Clutter

Tangled.  Messy.

 

We're renting until we know what will happen with Brian's job hunt.  And the renters who lived here before us weren't exactly into household maintenance.  Almost every door had squeaky hinges, the doorbell was broken, and the cords for every single window blind were tangled.  The latter took me a couple of hours to remedy, but I was determined.  Those cords looked ugly and chaotic, but also the blinds wouldn't work smoothly.

Ugly.  Chaotic.  Wouldn't work as smoothly.

Hmmm.  

 

Our house in Calfornia was fairly tidy on the surface.  But I'd never lived in a place with so much storage space and that didn't exactly encourage me to be careful with collecting or to thin out what we no longer used.  Arriving in Georgia, we moved to a somewhat smaller house with very little storage, which made for a tangled, messy puzzle.  What to keep?  And how to organize?  After slogging away for weeks, I needed some inspiration.  Thankfully, it was as close as my bookshelf...

I loved working at a large public library during my graduate school days.  When the next person stepped up to the reference desk, I never knew what they'd ask for and what I'd learn as I helped them.  The same held true for reshelving books.  One night I did a sweep just before closing, picking up the stray books left on a table.  One title caught my eye:  Clutter's Last Stand.  As owner of a large cleaning company, author Don Aslett wrote several books on cleaning, but his book on clutter seemed to hit a public nerve.  As letters poured in full of questions, he wrote several more:  Not for Packrats Only and The Office Clutter Cure.  Finally, amused and amazed by some of the stories he recieved in letters, he compiled them in Clutter Free Finally and Forever:  Including True Confessions and Solutions from 100's of Your Fellow Packrats.  I checked out all of Aslett's clutter books that night.  They were all easy to read and convincing, but the last one was my favorite.  I bought my own copy because reading other people's confessions and stories (paired with helpful hints) really helped me pare down.

When I came across Aslett's books, it was just a year or two after my parents' deaths.  We had a huge yard sale after they died and hauled several loads to Goodwill, but I was still living jammed up with an awful lot of their things -- things I thought I might use someday, things I thought I might learn how to use, things too expensive to toss, things that reminded me of the two people I'd lost.  What I came to realize, though, is that all those things suck up attention and energy.  They have to be maintained and cleaned.  They take up space that could house items I really use now.  They get in the way of being productive and living peacefully.

Try this...

Find the nearest pen cup in your house.  Dump everything out on the countertop.  Test all the pens on a piece of paper, throwing away any that won't work.  Also discard any that are leaky, wobbly, or skip ink.  Next, pull out any you don't like -- too thick/thin, wrong color, etc.  Stick these in a bag to give away.  If you still have more pens than you'll use before they dry up, put half of them in the give-away bag.  Then, over the next week, each time you need a pen and instantly instantly find one you like that works well, breathe a sigh of appreciation.  Then cast your eye around the room to see what you can thin out next.

Aslett convinced me that if you have a collection of twenty vases on the mantel, your eye moves right over them.  There is too much to see, too many colors and shapes for the eye to distinguish.  But if you thin that down to your favorite seven or five or three, each vase will be easily noticed and appreciated.  The mantel is also now a lot easier to clean.

The sad thing is that clutter-busting is a neverending battle.  For a little while there, I'd become quite the clutter slacker.  I'm actually glad to have less storage space now as it forced the issue.  Thanks to a recharge from rereading Aslett, my office hasn't been this functional and enjoyable in a long time.  Ahhhhh.

Soon I'll post some "after" photos.  

Comments

[Norma McCoy]

A very good post/blog. One that I need to take to heart and then do something about it...oh that will be for another day and time. :o)