MAKING PROGRESS WITH THE VISIBILITY RULE
Pre-deslobification process, I was overwhelmed by my entire home. Every last space was overflowing with stuff.
I decluttered, but I rarely felt like I made progress, even after putting in hours and hours of work.
Experiencing panic and shortness of breath at the sound of a doorbell is annoying enough on a random day when I’m caught off guard. It’s worse than annoying to still feel embarrassed when I’ve been cleaning or decluttering all day.
If the living room has clutter on every surface and the dining room table is covered with mail, no one automatically thinks, Wow. Dana has been getting things done today.
So I created the Visibility Rule: when I declutter, I start with the most visible spaces first. This ensures the results of my efforts will be visible, which will inspire me to keep going, and my decluttering energy will increase instead of being sucked away by a project that gave me nothing to show for my effort.
But whose visibility are we talking about here? What I see every day during my normal, living-in-my-house life? What guests see? What my family sees?
The short answer? Guests. Even if you rarely have guests in your home.
Declutter that most visible area first, every time. The Visibility Rule serves as both a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. As a short-term strategy, it helps me focus and prioritize. I have a place to start when I’m overwhelmed by the overall mess. Visibility! Visibility! Visibility! is a chant I can say in my head to stay on track.
As a long-term strategy, following the Visibility Rule means starting again in the most visible places with each decluttering session. Re-clutterers like me resist this.
How will I ever get to the rest of the house if every decluttering session starts with those same visible spaces? When a space I’ve decluttered becomes re-cluttered before I get to the next space, or as I’m working on the next space, it feels like no progress will ever be made and I’ll never get to the spaces where we live our daily lives.
Remember, I’m not sharing simple decluttering hacks in this book. I’m sharing real-life fixes.
In real life, the Visibility Rule plays out like this:
When you’re ready to declutter, go to the front door (or whatever door your guests enter). See what your guests see, and start there. Starting in that visible space every time will maintain your overall progress and will (really, I promise) eventually lead to your whole house being decluttered. At the same time.
When I began my own process in 2009, one of my first decluttering projects was my dining room. It’s the first thing people see when they walk into my house. Honestly, I was prioritizing according to embarrassment level. I can’t share a photo in this book because the camera I used in those early days of blogging was of such low quality the photos would never transfer to print. So let me describe it.
In the photo, I see a red bicycle helmet on top of a pile of papers that almost completely covers the top of my dining room table. The papers include instruction books, newspapers, coupons, and random junk mail. Mixed in with the paper mess, I see a screwdriver, a few socks and other pieces of clothing, a box of checks, a dehydrator, and an onion.
Surely it isn’t an onion, but in the photo, it totally looks like an onion.
A chair behind the table appears to be piled high with clothing. A chair in front of the table is definitely covered in clothing. On the floor, there are socks and a large sheet or blanket. There’s also a laundry basket and two bicycles.
Yes, I said bicycles.
That was a huge project, but according to the blog post I wrote about it, I spent less than an hour decluttering the room. Looking at that photo, even now as a Seasoned Declutterer, I would have assumed I’d need more than an hour.
But I said something else in that 2009 post that reveals the need to follow the Visibility Rule: “When it’s clean, I love this room. It makes me happy to walk by it.”
I can successfully not see a mess, even a fairly horrific one, until the doorbell rings. But, strangely, I do see clear spaces. Clear spaces make me happy every time I walk past them, and that is the biggest reason I have to follow the Visibility Rule. Following the Visibility Rule means my fleeting decluttering energy won’t flee quite so quickly. It will renew itself. Perpetuate.
A room that “makes me happy to walk by it” gives me energy to keep decluttering. When I get a jolt of random decluttering energy and expend it in an invisible space, such as my sock drawer, I use up that energy. It doesn’t replenish itself, because I don’t see the results of my efforts unless I happen to use that space. That energy is random, not perpetual.
Using my energy on a space I’ll see every single day creates visible progress. Visible progress makes energy sustainable.
Which makes decluttering sustainable.
Which, over time, affects my entire home.
But what about the feeling that while I’m focusing on one area of my home, another is getting out of control? How will progress ever happen if I keep going back to work on the same area?
Progress won’t happen if I don’t.
When I come to my next available time to declutter (which comes sooner since I’ve been inspired by the loveliness of a decluttered dining room), I still prioritize by visibility, again starting in the entryway and dining room.
When I first decluttered that dining room, it took less than an hour. Significantly less time than I assumed it would take, even though that room was full of decisions to make and habits to break. And the pile was six inches thick and covered the entire table.
That was more than one week’s worth of mess. That mess had been building for a very long time.
But when I start again in that visible space after only a week (or a month) as opposed to months (or a year), I’m re-decluttering.
Re-decluttering is shockingly easier than decluttering. I made the hard decisions last time. This time, it’s mostly a matter of putting things away. It’s mostly easy stuff.
If I have only an hour to give, I can make it back through the dining room in significantly less time than the first decluttering session. What took almost an hour the first time takes ten minutes this time. I have fifty minutes to spend doing hard, first-time-in-a-long-time decluttering on the next visible space.
I now have two spaces that inspire me every time I walk by them. The next time, I start again (yes, really) in my dining room. But this time, it only takes me five minutes (maybe even less).
I’ve gained experience each time I’ve worked in there, and with that experience comes a little wisdom. With wisdom, re-cluttering happens less. On a normal, not-decluttering-today day, I recognize junk mail for the future clutter it is and choose to walk straight to the trash can or recycling bin the moment I bring it into my house.
So this third time there are just a few random things to put away.
I move to the second visible space, and after ten minutes of easy re-decluttering in there, I’m ready to go spend forty-five minutes tackling the next visible space.
And so on and so forth.
And on and on.
Forever and ever, amen.
The progress is gradual, but it’s visible. As long as progress is visible, I keep going toward the edges of the house.
Following the Visibility Rule is important, but if you don’t, there’s no wrong way to declutter. If you’re getting stuff out of your house, you’re succeeding. If your home functions better, go you! Any decluttering at all is a win for sure.
But if you’re constantly frustrated because you can’t make sustainable progress, repeat to yourself, Visibility, visibility, visibility.