Today, I gained some organizing stuff (folders and folding storage boxes) and got rid of two boxes of magazines (recycling) and a bag of clothes (Goodwill.) I also worked more on my corner of the living room. I’m trying to spend less than an hour a day on decluttering (so I can make it a daily habit) and about half an hour on declutter/maintenance. I’ve started washing down the bathroom after I’m done getting ready in the morning. With the counters all clear (except for the clock, handsoap, and electric toothbrush), it’s really easy to clean up. I also cleared the edge of the tub so all that’s on there is my current shampoo (I can tend to be a product junkie, but that’s another habit I’m decluttering), DH’s shampoo, and my bodywash. That makes it really easy to clean. Sadly, the bathroom is not done… I still have to do under the sink, but that’s two days’ worth of work and right now I’m just skimming the surface and grabbing the easy stuff.

A really inspiring site I have found is Zen Habits. I spent a while this weekend reading a lot of the archives and I’ve added it to my daily reads for inspiration.

Today, I did not buy anything.

I decluttered the bathroom counter a bit more and cleaned out the medicine cabinet so DH’s supplies could fit in there. I have three tubs of moisturizer I need to use up! It’s crazy!

I also decluttered the magazines in the bathroom. Set aside most of them for recycling.

Tomorrow, I intend to bag up the leather shoes and purses that I can get to easily in my bedroom and take them to Goodwill (or at least get them into the Jeep!) along with the two bags of donation clothes I have waiting in the bedroom.

Step One:

Take a good, honest look at your closet, if you can get in there. How many things do you have hanging in there that you would wear right now? Get a box. Set your timer for 15 minutes and start at the front of the closet. Take the first article of clothing off the rod. Does it fit? Do you like it? Do you wear it? If not, why not?

If it doesn’t fit, get it out of there. Store sentimental favorites in another closet, an old suitcase, a rubbermaid bin, but NOT in your main closet. You should only have clothes that fit in your main closet. (We’ll talk about sentimental favorites another time.)

If you don’t like it, get it out of there. You don’t need to have clothes you don’t like in your closet. If you have to keep them for financial reasons, try to replace them as soon as possible with clothes you DO like. Of course, once you’ve cleaned out and organized your closet, it might turn out that you have plenty of clothes.

If it fits and you like it, but you don’t wear it, why not? I don’t wear some of my shirts because they need to be pressed. I wear wash and wear a lot more than I wear clothes that need to be steamed or pressed. I never wear or buy clothes that need to be dry-cleaned. However, if you add a 15-20 minute ironing session once a week, you might open up a whole new aspect of your wardrobe. (Fabric softener helps prevent wrinkles and a light sizing helps keep clothes crisp.)

Step Two:

Now, you should have only clothes that fit and that you like in your closet. You can choose to keep your closet like that, or you can go further and divide your clothes into sets or “capsules.” Each article of clothing in a set should go with the others. My closet can be divided into a brown set and a black set.

The brown set contains khakis, brown pants, a brown houndstooth jacket, and gold, green, and orange shirts. It goes with the brown belt and the brown slides. In the winter, I have two pairs of brown boots I can wear with this set.

The black set contains my black pants, black print skirts, gray jacket, and blue and purple tops. It goes with the black slides and the black boots.

In theory, I could grab any bottom and top from the set and have it work. There are exceptions. I have two blue blouses that don’t work with any of my current black pants, but they look good with my khaki pants. They would go into the brown set. Likewise, I have a green shirt that looks better with black pants, so it goes into the black set. Be flexible with your division.

Once you’ve divided your clothing into sets, then you can arrange them by type within their set. For example, in my brown set, I would have jackets, long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, skirts, and pants. I would do the same in my black set.

To get even more detailed, you can arrange each type of clothing in color order. (I would follow the rainbow- red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple-black-white.) This way, you could tell at a glance what you have and what you might need. Looking at my closet, I can tell I need a solid jacket that works with khaki pants. If I happened to find one in a sale, it would be a good purchase. Once you’ve arranged your closet, it’ll be easier to see the holes in your wardrobe as well.

Once you’ve done your own closet, you can do your spouse’s and your kids’ closets. I arranged my husband’s clothes in color order this way and discovered that he absolutely doesn’t need any more blue polo shirts.

For kids, it’s often easier to keep one capsule. For my older son, we’re just going to have a khaki capsule, to keep things simple. He has to wear polo shirts and khakis to school, with a belt and dress shoes. His khaki capsule will contain only clothes that are acceptable under the dress code.

Our younger son goes to a school that allows jeans and t-shirts, so he won’t officially have a capsule. Capsules work really well for girls, who tend to have more colorful separates.

As for casual clothes… jeans, shorts, and t-shirts… those can be folded in your dresser or hung up in all the new space you found in your closet when you cleaned out the clothes that don’t fit. Try to keep them separate from your dressier clothes.

Even if you never leave the house and only wear casual clothes, this would be a good process for you. It will help set apart your church clothes and if you have a last-minute function to attend (or a surprise job interview), you’ll have clothes ready. I do recommend that stay-at-home moms try to acquire and maintain at least one suit-set that would be appropriate for a job interview. You never know when life circumstances could force you to get a job, and during a family crisis is not the best time to try to put together a good interview look. Even if you are employed and intend to stay with your company forever, still make sure you have at least one interview outfit. You never know when you might have to interview within or without the company.

Managing your clothes will help you find weaknesses and figure out what you need to have on hand for a functional wardrobe.

Later, we will tackle dresser organization and SHOES!

Does this sound familiar? You have a visitor coming over at short notice, or you’re holding a birthday party for a child. You’re going to have company and you want your house to look its best. Things are looking okay, except for a couple of coats, some magazines, some mail, maybe some toys. Do you pick everything up (maybe in a laundry basket or a dishpan) and stash the bin somewhere until after the event? Here’s the important question: do you have more than one such bin from more than one such cleaning frenzy?

Obviously, the BEST thing to do is to keep the house tidy enough to where you never have to do a “Dash and Stash.” But let’s be honest here. We’re messies. Something is going to come along, maybe after you’ve been sick, or unmotivated, or after you’ve had a crisis that has kept you from being able to do that upkeep. Or maybe you’re still digging out from your clutter problem. Maybe your home is more than just a little messie. Sometimes, Dash and Stash seems to be the only option.

Two things will make a difference. Either get committed to cleaning out the Dash and Stash bin very quickly after such a cleaning frenzy, or figure out how to do an Emergency Clean Sweep without a Dash and Stash.

When you Dash and Stash, one of the most important things you can do is roughly categorize the items. Don’t stash dishes, clothes, books, toys, trash, and papers in the same box!

My advice would be to first dash around and grab all the dishes and trash. It will help to carry a dishpan and have a plastic grocery bag looped around your wrist while you do this step. Once you have all the visible trash and dishes, put the dishpan and trash-bag in an accessible place. You might still need them.

Now, grab a laundry basket (or another bag, if you must) and gather all the clothes. It’s likely there are socks in unlikely places, like in the couch or under the entertainment center. Don’t bother to move any furniture, just grab what you can see. Put the clothes wherever you keep laundry, the closer to the washer, the better.

Now, grab a bin, box, or tote and gather all the toys (if you live with kids.) Plop the bin in the owners’ room(s) and give the owners a deadline to clean it out (unless they’re babies.)

Grab all the books and put them on a shelf as neatly as you can.

NOW you’re ready to stash. Sort of. As you’re grabbing the magazines and papers that are left after the other rounds, cull all the obvious trash (empty envelopes, advertising fliers, magazine subscription cards, etc. Trust me, you’re not missing out on anything… new ads will flow in pretty quickly.) Put the rest of the papers and magazines in your bin.

If you really don’t have time to presort, then it’s extra important that you go through the box every day and don’t let it sit.

You can do Dash and Stash if you make sure the bin doesn’t stay full for very long after the cleaning. Set yourself a time limit. You could vow to clean out the bin within a day, or you could give yourself a full month. Whatever time works for you… the important thing is to work within your own limitations. After the event, you can set the bin in a prominent place so people can pick out their belongings and put them away in the right place. You can pick at it, pulling one thing out every time you go by and putting it in its proper place. Or you can add it to your daily list and devote 15 minutes or so to making sure everything gets put back in the right place.

If you were able to presort, then sorting through the box will be slightly easier. You can go through it with the 5 POP method (5 Pieces of Paper), which will be described in a future article on paperwork. Basically, you grab the top 5 pieces of paper in the bin and sort and file them. That’s it. Do it several times a day and you’ll eventually whittle it down.

A better option for most of us under most circumstances is to avoid doing the Dash and Stash in the first place, if at all possible. ONLY do Dash and Stash for emergencies. Don’t get into the habit of doing them on your regular cleaning schedule. You’ll just set yourself up to be overwhelmed later.

A big part of the hoarding problem is guilt. You look at the items that have served you well, or that maybe haven’t lived up to your hopes for them (but you just want to give them one more chance) and you can’t bear the idea of parting with them. It gets so bad that the t-shirt from a chili cook-off you didn’t even go to is equally as valuable as the sweater your grandma knitted for you for the bicentennial. It shouldn’t be like that. There is stuff and then there are treasures, and you have to learn to tell the difference.

I used to feel guilty if I didn’t keep everything that was ever given to me. I felt like all of the giver’s love was tied up in the object, and that if I didn’t like it, or outgrew it, or never used it, I still had to keep it because it was a gift. The sad thing about this view is that I was hanging on to something I could or would never use that someone else might love or need. I still feel a little twinge when a gift goes into the donation box, although that rarely happens. I figure if I’m tough enough on the other stuff, I can afford to keep the less suitable gifts, because they’re important to me.

Another problem is landfill guilt. Sometimes, it’s not possible to recycle paper, but if you worry at all about the environment, it feels terrible to contribute more trash to the dump. Get over it. Your house is not a landfill, and you shouldn’t use it as one. Don’t keep trash in your house to avoid adding it to the dump. You have other options to help the environment, other than using the house as a dumpster. You can recycle. If your town has optional curb-side recycling, use it. It’s just as easy to put paper in a blue sack as it is to put paper in the trash (or on a pile.) It helps with the guilt if you know your paper will be reused. If your town doesn’t have recycling, maybe you can consider working to make it happen.

Reduce the amount of stuff you bring into the house. My downfall is magazines. I cannot throw away a perfectly good magazine. So, I try to buy as few as I can. I’ve gone from buying 20 or more magazines a month to getting two by subscriptions and the occasional interesting-looking magazine from the newsstand. I’m also working on getting them out of my house while they’re still fresh. I try to donate the finer ones to libraries and the celebrity trash to doctor’s offices. Homemaking and cheap gardening magazines can go to daycare centers. Or you can find a friend who wants your old magazines. (Preferably a friend who has the guts to throw them away when done.)

Duplicate items cause clutter, too. We have 6 irons (other than our daily-use iron.) I doubt any of them work. We have three extra phones, a Dustbuster that has never worked, two Dirt Devils, an upright vacuum cleaner that I hate and refuse to use, an extra toaster, three ceiling fans, car speakers for a 67 Ford Fairlane (we now have a 72 Ford Galaxie 500 with perfectly good speakers,) brake calipers, a burnt out portable typewriter… the list goes on and on. I’m sure if you’re any kind of messie or hoarder, you have a similar list. Get rid of that stuff! Here in the States, there are people who will come and pick up scrap metal, and a lot of that stuff definitely falls in that category. When you replace an appliance, get rid of the old one! If it still works, give it to someone needy. If you’re like us, using appliances until they die, throw it away. Once again, your house is not a landfill.

At some point while you’re ruthlessly decluttering your house, you’re probably going to sit back and say, “I don’t want to do this again.” Life always requires some decluttering, whether it’s the clothes your kids keep outgrowing, or the books that you don’t need to keep around any more, but you can cut it way down. The first, and most important thing, is to think very carefully about what you bring into your house. If you’re a book-hoarder like I am, maybe you can check out more books from the library and buy fewer. Be pickier about your clothing. Cut back on magazine subscriptions. Turn down invitations to make-up parties, kitchen parties, lingerie parties, or any other party where you’ll be guilted into buying something. If you’re usually the hostess, try holding the parties only when the gift is something you really want and need.

Avoid places where you tend to over-buy. It’s not necessarily about money. You may know that you can walk into the Salvation Army with 10 bucks and walk out with four shopping bags full of clothes. Don’t do it! Even if you’re hitting the sales, make a list before you ever leave the house, and if you’re out to get two sweaters for your younger son, don’t buy four sweaters, a pretty candle, three scarves, and some books. It’s likely one sweater won’t fit, the candle will smell funny, you don’t like the scarves that much (but you were afraid someone else would buy them,) and you don’t have time to read the books. Clutter. As you get better at this, you’ll learn to recognize the real treasures. You won’t be as tempted to buy something because you’ll never see it again or because you’re afraid someone else will buy it. You know what? The truth is, you can probably live without it.

How many things do you really need to have? This is something you might want to think about after you’ve decluttered, but before you bring new things in to fill the void. (You may panic at the sight of all those bare shelves and empty drawers!) There are books and websites which will list the items needed for a perfect wardrobe or for a well-stocked kitchen. Try checking your inventory against those, and think carefully about whether you really need the suggested items.

Once you get your house the way you want it, try the trick of getting rid of something for every new thing you bring in. I find, however, that it’s easier to avoid buying something than it is to get rid of it. You can try an old trick I remember from a favorite children’s book. Write down the item you want on a list, and check back a couple weeks later to see if you still really want it.

I’ve noticed that homes have certain areas that are “framed” by the architecture of the home or apartment. Doorways are frames, windows are frames, some furniture setups form “frames.” All you have to do is look in the frame and arrange what’s inside in a way that pleases you (but is still functional.)

A logical place to start is the front door. What kind of picture is the front door framing? Is it framing a collection of plastic bags from the discount store along with a pile of shoes and toys? (Many times, ours frames a suitcase left behind the couch after a trip along with the extension cord we use when we vacuum. Pretty ugly.) You can move everything and then find some pretty things to put there instead (use things you already have, rather than buying something new.) Or, you can look at what ends up there and figure out a way to accomodate it. Put a shoe rack there that’s big enough to hold one pair of shoes for each person (they can keep the rest in their bedrooms.) Put a pretty covered basket to hold the basketballs and trucks and other toys that pile up. Mount a mail holder on the wall to hold the mail that ends up there. Put up a pretty, framed picture… it’s your choice.

Take some time once a day, once every other day, or once a week, to look through one of the natural frames and to fix what’s out of place. Look through your windows from the outside and make what’s visible look nice. Sit in the various seats throughout your house and look through the doorways to the hallways or into the other rooms, and fix just what you can see.

I’m not advocating that you JUST clean what you can see from the other room, but it’s a good place to start. It’s a good way to take a different tack on cleaning. It’s a nice change.

I was hoping to have some good advice for you on this page, but since I am struggling here, all I can tell you is what I am going to try next and whether or not it works.

There are a lot of ways to tackle clutter. I think the important thing is to pick away at it a little at a time. Figure out how much you can get rid of at one time without feeling major stress. You may have to start with throwing away one magazine a week or giving away one piece of clothing a week. Figure out your comfort level, and don’t try to exceed it by too much, or you will burn out. Make declutter dates with yourself. Write it down on your calendar. Set your goal, whether you want to spend a certain amount of time decluttering (say, 15 or 30 minutes) or whether you want to get rid of a certain number of items (say 25 items per session.) If you keep at it, you will eventually take control of that clutter!

My clutter problem can be divided into four categories:

• Paper: I have a hard time throwing away paper. That includes letters, junk mail, old newspapers, and my worst vice: magazines. I’m getting better at dealing with the magazines now. Before we moved from Germany to Texas, I threw away a bunch of them.

• I’m gradually tightening my rules on which magazines I am allowed to keep. I allow myself to keep:

  • any magazine with Madonna in it

  • any magazine with a picture of my dog’s breed–she’s a rare breed, so that’s one magazine so far,

  • and magazines with home decorating pictures I want to cut out and glue into my idea book. If I don’t cut out the pictures, then I have to throw away the magazines after a year or so.

• I’m trying to find the best way to deal with personal letters. I just can’t throw them away, and I won’t. We’re allowed to determine something like that, as long as the benefits of keeping the letters outweigh the costs of the storage space and clutter. Right now, I keep my letters in shoeboxes of various sizes, sorted by who they’re from. I’d like to buy some 3-ring binders and sheet protectors and put the letters in those, arranged by sender and date.

• With junk mail and newspapers, my main problem is I just forget to deal with them and they pile up. For that, I hope to set a weekly date to pitch all that stuff.

Clothes:

• Oh, I have a terrible problem with clothes. I keep far too many clothes: clothes that don’t fit, clothes that need mending, clothes that are terribly out of style. I’m still wondering how to deal with this. I’m putting off dealing with clothes I love that don’t fit until my 30th birthday next fall. That is my weight-loss goal date and whatever doesn’t fit on that day GOES. Bye Bye! With the clothes I don’t like so much, it’s a matter of just getting around to getting them out of the house. I’m going to store them in the basement until the yard sale, and whatever doesn’t sell goes straight to the Salvation Army. I try to keep in mind that my clothes aren’t doing anyone any good if they’re sitting, unworn, in my closet.

Toys:

• We are blessed with an abundance of toys. We also have two young sons, so those toys do get good use. But those two boys have more toys than they can play with. We are going to deal with this by having each boy fill a large box with toys he doesn’t want any more. Each boy will be responsible for selling his own toys and will get to keep all the proceeds. If we found a good charity that gave used toys to needy kids, we would donate to that, but they always seem to want new, understandably enough.

Miscellaneous:

• Oh, I hate that word. Miscellaneous. These are the things that just don’t fit ANY category. These are the things that won’t fit neatly in a drawer or binder. These are the things that have no logical place in my home, yet I can’t bring myself to throw them away. These are knick-knacks I don’t want any more but can’t find a good home for. I’m still struggling with Miscellaneous. We’ll set up a table for that at our yard sale—whatever’s left, again, goes to Salvation Army.

I am setting some decluttering goals. We are going to have a yard sale or rent a table at a flea market, either this fall, or next spring. The last time we did one, right before leaving Germany, I was happy to find good homes for a lot of stuff, and I also made 40 dollars. I don’t miss anything we sold, either!