Out of all the people in this section, friends should be the easiest. You’re friends, after all. If your friend asked you for help, you’ve been invited to help her make decisions she might be scared to make on her own.
JUST DECLUTTER
I love telling people what to do. I enjoy it so much I often have to physically clench my mouth shut to avoid alienating people in my life. I’m sure they wish I was more successful at this.
Just like I had to focus on decluttering instead of organizing in my own home, I find that when I help someone else declutter, I have to remind myself of this game-changing concept again and again. You may have been invited to help. You may have been begged to help. But today is not the day that you get to fix this person you’ve always wanted to fix. It’s the day to just declutter. Don’t get distracted by the shiny idea of changing how she runs her everyday life.
You’re there to remove things. You’re there to help your friend be realistic as she goes through her clutter. You’re there to keep her on track and ask the correct questions.
DIRECT THE PROCESS AND STAY ON TRACK
The main benefit to having a friend help declutter is focus. Clutter is intensely personal, so it’s easy to get distracted. You are there to keep your friend on track. Bring her back to the most visible space when the enormity of the overall task threatens to overwhelm her.
Help her identify easy stuff. Hold the trash bag. Move the Donate Box a little to the left. Point to the next thing instead of engaging in the conversation about the sob story that got her into this mess.
Deal with procrasticlutter while your friend works on other easy stuff that needs to go where only she knows it goes. Folding laundry and washing dishes isn’t fun, but it’s mindless. You can easily ask, “What’s easy?” and the two decluttering questions while you work. Dealing with procrasticlutter, no matter how frustrating, is part of the decluttering process. Take that on yourself so your friend can move on to the real decluttering decisions that need to be made.
ESTABLISHING TRUST
You already know the questions to ask. You know the order of the decluttering process that creates visible progress and builds momentum.
When you’re helping other people declutter, though, it’s incredibly important to listen to their answers. So when you ask, “Is there anything on this countertop that has an established home somewhere else?” accept the answer. If your friend keeps screwdrivers in a drawer in the living room coffee table, don’t tell her that’s a dumb place to keep screwdrivers. Just smile and take it there. This is how you’ll build trust.
Prove through your actions and reactions that you respect your friend and aren’t there to completely upheave her way of doing things. Keep things simple, and stick to the steps without rolling your eyes or asking your friend to defend her answers. Throw away trash, put easy stuff where it goes, and stick Duhs in the Donate Box.
After the easy stuff layer is gone, ask, “If you needed this item, where would you look for it first?” Explain that “would” is instinct. When you see the wheels turning in her head, remind her that instinct means there’s nothing to analyze.
If you stayed nonjudgmental during the easy stuff phase, you’ll have earned the right for your friend to be honest with you during the decluttering question phase. If she seems embarrassed when she tells you where she’d look first, just say, “Okay.” Then take it where she’d look for it.
I once heard that for people to be willing to change, they first need to feel accepted as they already are.
As someone who desperately needed to change her ways, I can tell you this is true. I needed to feel accepted by the person who was trying to help me. Feeling judged made me want to defend myself, and this meant defending the way I’d been doing things, even when that way was so clearly disastrous. Asking the two decluttering questions and accepting your friend’s answers lets you show that you accept how she does things in her home.
Do, however, try to read your friend’s face as she answers question #1. Is she making up an answer? Is she trying to impress you, or does she think there has to be an answer?
If you’re not sure, go ahead and ask question #2: “If you needed this item, would it ever occur to you that you already had one?” If she wouldn’t look for it, encourage her to put it in the Donate Box.
Consolidating is the perfect job for you as the helpful friend. It’s physical work that has to be done, but it doesn’t require decisions yet. Put like things together within the space so you can both get a visual reality check. You know by now that consolidating helps teach the realities of the Container Concept without any lecturing whatsoever. Consolidating is important so you’ll be ready to start purging down to the limits of her containers.
If you’ve dealt with the easy stuff, purged or relocated things by asking the two decluttering questions, and consolidated, there’s a 73.456 percent chance your friend is looking a little dazed at this point. But keep going. Be the muscle. Ask her to tell you which things are her favorites, and place those in or on the container/shelf/cabinet/ drawer. As the shelf or box fills up (or if it’s already full), point out that it’s full, and suggest donating the things that don’t fit. If this causes panic, use the One-In-One-Out Rule.
LET MOMENTUM HAPPEN
Momentum is real. If you’ve followed these methods in your own home, you know this. Don’t get caught up in a once-and-for-all mentality when you’re helping a friend. Praise the visible progress you’re making. Point out the improvement. Celebrate “less” and “better” as you go.
Your friend will get better at answering the decluttering questions, just like you got better at it. She’ll start enjoying the diminishing volume of stuff.
EXPLAIN YOUR METHOD
Don’t lecture, but if your friend asks, do explain why you’re asking what you’re asking and why you’re working on visible spaces as needed. Maybe let her borrow this book before or after you help her. Feel free to blame this Dana person for your decluttering methods.
HELP YOUR FRIEND FINISH
The finishing is the hardest part of any project, and finishing a decluttering project is the hardest of all. Distractions happen. Exhaustion happens. Fizzle happens.
Be the muscle. Be the walker. Be the one who takes things where they go. Be the one who stays focused on visible spaces so your friend will continue to be inspired by her own visible progress.
HELP MAINTAIN AND RE-DECLUTTER
What’s your long-term role as the friend who helps declutter? Let me be clear: it is not your job to threaten your friend with an unexpected doorbell.
The only thing that will do is make her start looking for other friends and start phasing you out of her life.
I can say from experience that the least helpful thing for a decluttering helper to do is to be shocked and dismayed at the reappearance of clutter. Shaming me for a space going back to being cluttered doesn’t spur me to do better. It spurs me to make new friends. And not let those new friends inside my house.
If you really want to be helpful for the long term, offer to help again. Start with the trash again, do the easy stuff again, ask the same questions again.
This time your friend will already trust you, you’ll know how her home works, and things will go much faster. And she will see the beauty of re-decluttering and understand how worth her time it is to keep going, no matter what.