a box or trash bag and get rid of them immediately. There will be things you are ambivalent about—you think you should discard but don’t really want to; other things are good enough to give away. Put these in boxes that you label THINK ABOUT and GIVE AWAY.
While you are consolidating, the house tends to fall into temporary disarray, so break the job up into units you can handle during the available time periods. For example, isolate one closet, dejunk it, and organize it. Put the excess out of the way in boxes and, as soon as you are finished, discard what you don’t want to keep. In this way you get the closet organized but the room still looks good.
Keep going with each project until you get it finished. If you have trouble finishing a project, ask for the assistance of supportive members of the family, invite a friend over to help, or hire someone to do the job for you.
Containerize
Once you see how many items you have of each grouping, you are ready to put the different groupings into containers, such as boxes, baskets, or whatever makes sense for what you have and where you have to place it.
When you see the size of your pile, evaluate the size of container you need, considering the space you have to store it. With tape measure in hand, find containers that meet your need. These may already be in the house, or you may have to buy some. Just be sure there is a container for each grouping.
When you see all that you have in each grouping, you may decide that you don’t need it all, and you begin to decide to get rid of some of your stuff.
Store the container, with the things in it you want to keep, in a convenient place, close to where you will use the items. This is especially important if you use them often. Things used repeatedly should be put within easy reach. For example, office supplies should be in or near the desk; cleaning supplies in the bathroom and kitchen cupboards. Finally, label the front of the container (where possible) to indicate what is inside. If you have small children, include a picture as part of the label.
CHOOSING CONTAINERS
When deciding what containers are best for storing certain items, ask yourself two questions:
If the item is hard to reach when you need to retrieve it, you will frustrate yourself. If what you have gotten out is difficult to return, you will be tempted to leave it out rather than struggle to put it back.
FIRST CONTAIN, THEN MAINTAIN
There are two important things to remember about containing your stuff. Do not crowd your items into a container, and do not crowd containers into storage space. It is hard to work with things that are jammed together. When you make your items easy to retrieve and return, your organizational life will benefit. First contain, then maintain.
IF IT IS NOT WHERE IT BELONGS, IT MIGHT AS WELL BE GONE
Some people can get away with leaving things out of place or storing them poorly. It doesn’t interfere with their routine or productivity. Many people—including me and maybe you too—can’t. There are two reasons for this.
First, we don’t seem to be able to locate things visually if they are out of place. Our eyes and mind go only to the one place we expected to find the item. If it is not there, we don’t see it, even if it is a foot away from the designated spot. Our eyes just don’t track in a way that will locate the item elsewhere. This is where the expression, “If it were a snake, it would have bitten you,” comes from.
Almost everybody has had that experience at one time or another, but some of us have it as a way of life. For us, it is imperative to make sure things are consistently where they belong because if they are not there, they are pretty much gone. Do yourself a favor and take this part of storage seriously. Put everything in its place as you finish with it, so it will be there when you need it.
The second reason for consistently returning items to their specific places is because our memories falter early on in the search process. If an item is missing, some people can figure out an alternative place to look. They can guess, and pretty accurately for the most part, where else the item might be. By looking in three or four possible spots, they find it.
Not so for the rest of us. In his book on increasing output, Dr. Mel Levine alludes to his problem with keeping up with what he needs when he writes that he spends a lot of his day searching for misplaced objects. “If I need a Phillips screwdriver for a chore at home, it consumes much less time and anxiety if I buy a new one than if I try to locate the one I bought six weeks ago.”[1] He also loses important papers at work. Obviously he would benefit from applying the three steps of organizing.
If the screwdriver is not in the place we expect to find it, many of us may look in one more spot and then give up and buy another one. If you do this often enough, the house becomes filled with many mislaid, duplicate glue bottles, rolls of tape, scissors, stamps, gift cards, flashlights, and a hundred other items that can be easily misplaced in the course of everyday life. Lost papers, some irreplaceable, hide in piles and other places, covering the desk and surfaces of the house.
Containerizing our things properly will save us money, time, and most of all, frustration.
Condense
No, “condense” doesn’t mean to pack everything in tightly. Basically it means to get rid of excess belongings. You may wonder why this is the last step and not the first.
We declutter all along the way as we start to take control of the house. However, as a practical matter, it is when we see how much duplication we have, after we have sorted things into groups, that it really hits us, “I have w-a-a-y too much stuff!” At that point, we are able to let it go intelligently and with much more emotional clarity.
Though how much we should keep is a complex subject, it is safe to say that in today’s world, we all keep “way too much stuff.” The amount of things displayed from a single house at a garage or yard sale testifies further to the fact that many others are in the same boat we are.
Trying to live with all of these things is not easy. The more stuff we have, the more we have to manage. This kind of abundant life leads to many problems that have to do with our stuff:
IN THE TRENCHES WITH SMART HOMEMAKERS
We use things to try to fill the emptiness, the hurts, the past and or present feelings of deprivation. We attach our longings, dreams, hopes, and desires to our stuff.
Special Cases
For one reason or another, some people feel the need to get and collect an unreasonable number of belongings. Even when they don’t have room, energy, or ability to properly store the things they gather, they continue to fill the house until it becomes a jumbled warehouse. Serious problems ensue for these people. They hesitate to have repairmen or even firemen come into the house. Their families become concerned about the health and safety of their loved ones. Landlords are upset by the condition of the property. Sometimes neighbors call the civil authorities. Often nobody knows the condition of the house because the resident keeps outsiders away.
In these extreme cases, people may maintain homes full of belongings, or they may fill sheds or barns outside the house. Some rent storage units to hold all their stuff. The belongings may be clothes, gifts, furniture, books, or whatever appeals to them. The items may be bought at yard sales or new with tags still on them or still in the shopping bag.
When it gets to this extreme, the condition is called hoarding. Recently, the problem has been studied as a part of the psychological disorder known as obsessive-compulsive disorder. I mention it only because a few people reading this book for help may need to be aware of it, either for themselves or someone they care about, and should seek professional help. For the latest information on this problem, look up obsessive-compulsive disorder/hoarding on the Internet.
The Bare Bones method bogs down when too much stuff is in the picture. Fortunately, most of us are not dealing with a problem of this magnitude. Even so, it is common in today’s world for many of us to try to keep more than is good for us. Excessive gathering boomerangs from promising to meet our needs to becoming a burden.
Tightly Controlled Clutter
Rose is an example of one who indulges in moderate excess. In her lovely home, she does not struggle with neatness or with being unable to find things. Her belongings are well stored, and stored, and stored. She and her husband have a two-car garage into which one car can fit. The rest of the space is full of many items they use in their busy and interesting lives. These are on shelves or hung on the wall.
In the home office there is a bookcase full of books. There is also one in the family room. Her husband’s office has walls of books. The bathroom has a large and tasteful basketful of magazines. There is a shed holding heavy tools in the backyard. Not a shred of clutter or crowding is evident. The house looks good, and both Rose and her husband can locate the items they need most of the time. They function well.
Like Rose, many people don’t have a clutter or storage problem, but they do have two more subtle problems. One is management. They must work hard to manage all their belongings on a day-to-day basis. In addition, when the time comes to dismantle this household, it will be a very big job. However, this way of life works for these people because they handle it well.
Even so, if they were to reduce their belongings, perhaps by about 20 percent, they would probably experience an 80 percent improvement in the quality of their lives.
A Deliberate Choice
The wealth of our country makes it possible for us to overdo, even if we are not personally wealthy. Like fast-food outlets, we have supersized our lives in many ways. Simplicity is out; excess is in. We have grown so used to having too much that we have begun to believe it is normal and even necessary.
But change is in the air. There is a trend back to basics. The high-calorie-double-cheeseburger-with-bacon sellers have begun to offer lighter fare. Realtors report that many who previously bought huge houses to make a big impression are returning to cozy, more personal homes. They want family members to talk face-to-face rather than cell phoning to the other end of the house or using the intercom.
In the past, the national economy forced the simple life on society at large. Now, with an improved economy, we must make a personal and deliberate choice to simplify, to draw back from materialism, and to seek a more harmonious way of life. It’s a matter of quality replacing quantity, significance taking over for ostentation. This is not easy because it is so foreign to the familiar get-more mentality.
Sometimes simplicity is forced. Clara was removed from her home because it was deemed unsafe and unfit for her children due to hoarding and was placed in an apartment sparsely furnished by the Salvation Army. She had only a few of her personal belongings and reported that she felt great relief to be free of the burden of stuff. She vowed to continue to live free of excess.
When simplifying is voluntary, the Bare Bones Way can help.
IN THE TRENCHES WITH SMART HOMEMAKERS
From Janet:
Make for yourself a really small area to keep tidy. It may be some personal space (beside your bed) or it may be the bit that people see immediately when you open the door. Or it may be the place that really gets you annoyed. Just choose your own personal organized space—not too big—but well defined. (I recommend about 2–4 feet square—no bigger for the first bit.)
Then go through that space and you sort through everything that is there. You make 3 piles—stuff that really is JUNK—old receipts/junk mail/cardboard boxes/a single sock. My way of looking at it is “Have I needed this in the last 12 months? WILL I need it in the next 6 months?” If the answer is NO— throw this lot AWAY for good—no more to be seen. The second pile is “This is too much for me. I think I might need it, and I can’t make up my mind.” This goes in a box marked “sort later.” The third pile is the giveaways—it is still good, but my neighbor may need it/use it etc.
Don’t do all the sorting through at one time—the idea is not to run a marathon, but to teach you some new habits in getting the mess down.
Let Beauty Inspire You
Maintaining order is essential for a satisfactory life. How to maintain it will be detailed in chapter 6. But working for order is not nearly as emotionally satisfying as creating beauty. In the same way that it is more satisfying to save money than to pay off debts, it is more satisfying to create beauty than to dissipate clutter. For that reason we cannot ignore the need for a balance between the two.
I used to advise establishing order before trying to create beauty, but I learned that people need inspiration to motivate them to do the hard job of organizing. It is a delicate balance. We don’t want to put cute trinkets in the midst of a mess and call it attractive decorating. On the other hand, we can use a focused pursuit of beauty to spur us on to a harmoniously organized life. We do it by creating areas or zones of beauty as we organize.
Some people choose a small area where they will maintain beauty, such as keeping the kitchen sink shiny or the kitchen counter clear and polished. Others start with one corner of the living room, keeping the lamp table polished as it sits beside the overstuffed chair with the comfy, attractive pillows. Perhaps some cut flowers grace the area. Relaxing in that spot of beauty and seeing it regularly in passing inspires and motivates these people to keep going.
Or we may aim at keeping an entire room beautiful. For instance, if we create a lovely bedroom, our desire for order will flow from it to the rest of the house. When we spend time in our sanctuary, we exit renewed and energized. The emotional satisfaction that is derived from what we have created will encourage us to continue spreading more and more order and beauty throughout the house.
More specific ideas on how to maintain the house will be given in chapter 6, but remember, the impetus to do it and do it consistently over the long term comes from a heart for beauty.
Tips
Take note: Be charitable to yourself! If things like these have been lying around for weeks waiting to be sent to a “special” person or place, decide today to give them to a local charity or (gasp!) just discard them. The Bare Bones Way is just do it.
Decision Time
This chapter contains the heart—the three Cs—of the Bare Bones Way for getting the house under control. Each step is necessary to set up the house for Bare Bones simplified living.
Consider how you will put these three action steps into practice. Focus on each one, then put a check beside each incremental step as you do it.
Consolidate
____ Obtain boxes in which to gather groups of items.
____ Group items into the boxes by category.
____ Locate the box near the area where the items will be stored.
Containerize
____ Note the size of the container you will need to store each group of items.
____ Buy containers that will fit on the shelf and hold the things you are storing. You may want to measure before you go and take a tape measure to shop. It will take a while to collect the variety of baskets and containers you need.
____ Place labels (with or without accompanying pictures) on the containers.
Condense
____ Give away duplicates or unnecessary items.
____ Throw away broken or useless items.
The Toilet Paper Test: Everybody buys it and uses it, but how individuals handle a four-pack of toilet paper varies, depending on levels of organizational outlook and habits. Perhaps how you deal with toilet paper when you first buy it corresponds to your personal level of organizing in other areas.
When you buy toilet paper, what do you do (check one)?
____ Leave it in the car and then bring the package into the house when needed.
____ Leave the pack sitting in the kitchen when the groceries are unpacked.
____ Throw it down the hall toward the bathroom or storage spot.
____ Put the package in the bathroom or storage area, opening the package when the first roll is needed and later struggling to get each roll out of the wrapping as needed.
____ Unwrap the pack so that individual rolls are easily available and distribute them to individual bathrooms or near where they will be needed.
Of the five, the last one is the kindest to yourself. Taking the time initially to put the toilet paper where it is accessible makes life easier. It is doing this kind of small deed consistently that keeps a person on top of things. In the end it makes life simpler so you don’t spend your time catching up, sending someone out to the car, or always looking for things.