HOT MESS // Too Many Toy-Tabs Open

I once spent over an hour with my little nephew pretending to play hockey, pretending to vacuum, pretending to ride horses, pretending to be using a leaf blower. We didn’t use a single toy in this series of games. No, our hockey stick, our vacuum, our horse, our leaf blower was all the same thing: a clear plastic dowel.

He’s not alone in being creative as a result of constraints. Studies show that kids played longer and more elaborate games when given 4 toys at a time as opposed to 16.

That’s right, 16 toys was the HIGH number. We’ve all seen plenty of homes that have 160 toys out at a time, if not more. 

Lindsey Escalante compares a child surrounded by too many toys to an adult with too many tabs open. Just as our attention flits from one shallow task to another when we have too many tabs open, children play briefly and shallowly with toy after toy after toy without sustaining an interest in any one in particular. 

We adults sometimes forget that everything can be novel and interesting to young children, if we allow them to concentrate on something long enough to be imaginative without distracting them with the next colorful, noisy thing. 

Toy rotation is one simple way of reducing the number of toy-tabs. Regifting or donating the excess works, too. Asking for memberships to museums or kid gyms is one way to reduce the influx of new toy-tabs from well-meaning family members. 

As far as navigating the holiday season, I love the simplicity of the 4- gift challenge. Parents/Santa solicits a short and specific list from children: something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. Kids get less and play more. Parents spend less and relax more. Less gifts, more gratitude. 

HOT TIP // The Tao of Holiday Shopping

The Black Friday promotional flyers have started trickling into my mailbox, and I’ve been reflecting on how I balance my disdain for excess consumption and crowds with my love of great bargains. (Hey, I’ve been a miser much longer than I’ve been a minimalist.) 

Here’s my take:

1. We should never cut short Thanksgiving day to jump-start Black Friday shopping. 

Thanksgiving, despite its difficult history, is at present one of the only days a year that we’re encouraged to appreciate the historically unprecedented abundance and ease we enjoy, and to exchange only consumable gifts, if any at all.

Gratitude makes us happier. Connecting makes up happier. Mashed potatoes make us happier.

The deals will be there in the morning, despite what the scarcity and urgency triggers in advertising might suggest. 

2. Everything is 100% off if we don’t buy it at all.

We should not purchase things that are not on our shopping list, and we should not purchase things that are currently on our nopping list. If we’re considering shopping on Black Friday, we should start firming up those lists now so we’ll have the wherewithal to stick to them when we’re subjected to the manipulations of the store environment.

3. We can always vote with our dollar. 

REI took a bold risk in 2015 with its #OptOutside campaign, closing its doors on Black Friday to offer employees a chance to access the same natural settings for which they equip their customers.

But people, myself included, found that so refreshingly counter-cultural, they became members of the cooperative. I now shop for all my outdoorsy gear at REI, and I’ll  likely be a loyal customer for life. I get things I need there happily knowing I’m supporting a company with some conscious.

What vote do you want to cast?

4. We should concentrate our bargain-hunting on Small Business Saturday. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer great deals at big businesses which are unlikely to share our interests. 

If we get what we need and want at an independent, local store, we know that 3 times more money will stay in our area than if we went to a big box, and 50 times more money will stay in our area than if we purchased from an online retailer. 

That’s money that supports other local businesses, helps local politicians win elections, and funds three of my favorite things: schools, parks, and libraries.

Yet another way we can vote with our dollar for a world with less clutter, more community.

HOT TIP // Live Below Your Threshold

At what point does the amount of stuff in a space feel cluttered to you?

That’s your clutter threshold, and we should all be mindful of living well below our thresholds if we want our homes to feel like a source of relaxation as opposed to a source of stress. 

My threshold for clutter tolerance is very low, but I didn’t always know that. When I had opportunities to live in very small spaces with a tiny fraction of my possessions, I found myself both calmed and energized. When I returned to larger spaces with loads of things, the difference in my mood and energy level was profound.

Marie Kondo refers to the “click point,” at which we feel like everything we own is relevant and joyful to us and we can thoughtfully engage with all of our possessions. We experience this as essentials without lack, abundance without excess. We know it when we feel it.

Now I realize that even just a few items out of place can make me distracted and anxious, which is why I’m mindful of respecting curfew, tackling procrasticlutter, and weeding. The sight of a clear counter and a made bed helps me stay productive and positive.

Two people can respond differently to the same level of stuff. Plus, a pile of other people’s stuff starts to feel like clutter to us way sooner than a pile of our own stuff does. While we can all respect the thresholds of others, I recommend that the lowest clutter threshold becomes the default setting for the shared spaces of the household. Neatniks and slobs alike will come home happily to a place that is below, or well below, their threshold. 

HOT TIP // Dunbar’s Closet

Dunbar’s Theory suggests that the number of truly active relationships an individual can maintain with other people maxes out around 150. This makes sense when we consider that relationships take effort, attention, trust, and memory, all of which are limited cognitive resources. 

I’d argue that Dunbar’s Theory extends to our closets.

Amy Fine Collins said it best: “Opening up your closet should be like arriving at a really good party where everyone you see is someone you like.”

There’s a limit to the amount of clothing we can actively like, and we store many, many more articles of clothing in our homes than what we can realistically engage with.

We might recognize the item hanging in the closet, but we don’t have any associations of wearing it with confidence, taking it to be cleaned or repaired, etc.

Now, I’m not suggesting we all go count each article of clothing and get out the big black garbage bag once that number exceeds 150. Our qualitative feelings should determine what we keep rather than a numerical cut-off point. Minimalism to me isn’t having as little as possible, but rather keeping only what is relevant to my life. 

That said, if we keep only the number of items that we can actively engage with, we end up knowing, loving, and using our clothing. Our closet has the intimacy of a party, rather than the anonymity of a networking event.

Changes in season may lead to changes in our “inner circle” of clothing. I can’t be bothered to rotate clothes in and out each season, but some minimalists formalize the inner circle with seasonal capsule wardrobes. Either way, we can rest easy knowing our flowy tank tops will hibernate all winter after a summer out on the town with us.

HOT MESS // Unfinished Business

We all feel uncomfortable with unfinished business. But we don’t always realize how much cognitive load incomplete tasks demand. 

The phenomenon of ruminating on unfinished, interrupted, or incomplete tasks is called the Zeigarnik Effect, after the Russian psychologist who studied it. (She was also a mother of two, so who better to study interruptions and incomplete tasks!)

Zeigarnik first studied waiters: if a patron hadn’t yet paid the bill, the waiters recalled all the details of their order. Once the bill was paid, the waiters soon forgot the details. 

Our brains can dispose of information once it’s no longer useful and relevant to us, which frees up our cognition for other things. If we complete a task, we can “close the tab.” If the task is incomplete, that tab, and all the other tabs about all the other tasks we need and want to do, are open, vying for our attention and energy. 

This is yet another reason why I caution clients against the “just a little each day” approach. Who wants to dedicate any of our limited mental bandwidth to ruminating over decluttering a linen closet bit by bit?

This is also why I end a session with a set plan for donations. If that final step of dropping the excess towels off at BARCS is languishing in our mind, we don’t experience the full relief of a decluttered and organized space.

The benefit of the Zeigarnik Effect arises in projects that are inherently longer-term and multi-step, like packing for a move or setting up a new house. 

If we stop working for the day right in the middle of a process, electing not to complete the obvious next step, when we return the next time we have an easy starting point. 

Ernest Hemingway would stop writing right in the middle of a sentence on Day One so he would have an instant spark of momentum on Day Two; we can leave the next category of clothing to be curated in a heap on the guest bed for tomorrow-us to tackle first thing. 

We won’t feel that sinking, where-do-we-even-begin feeling, and we’ll build up momentum that will carry us through that day’s set of tasks, and the next, and the next, until we can close that tab for good.

HOT TIP // Distill

Grief drives some people to keep as many belongings as possible; to let it all go would be too painful. Others clear out as much as possible; to hold on to it all would be too painful.

This dichotomy of reactions comes up for siblings as their parents die, parents as their children grow, and even within individuals as they move houses or change jobs. (Transitions of any sort, even the exciting ones, can cause us some grief over what’s now behind us.)

Neither reaction is right or wrong. But there is a middle path that can appease both parties: distillation.

To distill is to both keep and let go. We select the single item of a set that can stand in for all the others, absorbing all the meaning and memory so the others are no longer required.

If we’ve inherited our grandmother’s tea set, we can distill it down to just the teapot, or to that special cup and saucer we used each time we went over.

If our child produced dozens of coloring pages and crafts during their pre-school years, we can distill it down to the one piece that shows the most originality, the one where they wrote their first letters, or the one that would look almost gallery-ready if we hung it a sleek frame.

We might find we gravitate towards some objects more than others, and it’s simple to select the one to keep. But even if we’re convinced that each item is majorly important, choosing just a couple and letting go of the rest will strengthen our connection with the keepers by default. 

If we can confer the distilled items with the dignity of regular use and/or prominent display, all the better.

HOT TIP // Take It With You

All the stuff in your life? You can take it with you. 

No, not like that.  Our funeral procession won’t include a U-Haul.

I mean that when we’re going from one place to another, we can take items with us to return them to their assigned homes, or at the very least get them closer. 

In my house, I’ll temporarily leave something that needs to go upstairs near the bottom step. Next time I’m heading upstairs anyway, I’ll take the item with me and put it away. 

Same with the items temporarily perched on the railing near the basement steps. When I go to start a load of laundry, I’ll take them with me. 

Same with the items temporarily resting on the chair by the door. When I go to return my library books, I’ll also drop some letters in the mailbox and return my umbrella to my car. 

When we’re getting out of the car, we can take a couple of pieces of trash out with us. 

When we’re already leaving our house to run an errand, we can take that borrowed item we’ve been meaning to return to a neighbor.

This is a small but significant routine that maintains our hard-earned order in our homes. Combine with the one-minute rule and nightly curfew to even greater effect.

HOT TIP // Clean Your Own Castle

Buying more time is an excellent alternative to buying more stuff, and hiring some housekeeping help is no different. We don’t need to feel guilty for outsourcing some tasks during challenging seasons of life so we can focus on other priorities. (Mr. Money Mustache would disagree.)

But we get something out of cleaning our own home. We become intimately acquainted with our space and the objects we keep within it, in a way that generates feelings of ownership, responsibility, gratitude, pride, and care.

This sense of ownership is why some schools task children with daily cleaning instead of hiring janitors. If we are the ones mopping the floors, we’ll be more likely to wipe our feet, to pick up after ourselves, to encourage thoughtfulness and care in the people sharing the space with us. 

We demand so much from our homes: shelter us, store our possessions, entertain our guests, keep us comfortable, connect us to a neighborhood community, offer us a retreat from public life, on and on. In caring for our home ourselves, we can even up the exchange. 

If cleaning our homes feels onerous, it forces us to contend with our excess: we are responsible for more space than we can comfortably care for, and/or we are responsible for more stuff than we can comfortably care for. 

When our homes are decluttered and right-sized, we eliminate friction associated with cleaning. It’s less burdensome, and maybe even enjoyable, because we are caring for spaces and objects we lovingly use.

HOT MESS // What If?

In my experience, clutter is caused by two things: inattention, or fear.

The inattention clutter is simple enough to remedy. We got preoccupied with other priorities, so we sit down with our calendars and find a weekend or two to invest in getting back on track.

The fear clutter is more demanding. Relief from decluttering is tempered by discomfort and fatigue from confronting fear. 

Fear is a shapeshifter, but it almost always starts with “What if?”

What if we can’t get we need one day? What if we won’t have enough? What if we offend someone else? What if we lose our memories and connections? What if we’ve made mistakes? What if we’ve changed? What if we haven’t? 

I only got through the “Eat” part of Eat Pray Love, but I’ve read and reread Big Magic in its entirety. Elizabeth Gilbert has fear figured out. Her suggestion, and my strategy for getting clients unstuck in times of paralysis is to stop asking “What if?” and start asking “What are you afraid of?” 

Acknowledging that we’re afraid is often enough to both validate our feelings and activate the more optimistic, trusting, and braver parts of our brain that can compete with fear. Instead of saying “What if I’m aging?!” and spinning out, we can hear ourselves say aloud “I’m afraid that if I let go of this t-shirt from college, I’ll have to accept that I’m getting older.” Our rational brain can kindly say “Aww, that sounds tough.” while quietly adding that shirt to the donation pile to make room for the things our older, wiser selves actually want around. 

Here’s my perennial fear statement: “I’m afraid that in letting go of these unread books/unfinished projects/formal business attire/ fancy recipe ingredients, I’m not going to reach my full potential.” I can voice that, and then swiftly remind myself that libraries and stores exist, and I don’t need a hoard of unmet aspirations in my home detracting from the things that real, here-and-now me is doing on the daily. 

There, there scaredy-Megan.

HOT TIP // Sensory Audit

When we think of improving our homes, our mind often jumps right to getting new stuff. But let’s back away from Home Goods for a moment (and maybe delete that Zillow app).

I often suggest that clients do a “sensory audit” in an area of their home they love vs. an area that’s frustrating them, tuning in to how what they’re experiencing with their senses is feeding their perception of the space. If no area of the house feels pleasant to them, I prompt them to remember a feeling of home from childhood.

When we think back to a place where we felt at home as a child, we probably don’t cite the throw pillows in a barely used living room or the dusty knickknacks on the bookshelf as sources of comfort and retreat. Our attachment, enjoyment, and memory of a place has more to do with our sensory experiences than the objects within.

As a kid, I remember feeling at home eating my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese around their kitchen table with my cousins, hearing the laughter of the adults sitting in the dining room. Now, I feel most at home curled up with a cup of coffee, reading my latest library book, under one of my 4 favorite blankets (pipe down, minimalism police), or cooking one of my favorite recipes with my favorite kitchen tools while playing a record. These moments involve possessions I love, but more importantly they involve people, activities, and experiences I love.

A sensory audit can help identify small tweaks that can add up to big impact in our homes.

How can we improve the quality of sight? Can we clean the windows? Switch to warmer LED bulbs? Freshen up the paint? Hang photos or art we love? Organize our home?

How can we improve the quality of sound? Can we have our favorite music playing? Close the door to the noisy utility closet? Relocate a small rug to dampen sound?

How can we improve the quality of smell? Can we throw open the windows? Give our garbage disposal and cans a good cleaning? Switch to natural cleaning supplies with fresh scents? Care for our air-filtering house plants?

How can we improve the quality of touch? Can we hug every human and animal in our home each time we return? Spend some time after work knitting or cooking or otherwise using our hands? Can we actually use the “good” towels and sheets and donate the worn ones to the animal shelter?

How can we improve the quality of taste? Can we brew strong, fresh coffee at home? Install a water purifier? Learn a family recipe? Splurge on a great bottle of wine and fancy imported cheese on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday?

Other people are perhaps the greatest source of sensory input, and any change we make that’ll increase the quality of time we spend with ourselves and with other people in good meals, good music, and good conversation will amplify our experiences in our homes.

HOT TIP // Teach A Man To Fold, He’ll Fold for a Lifetime

There are so many benefits to having our homes in order, we can be motivated to create those benefits for other people. That’s why I started this business and blog.

But the same way we can’t eat right for someone else, or exercise for someone else, we can’t truly organize for someone else. We can only support them in organizing themselves.

People need practice in evaluating their own possessions to cull and curate them with intention. 

They need practice in thinking through how to optimize storage so they’ll know where to find an item and can return it with ease.

And they need practice in the habits and mindsets that keep a person organized over the long haul even as interests and needs evolve to require a different set of possessions. 

I’m all about division of labor when it comes to chores.

But if our aim is for everyone to be organized, one person can’t be the “organizer”of the household. The others won’t become organized themselves through osmosis. 

Laurie Palau cautions us against being “the bottleneck.” If we are the only person in the house who knows a system, we will be the only person in the house responsible for maintaining that system. That’s exhausting for us, and infantilizing to the ones we live with. 

I talk with plenty of people who feel that if only they could get their kids or spouse or roommates out of town for a weekend and bring me in, their house would be set for life.

And yes, sometimes a kid-free session is more productive. 

But if we want children (and childlike adults) to take ownership of maintaining a system, they need to have some input in that system. And they need to be trained in the system. Remember, organizing is a set of learned skills, not an inborn trait.

HOT MESS // Home-Based Consignment Shops

We see our bags and boxes of clutter ready to head out the door, and while part of us feels relieved, another part feels ashamed. How much did we spend on all these items? Did we get our money’s worth?

Our impulse is to try and mitigate that feeling of guilt, fear, and loss. We decide we’re going to try to sell our stuff to “recoup our costs.”

Here’s how this goes wrong: We’ve probably overvalued the item because of the endowment effect. We think to ourselves “Well, I bought it, and I’m smart, so it must be valuable.” We create detailed postings with dozens of photos. We wait for the perfect buyer willing to pay close to full retail. We keep telling ourselves we’ll have a yard sale one of these weekends…

These items languish in our basement. We’ve decided to let go, but we haven’t actually decluttered. Our home becomes a poorly managed consignment shop. 

Here’s how this can go right: We acknowledge that if that item is going into the marketplace, it’s value is determined by what people are willing to pay. We don’t try to “break even" and we look for most simple sale, not the most lucrative sale.

We price those bad boys to MOVE, and arrange an immediate pick-up. Or we drop them off at a consignment shop and let them handle the resale. The items are out of our homes, in the hands of someone who actually wants them, and we get a little cash tip for our efforts to declutter.

If you’d like some cash as the cherry on top, go for it. But also, consider how your excess can be someone else’s assist.

Post to Buy Nothing Baltimore or a neighborhood page. Drop off donations to House of Ruth, The Book Bank, the Teacher Supply Swap, BARCS, or the Junior League. Arrange for the Green Drop truck to come by. Put things on the curb with a big ole FREE sign. Trust that these items will be of use to someone deserving., even if we get zilch in return.

Frankly, we should feel a little pinch when we declutter. We bought things we didn’t need. We hoarded things that stopped serving us long ago and could have been of use to someone else. It’s that pinch of seeing all that former-money leave the house that’ll curtail future impulse buys and encourage more intentional weeding.

And that pinch will fade, once we realize what we gain: space, energy, time, freedom. These can feel even better than money.