The notion of “spring cleaning” has become something of a cliché, but with good reason. The changing of the season, the rebirth of life—it’s a time when people are often more inclined to make changes at home, clear out the clutter, and get more organized.
According to decluttering experts, it’s always best to come up with a plan before doing anything. And part of that plan is considering why something as seemingly simple as removing clutter might be far more important than you realize.
Rosalyn Cherry is the creator of Clutter Master, a guide and hands-on kit designed to make organizing easy. She says removing clutter can have positive emotional impacts that people might not even think about. “A basic definition of clutter is ‘a confused multitude of things,’” Cherry says. “When there is no clutter, you are surrounded by the things that nourish you. Everything has a place, so you can find what you need with ease. Your living space reflects who you are. You move forward in life, open to possibilities instead of being weighed down with too much stuff. It is a glorious feeling of freedom and it is attainable with time and effort.”
Johanna Bard, owner of Your Hudson Valley Organizer and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers, agrees, adding that it might be especially important in times of financial strife. “Let’s just take the economy right now,” Bard says. “If people in general have less money to spend and aren’t going on vacations, perhaps it’s better spent in creating your nest, creating your vacation at home and having a calm and serene and fun place to be.”
Design Intent
In undertaking an organizing project regardless of the scope, coming up with a game plan might be the best place to start. Marie Mendoza, New York State–certified interior designer and owner of Kingston-based Marigold Home, says it’s simply a matter of considering what you have to work with. “The best first step is to identify the size of your space and to remember what you can put in your space is only what the space will allow,” she says. “It’s like putting water in a pitcher.” Mendoza says the next step might be to figure out what you’d like your space to look like, something she calls “design intent.”
“There should be a design scheme, and then once you have that master-plan design scheme, you can start implementing. From step one, there should be a goal, and step 100 would be you achieve that goal.” Not adhering to one’s design intent, Mendoza says, is how people run into trouble in the first place. “That’s how things get cluttered. It becomes a hodgepodge. It becomes like a circus.”
Bard recommends starting small so as not to feel too burdened by the project, a pitfall many people have been snared by. “It’s important to understand that it’s not necessarily as overwhelming as you think it’s going to be,” she says. “If you’re going to tackle the kitchen, start with one shelf in one cupboard. Decide what is going to stay and what is going to go.”
It’s also important to realize that if you have clutter in your life, you aren’t alone. “It happens to everybody,” Mendoza says. “It’s because of change.” When organizing one’s home, Cherry recommends making decisions in a decidedly organized fashion, by starting with a large trash bag and a few boxes.
“Make the following signs on cardboard or index cards,” she says. “‘Keep Here.’ ‘Keep Elsewhere.’ ‘Repair.’ ‘Sell.’ ‘Give Away.’ Attach these cards to the bags or boxes.”
Once this row of receptacles is ready, Cherry says it’s important to select an item and ask three simple questions to determine whether it belongs in one’s life anymore: Has it been used in the past year? Does it add to or help one’s life? Does it reflect who one really is?
“Put each item in the correct pile or in the trash bag,” she says. Set aside 15 minutes for starters, to evaluate items. “Handle the rest and start another 15-minute session if you are up to it, or make a date for the next session. I call it building the declutter muscle. You do this over and over with all the spots in your living space. It will take as long as you need over time to get to every spot. Once you have what you only use, what adds to your life, and what reflects who you are, you will know how to organize.”
Act Now!
Bard says the best way to make that sort of endeavor stick is to act upon it before you change your mind. “Whatever is going to exit the house leaves that day,” she says. “If it goes to the garbage, it goes right in the garbage can. If it goes to Goodwill, it goes right in the car. Otherwise it can just sort of get forgotten again. And if it’s exiting the house, you can see what you’ve done.”
For some, deciding what stays and what goes can be an incredibly emotional experience, one that often derails an organizing project before it really ever begins. “I always ask hard questions, and I don’t let people get away with rationalized answers,” Bard says. “‘Oh but my mother gave it to me.’ So what, have you used it? If you love it, do you honor it? Is it in a place of honor in your home? Is it time to pass it on?”
And the emotions can often run deeper than that. “One of the hardest emotional experiences is to go through clutter, the new and the old which you may have been carrying around for decades and putting off decisions about,” Cherry says. “It is very emotional if as a child or teenager you were being told you were a slob, or you were stupid, or you could not find your way out of a paper bag. These painful memories are embedded in the cells of the body and can make the process of letting go even more emotional. This is one of the most overwhelming tasks some people encounter.”
Even so, Cherry adds, the benefits of facing those feelings can yield positive emotional results. “While it is very painful, it needs to be done for a breakthrough to a new and better life,” she says.
One Step at a Time
Another way people find themselves giving up is expecting too much too soon when getting started on organizing clutter. “It’s important to know that in doing a project, things may get messier before they get neater,” Bard says. And once a project is completed, it’s also important to make sure you don’t fall back into bad habits and have to do it all over again. “Just like in recovery for anything, there can be backsliding,” Bard says. “The maintenance is really important. Get support. Engage family members or an organizer.”
Cherry says the best way to ensure the organizing project works out for the long term is to change the way you think, both in what you’ve hung on to and what you might add to your home. “Once everything is decluttered, always put every item back in its place after you use it,” she says.
And when new items are being considered, think about the three questions posited during the initial decluttering, Cherry says. “Also, if you do bring in something new, you must have a place for it and always return it to that place,” she says. “And for every new item you bring in, you can let go of at least one and maybe two or even three items.”
Mendoza agrees. “It’s very simple,” she says. “First, don’t do a lot of impulse buying. And second, if you’re looking around for things, make sure it achieves that design intent. If you don’t, you’ll go back to that same pattern, and it’s hard to control yourself. Don’t not have change. It’s okay to change—accessories, furniture, window coverings—as long as it achieves your design intent.”
Cherry also says it’s important not to do too much planning for future clutter, as it might exacerbate the problem instead. A major pitfall is buying containers before you know if you even need them. “They often become receptacles for stuff you are procrastinating to decide about now,” she says. “And no matter how high-tech the world gets, there will never be anything to take the place of you going through each item one by one to determine what to do with it.”
Going Pro
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, fret not. There are further options. “Decluttering and organizing are a big business,” Cherry says. “There are new how-to books that come out every year, magazine covers every month that hint they have the answer to finally help, TV and cable shows where the virtues of letting go are extolled, and articles and websites galore.”
There are also professional organizers, like those interviewed for this story, who can help. Cherry says the reason organizing clutter has become such a big business is because it’s become such a huge problem.
“In our consumer society the desire for the latest gadget, electronic breakthrough, or whatever Madison Avenue is pushing, is enormous,” she says. “And with the Internet, Madison Avenue has really become quite sophisticated in gearing its marketing to individual tastes based on past purchases, websites visited, and who knows what else.”
But no matter how big or small a decluttering project might be, the payoff makes it worth the effort. “There’s a sense of peace and calm,” Bard says. “They have reclaimed their space, time, and energy. People really feel that.”
Marigold Home Marie Mendoza
www.marigold-home.com
Clutter Master Rosalyn Cherry
www.clutterkit.com
Your Hudson Valley Organizer Johanna Bard
www.yhvo.com
This article appears in May 2009.
