So, what is clutter anyway? I define clutter as two things. First, it is any object that is not put away in its proper home. This is the clutter that is found on flat surfaces like counters, the top of your dresser, and sometimes even piled on the floor. This type of clutter is basically an overflow of everyday life, or “lazy clutter” (because we were too darn lazy to put it away). The second type of clutter is the overabundance of stuff. This type of clutter is the fifty picture frames on every wall throughout your home, the collection of ceramic bears on every furniture surface or the one hundred books on the shelf you have already read and never will again.
We live in a world of “buy now, pay later,” where we are constantly bombarded by ads promising us that acquiring some new gadget or thing-a-majiggy is going to make us happier, healthier, and improve the quality of our life. What we actually end up with is so much stuff that those piles of empty promises make us sad, sick, and desperate for a change. I’ve been there, done that and I am literally writing the book about it. “Stuff” doesn’t make us happy, but having a clutter-free home certainly can!
I would love to tell you it’s possible to have a beautiful and organized home without getting rid of anything, but that would be a dirty, rotten lie. Purging is probably the most important step in getting organized and the most difficult step of the process.
Just in case you are planning on skimming this chapter, let me start with my most important tidbit of advice first: don’t overthink it. Trust your first instinct. When deciding whether to keep something or to donate it, make the choice fast and stick with your first decision. You are not trying to decide which child to keep, it’s just stuff. Second guessing yourself is just going to make the process much more difficult. Remember, your belongings are replaceable, but your time and well-being are not.
I’m going to start this chapter with a quick story about one of my most challenging clients who had an extremely difficult time letting things go. Let’s call her Susie. Susie was a school teacher, lived in a beautiful home, and had a loving family. She hired me to help organize her home office, and when I first entered her house, I was excited by what I saw. Everything was neat and clutter-free and Susie seemed to have it all together. This is going to be a piece of cake, I thought. When she opened the door to her office, though, my optimism sagged: it was full, waist-high full, with every square inch of floor space covered with huge piles of junk.
I’ve dealt with this level of clutter before. The difficult part was that Susie wanted to keep all of it, and have it all fit in her tiny office space (while looking beautiful, spacious, and clutter-free, of course). When I asked for her vision for the room, she told me she wanted an “open and airy oasis to do yoga and meditate.” Her vision for the room could not be further from reality, and there was no way we could make it happen without some serious purging. Susie assumed I had some tricks that could just organize everything, transforming her office into a clean and minimalist space. I’m a Professional Organizer, not a magician. Even with the addition of a bazillion shelving units and every basket on earth, she just had way too much stuff to ever fit properly in such a small room.
Trying to get her to purge was a nightmare. Everything was important or special to her, despite it being buried under three feet of clutter, and despite the fact that she hadn’t even stepped foot inside her office in over three years. Susie agonized over every single piece of paper. Filling a small shopping bag of clutter to donate took weeks instead of the minutes it should have. I had originally scheduled and quoted forty hours (which I thought would be more than enough time) with Susie to reorganize her office. Three months later, I was still dragging myself to her home each week in hope that she would finally see the light.
So what happened? I got real with her. To tell the truth, I lost my temper and unclenched my tongue, and let everything I was thinking finally fall out of my face in one epic and unprofessional monologue.