HOT TIP // Weeding

I always caution clients against the “just a little each day” approach. Decluttering is like a juice cleanse: muster up the willpower just once, watch in horror at the things that come out, reset your whole system, and then emerge into the next chapter of your life.

That said, we should be prepared to stay vigilant against the creep of clutter. We establish routines to keep our house neat and tidy, but we also may need to do a very mini-decluttering from time to time. Amanda Sullivan calls this “weeding” and it doesn’t need to be a daily or even a monthly task; we should “weed” every once in a while as our lives change.

Now, big life transitions often need big, full on decluttering. A cross-country move, a marriage, a new baby-- those can alter our whole life, not just shift it a bit.

But our lives often change more subtly, and we’re vulnerable to keeping a newly unnecessary item around because we can remember using it recently. Instead, we can use these shifts as a cue to “weed” our possessions, and stay intentional about our homes.

Our new office has a lax dress code, so the pencil skirts and panythose can go.

We recommit to eating healthier, so the candy stash can go.

We complete a course or training, so the materials can go.

We switched to decaf, so the dark roast can go. (Yeah, as if.)

Weeding can take the shape of mini Minimalists game than lasts a week instead of a month. Or a rapid fire “spark joy” test when we’re Konmari folding all of our laundry. Or a session with me with the broad focus of ensuring your home is a reflection of your current life and your highest goals.

We’re constantly evolving, and so should our belongings.

HOT MESS // Pantry Perfectionism

Right now, I have a beautiful Ball jar filled with dried cranberries, which looks great and makes me “feel” organized. Too bad they have 30 grams of sugar per serving. That’s close to 8 sugar cubes! I would never eat 8 sugar cubes, ever, let alone in one sitting! They came in a bag with a lush illustration of fresh cranberries, designed to make me think of nature, energy, and health, and to distract me from the fact that it’s basically candy. (Marketers can be evil geniuses.)

When we organize our pantry to prioritize what looks good, we might be undermining our efforts to eat what is good. Having a ROYGBIV pantry might be pretty on Instagram, but it’s a net loss if it nudges you to buy a ton of Swedish Fish and Cheez-its.

Michael Pollan has the simplest nutrition plan in the world: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.  He expands on this manifesto in his book, Food Rules, which is a slim and worthwhile read. One of his many great ideas is to avoid food that comes with complicated packaging- the very foods we typically store in pantries.

The plants we should all be eating more of typically don’t come in colorful boxes or crinkly bags. They are “use it or lose it” foods that will spoil if left uneaten, because they are fresh and nutritious. They belong in the fridge, or left out in a bowl on the counter, to encourage us to reach for them first.

Some foods that technically come from plants are actually quite processed, like the chips, pretzels, cereals, pastas, white flours, etc that have a long shelf life and look so beautiful when they’re decanted into clear acrylic drawers or OXO containers. Despite dressing like a mime, I'm not against having lots of color in your home. But color-coding our Doritos bags does not make them good for us.

Our pantries should be organized, functional, streamlined spaces considering how frequently we have to retrieve things from within them. People with organized pantries, and kitchens in general, tend to enjoy cooking at home more often, saving money and eating healthier.

But instead of fussing over our perfect pantry, we should ROYGBIV the produce in our fridge. Eating fresh plants from across the color spectrum is an easy way to get the nutrition we need. We don’t need snacks, or supplements, or meal replacement shakes, or expensive cleanses stored in our pantry. We just need real food, not too much, mostly plants.

So I’m going to use up these darn craisins, judiciously, in very green salads with spinach and more-than-the-recommended-daily-amount of goat cheese from my fridge, and oil and vinegar from my pantry.

And then, I’ll fill the jar with plain, brown, boring, nutritious almonds, or wild rice, or whatever other plant that’s actually recognizable as a plant. (Good thing I don’t bother to label.)

HOT MESS // Souvenirs

When I got the chance to visit a string of European cities at 20, I convinced myself that the best way to make the most of this privilege and opportunity was to get a memento from each and every place.

 This seemed simple and even a little romantic at first, but ultimately it started stressing me out. My flight out of Berlin was in a few hours but I hadn’t found my “thing.” (I was too busy eating all of the schnitzel.) Did I give up having the complete collection of my dreams? Did I just grab something random from the airport?

 The compulsion to retain something from our travels makes sense; we learn and grow from travel and we want that to carry over into our normal life. But what we really want is a memory. And objects can jog our memories, but only if they are connected to an experience or a place in a visceral way.

The shirt I impulse bought in Barcelona because “I needed to get something from Barcelona” ended up in the donation pile. I picked it up hoping to hold on to that expansive feeling of time and space so notable in those Spanish afternoons on the roof garden of my hostel. I mainly felt irritated because the sleeves were itchy.

On the other hand, the perfectly smooth stone I found combing the beach in Greece has come with me through three moves. Holding it reminds me of meeting an elderly couple who walk into the sea each morning in their water shoes and swim caps, hand in hand.

I’m willing to bet your novelty shot glass from the kitschy souvenir shop in the touristy part of town doesn’t call to mind how you felt when you first ordered a coffee in the local language, or paid in unfamiliar bills, or even just left your phone behind in the hotel room for a gloriously relaxing afternoon. Maybe there’s no object to hold that memory for you, or maybe it’s one you have to find rather than shop for.

 In his book The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton makes a poignant suggestion about our need to “possess” the beauty and expansiveness we experience when we travel.

 He suggests that we try to create art about our experience. Sketch a drawing, compose a small poem, create a snippet of melody. The act of synthesizing your travels and creating something of our own both deepens our memories and gives us something to do other than shop, purchase, consume.

 So on your next vacation, just say souve-no. (I know, I know, I’m sorry.) And when you return home, enjoy clutter-free memories.

HOT TIP // Financial Fast

I was talking with some friends after we’d binged Tidying Up on Netflix, and they all agreed that letting things go (with a little bow and an arrigato) had gotten easier, but their homes still felt crowded out by stuff.

One said “I’m really good at throwing things away, but I’m even better at replacing them.”

That revolving door feeling is one reason why I don’t really love the one-in, one-out rule, because it can so easily become the one-out, one-in rule if you’re not careful. And if that’s the case, it would be better to just keep your stuff.

So my suggestion instead is to follow a major decluttering session with a financial fast.

The 21-day financial fast is fleshed out by Michelle Singletary in her book of the same name, and the TL;DR is this:

For twenty-one days, spend only on needs and obligations, tracking every cent.

This sprint of frugality can help you examine habits and mindsets around money that might be getting in your way, jumpstart savings for an emergency fund, and generally shed light on how you spend and save. And a three week moratorium on stuff entering your house will give you the chance to get your existing possessions organized for the long term.

The concept is so simple it took me under a dozen words to describe: For twenty-one days, spend only on needs and obligations, tracking every cent.

But obviously it’s much easier said than done, and by Day 6 I’ll be trying to rationalize buying three cases of blackberry cucumber seltzer and yet another potted plant.

So here’s my tips on successfully completing a 21-day financial fast:

• Start right. A party for your friend’s birthday on the 3rd? Fine, start the 4th. Make a Month. Or in this case, 3 weeks. 21 days does not need to be the 1st through the 21st. But consider starting on a Monday to capture some of that fresh-start feeling that can build momentum.

• Make a plan based on previous spending statements. Notice what and when you spend on things you don’t need. Spend 3x as much on groceries (cough cough ice cream) when you shop after a long day at work? Plan to go on Saturday morning. Buy a coffee whenever you pass that cafe? Try a different route. Schedule free activities on nights you would otherwise drop money on drinks. Be proactive and thorough, because you are not a magically different person now that you’ve decided to try this.

• Track every cent right away in your notebook or your YNAB app, and add all things you want but can’t have to your shopping list. Even if you add “candy bar” to your list, you’ll be acknowledging that you want that object which can partially satisfy the craving to buy it. And try not to say “I can’t buy that.” Instead say “I’m choosing not to buy that.” Much more empowering, and accurate.

• Have a reentry strategy. If on Day 22 you max out your credit card at the mall, these three weeks will have been in vain. Instead, plan to indulge modestly in non-essentials. Chances are the three week fast has changed your mindset enough that a slow roll into spendiness won’t undermine it.

• If you slip up, just extend the fast one more day. You don’t need to start over from zero, but you do need to analyze the heck out of what went wrong. Did your emotions hijack your plans? Did you fail to plan in the first place? Were you feeling some peer pressure? Or were you alone and thus less accountable to others? Keep moving forward with that self-knowledge.

And when you’ve closed the revolving door on your house and you’re ready to streamline and systematize, call me up. I’ll bring the La Croix.

HOT TIP // Retrieval

Instagramitis would have us all believe that each and every item we own needs to be in a clearly labeled bin with a lid, stored only with items of the same color, shape, and size if we ever want to be truly organized. (Looking at you, @thehomeedit, you beautiful pipedream, you.) But being super “organized” isn’t all that useful  if you can’t retrieve the object you need right when you need it with minimal fuss.

I’ve recently relearned this lesson while doing laundry. I needed to replace the lint trap on my washing machine hose right then and there to prevent water from squelching out of the washing machine hose and onto the floor.

I had previously stored those little wire mesh socks in my bin of household maintenance items, which also included lightbulbs, batteries, screwdrivers, the felt pads for the bottoms of chair legs, etc.

This assigned home made some logical sense. The challenge though was retrieval. When I notice the need for a new lint trap, it’s usually a few loads of laundry before the urgent, eminent flood level of lint. And at that low level of urgency, I don’t want to be bothered with crossing the basement, taking a bin off a shelf, taking off the lid, and locating the lint traps. So, I would procrastinate changing the lint trap and do another load…

And another.

And another.

And another.

Until I’d reached critical lint level and water could barely eek out of the lint-clogged washing machine hose.

In my dogmatic days, I might have become frustrated with myself for letting that slide. Nowadays, I’ve leaned into laziness. (I’m still pretty ruthless about procrasticlutter, but a clogged lint trap doesn’t have a huge impact on the feel and function of my home, so I can go easy on myself.)

Now, the jar of lint traps lives right on the ledge of the utility sink, mere inches from the washing machine hose. I don’t procrastinate changing the trap because it takes a minimal number of steps to do so: take off old trap, grab a new trap from the bag, secure new trap, proceed with life.

In general, storage should happen IN something, not ON something. My laundry area would look more organized if I installed a cabinet and stashed my lint traps IN there rather than ON the sink ledge. But I’m all about breaking my own rules when it comes to prioritizing retrieval.

So go ahead, stash your shoes on the floor by the door. Stash your refillable travel-size toiletry bottles in a pocket of your suitcase. Store things near the location they will be used, and with items that they’re likely to be used with, and above all, prioritize retrieval. Even if it’s not picture perfect.

HOT MESS // Jetsam

There comes a point in the purge stage of S.P.A.C.E. where a client finds an item has clearly been neglected.

It might have been unearthed from a dark, cramped corner, or a dusty top shelf. The reaction to seeing the item is not one of relief at finding a misplaced treasure-- it’s more like the facial expression equivalent of “meh.”

And then he or she inevitably explain that an old roommate left it behind when they moved a few years ago.

Those items almost always end up in the donate pile, and I often wonder why it got to live in my client’s home for so long in the first place.

To be clear, sharing housing and household items is a financially and environmentally responsible decision. As is weeding through our belongings before relocating to make the move simpler. As is opting for used items rather than purchasing new ones. I have no qualms with any of that.

But jettisoning our unwanted items without consideration isn’t really fair. It takes a bit longer to find a friend who’d love to have it, or post it to Craigslist and find an interested buyer, or to research a specific organization in need of it, or even to box it up and drop it off at the Salvation Army where someone can purchase it in the future. But the alternative is to burden our former roommates with our clutter.

And by accepting these left-behind items from our former roommates, without questioning whether or not they will equip us better for the life we’re living, we’re essentially ceding control of our household. Our homes become the shore where jetsam washes up and remains for years, taking up the space that should be reserved for items we actually love, use, maintain, and need.

So by all means, give to and/or receive from a former roomie. Just do it with some consideration.

HOT TIP // Choreography

Among the many reasons to love Mr. Rogers, my favorite might be his perfected “arriving at home” routine. Hanging up the coat, zipping up the cardigan, stowing the shoes, getting ready to learn something new… the consistency is orderly and soothing, and it keeps Mr. Roger’s pretend home very tidy.

I suggest you choreograph a Mr. Roger’s inspired arrival routine of your very own.

Now, this might seem totally contrived and a touch insane, but actually planning out how you are going to arrive home on a typical day, even writing or sketching it out on paper, is a simple way to a more organized home and life. You likely already have some habits surrounding your arrival, and it’s worth examining if those habits are serving you and your home, or if it’s time to design a new approach.

(When you have the everyday arrival down, move on to the bon de revenir masterclass.)

Here’s my everyday arrival routine:

Arrive at front door → Check the mailbox → Enter, stow shoes by the door → Walk to wall hook and hang up keys →Continue to kitchen counter “command center,” stow work bag underneath, immediately process mail → recycle junk mail → put important mail in command center caddy→ clear items, lunch dishes, and trash out of work bag →store any items that need to be stored on the first floor/ place them on the bottom stair if they belong upstairs --> walk back towards wall hook to hang up coat → plop on couch, commence vegging.

Done.

This reads like a robot manual, and I’m really proud of that. I don’t have to consciously think about any of these steps. I just execute them, on auto-pilot, while still listening to my audiobook or heck, maybe even singing about how beautiful it is in this neighborhood. I move through my house in a fluid circle, accomplishing a dozen tiny tasks that have a huge impact on my house, and my next departure from it, all in just a few minutes.

As you go through your own routine, think about how to optimize for organization and efficiency. I installed hooks for coats and keys, repurposed a utensil caddy to store bills, stamps, envelopes, and checkbooks, and designated a small bin for recycling in the pantry of the kitchen so I don’t have to go outside to process junk mail.

You might want to utilize a beautiful serving tray that’s gathering dust on a high shelf to hold keys, dog leashes, sunglasses, and other get-out-the-door necessities. Or you might want to relocate that chair that becomes a dumping ground for coats and bags away from the door so you don’t have that option anymore. Rehearse, refine, repeat, and reflect.

And for my dear readers with children, help them master an arrival routine, too. Choreograph putting notices in the “parent inbox,” placing homework in a visible spot for study time, clearing out any leftovers from lunch boxes before they start to stink up the whole house, etc.

You may even go so far as printing it out and sliding into a sheet protector so they can check off each step with a dry erase marker to help build the routine. (No judgement if you also try this with the grown-ups in your home.)

We arrive home virtually every single day, so we might as well totally nail that part of life.

HOT TIP // Prime Real Estate

Assigning a home for each object I own is important, or else putting my things away would be a constant decision-making process rather than a quick, auto-pilot procedure.

But there are good homes for my objects, and there are bad homes. I have to make sure that the items I use most frequently are getting homed in prime real estate.

What’s the prime real estate within my home? The most visible, accessible, convenient storage places.

I have a mug of coffee each morning (or else), and I occasionally serve wine at gatherings in my home. Now, I could store all my glasses, mugs, and cups in one cabinet with three shelves. Sounds “organized,” right? Sure, but it’s not optimized.

The things I use everyday should be very, very easy to retrieve and to return. So, my mugs are on hooks, directly above the dishwasher. (On hooks are one of only two types of “on” I’ll allow for storage, because “IN” something beats “ON something.)

The wine glasses used once in a while are located across the kitchen from the dishwasher, on a high shelf that’s a tad inconvenient for my 5 foot frame to reach. I even store wine bottles in a rack on top of my cabinets, which I can’t reach at all without standing on a chair. But that minor inconvenience is tolerable, because I don’t drink wine every single day. (Come to think of it, I should put all potential vices on top of my cabinets…)

If I had to stand on a chair to reach my percolator and mugs every morning, I would accumulate a lot of frustration.

This concept of prime real estate is the most helpful in the places we have to access every single day, namely our closets, our bathrooms, and our kitchens. I don’t store my formal clothes in the prime real estate of the bedroom closet, because my everyday wardrobe is more deserving. The cocktail dresses live in a hall closet. I don’t store dozens of back up toilet paper rolls in the prime real estate of the bathroom, because my toiletries are more deserving. The back-up TP lives in the basement. I don’t store my appliance manuals in the prime real estate of my kitchen drawers, because my cooking utensils deserve that space. The manuals get stashed in the “House” folder in my file box. (Or they get recycled, because the internet exists.)

This is yet another way I commit home organizer sacrilege and stash the pair of shoes I currently have in use near the door. I will wear them tomorrow, and the day after that, until the weather changes or the activity I have planned for the day changes. So they deserve that primest of real estate.

HOT MESS // Dry Cleaner Bags

Do you have clothes stored in dry cleaner bags in your closet? Go take them out! Right now. Go ahead.

Seriously, go. I’ll wait.
 

Hello, again. Why am I on a crusade against dry cleaning bags? I’d love to say it’s about the island of plastic in the ocean, and yes, I do care a great deal about that. But it’s not even that noble. Dry cleaner bags are just bad. For your clothes. For your closet. For your routine.

If you dry clean things often enough, why not invest in a reusable bag? That can serve as storage for dirty clothes, a visual cue to head to the cleaners, an environmentally friendly alternative to all of that forsaken plastic, and an imperative to unpack your clothes right away.

When I was lazier about dry cleaner bags, my clothes suffocated in all that plastic, unable to vent off the dry cleaner chemicals, succumbing to humidity.

So much space in my closet was taken up by those bags, those padded hangers, those THANKS FOR YOUR BUSINESS paper wraps. Marie Kondo would call it “gomi,” or trash.

Those pieces were less accessible because of that one additional step to retrieval. And, sure, plastic is transparent, but I’m convinced humans are incapable of really, truly seeing an article of clothing smooshed inside a dry cleaner bag. 

If I’ve dry cleaned an item, it’s because I’ve actually worn it. If I love it enough to wear it, bring it to a dry cleaner, pay for the service, and bring it home a few days later, why oh why stop short of taking it out of the bag?!?! What is one more step in the process of properly caring for my possessions and streamlining my space?

 So nowadays, I follow the one-minute rule and take the clothes out of dry cleaners bag immediately.

And I think very hard about acquiring a dry-clean only item. I make plenty of shopping (and career) decisions based on maintaining my majority machine washable wardrobe. No shame in that game.

HOT MESS // A Little Each Day

I’m all for the Minimalists Game, albeit my remixed version, because it can build momentum and motivation for owning less, and help you tune in to your gut reactions to the objects in your home.

But I’m uncomfortable with the oft-cited suggestion of “just doing a little each day.” I get it, we have busy lives, and the thought of committing whole hog to a decluttering project seems overwhelming. But let’s do the math, assuming you spend just 20 minutes every weekday decluttering for the rest of 2019.

20 minutes a day X 260 weekdays a year / 60 minutes per hour = 86.7 hours.

That’s over two weeks of a full-time job spent contending with your stuff. Not to mention the time and energy you lose living with clutter during this interminable project.

If you find a clear-ish week on the calendar, commit to the process, tune in to your gut, and roll up your sleeves, we can declutter an entire rowhome in an average of 24 hours. It’s much more efficient, and then you get to actually reap the benefits of a tidy home: more time, more space, more energy, more rest.

Keeping your home tidy can be a daily habit: create your shopping list and nopping list, follow curfew, follow the one-minute rule, eliminate procrasticlutter, don’t shop on payday, etc. Maintaining a tidy home is akin to eating well.

Decluttering your home in the first place is not like eating well; you don’t really see the benefits if you do a little each day.

Decluttering is like a juice cleanse: muster up the willpower just once, watch in horror at the things that come out, reset your whole system, and then emerge into the next chapter of your life.

If you want help getting this one-and-done approach over with so you can move on with your life, book a six-pack of sessions and get a 20% discount.

HOT TIP // Give Gifts to Your Future Self

With the latest gift giving season still fresh in mind and the new season of resolutions underway, I’ve been thinking about how I give gifts to myself.

If you subscribe to Gary Chapman’s argument, gift-giving is one way to express love to another person. And we can express love and appreciation to ourselves by giving a gift to our future selves.

This gift might come in the form of an experience I want to have: concert tickets, a membership to a museum, lessons or a class, etc.

This might come in the form of an object that supports the life I want to live. If I want to reach for water instead of soda, I can purchase a refillable water bottle that looks and feels great to me. If I want to support myself in exercising outdoors, I can purchase sturdy hiking boots. I just need to keep in mind that owning the gear is not the same as doing the activity- for that I need to schedule and protect time.

Time, and it’s close companion, space, don’t fall neatly into the conception of gifts that Chapman describes. I can’t wrap up a free hour, or a clear mind, or an empty shelf with a bow. But those are the gifts I want to give myself most.

‘Someday’ means never—there will probably never be a point when I have more energy or more motivation than I have right now. I know my life will grow and change, but I can be certain that new responsibilities and interests will pop up for me as time goes on. I’ll appreciate entering those next phases of life less burdened by stuff and obligations that won’t serve me.

So I work very hard to do a solid for future me by decluttering an object (or an obligation, if possible) when I start to feel less than positive feelings towards it.

Future me is going to feel just as doubtful about the sweater that is a little too big for me.

Future me is going to feel just as annoyed about digging through a pile of unloved socks to find my favorite pair.

Future me is going to feel the same pang of guilt and inadequacy seeing that book I “should” read collecting dust.

I can let these objects go now, to clear out time and space for future me.

If “get organized” is your New Year’s Resolution, I invite you to reconsider. By all means, get organized. I’ll help! But don’t think of that as a resolution to be maintained over the course of the year, but rather as a gift you’re giving to yourself now. Then you can make more ambitious resolutions about your goals, not just about your stuff.

HOT TIP// Be Able to Label

I might be an organizing iconoclast, but I don’t use a label maker.

A label maker has a hyper specific use, which y’all know I avoid. A label maker is an awkward size and shape for storing. It requires batteries, which I must purchase from a store and then store in my home. It requires special rolls of sticker paper, which I must purchase from a store and then store in my home. Hard pass. 

Whether you physically put a label on something or not, it helps to have a specific label for a particular container in mind. That’s the sign of a clear system, one that can be maintained and sustained. In my mind, I’m able to label a basket as “Off-Season Accessories,” because it houses swimming gear in winter and hats, gloves, and my ridiculous wool sock collection in the summer. (I think wool socks need to go on my NOPping list soon.) But I don’t actually have a label on it, because I don’t need a sticker to remind me what’s inside- it’s the only basket in the closet!

If you have so many bins, baskets, file folders, totes, or caddies that you feel compelled to label or else you won’t keep it all straight, put down the labelmaker and declutter first, focusing on the Sort and Purge steps of S.P.A.C.E.

We sometimes end up labeling as if our spaces won’t evolve, and then using the space that exact way because it’s how it’s been labeled, whether or not our lives have changes and our needs and desires for the space has changed, too.

If you have children (or childlike roommates) that you’re trying to train to follow the system, an actual physical label might helpful. Be specific, but not insane. “Legos” is a better label than “Red Square Legos.” “Spices” is a better label than “Pink Himalayan Salt”

But how can you label if you’ve decluttered your hyperspecific label maker, you ask?

Instead, I use Avery or Staples brand white rectangular stickers. Buy them cheap, store them flat with your other papers, and call it day.

 I write on them with sharpie. Buy them cheap, store them with your other pens, and call it a day. If you feel like spicing up your label, use a colorful sharpie and, say it with me now, call it a day.

 Alternatively, you can use a post-it note, a strip of masking or painters tape, or a dry erase markers until you’ve memorized the system, and then eliminate the label altogether.

 The cramped sans serif font of a label maker makes everything look like a stuffy office. Your own handwriting, however, is all over your house, in your planner, your grocery list, your outgoing mail, so it doesn’t look out of place on a label. If you don’t have very neat handwriting, write in all capital letters. 

 You could go out and get chalkboard markers and black labels if you want. Or buy cute gift tags on pretty cord.  Or order fancy, custom made vinyl labels in pinterest-worthy designs.

Or you could just not, and take a nap instead. 

After all, we organize our homes to better live our lives, not to better label our lives.