Tweak: Declutter Daily

January 6, 2009 · Posted in Catherine's Story, Declutter Daily, Tweaks

I can still remember the moment clearly when I decided to tackle the clutter once and for all. I was sitting at the computer desk in our bedroom.

The desk was piled high with mountains of paper, empty coffee cups, CDs, assorted junk and garbage and who knows what else. The bedroom in which the desk stood was crowded with cardboard boxes of clothes, plastic totes full of clothes and heaps of clothes. There were shopping bags full of papers. There were narrow paths to get around the room. Of course, the bed was unmade.

From the desk I could see the laundry room that adjoined the bedroom. The laundry room floor was entirely covered by an 18-inch deep pile of dirty clothes. I had to step up onto the dirty clothes to do wash, and sometimes I would have to move the heap away from the dryer door so that it would open and close.*

The kids rooms were also piled high with junk. With nobody to teach them how to stay organized and get rid of what they no longer needed, how could it be any different?

The living room was also filled with clutter. Sometimes we’d manage to get it cleared out down to the bare floor, but toys and junk piled up again quickly.

The kitchen typically had a pile of “recycling” in the corner — but really, when there’s a big pile of empty bottles and cans it looks more like trash than recycling, doesn’t it? More often than not the counters were piled high with dirty dishes waiting patiently to be washed, sometimes for days.

To tell the truth, the clutter had been even worse at times in the years before that fateful day, but I had already been working what would become the Tweaks System. Regular grocery shopping and cooking at home meant that the kitchen had to at least be functional. The junk food packaging piles from my darkest times were already a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, the house was incredibly disorganized and cluttered and I knew I wanted this to change. I just had no idea how — the task of getting it all cleaned up seemed absolutely overwhelming.

Then, on a message board I found a post about an organizational site called FlyLady run by a wonderful lady named Marla Cilley. Her site put a name to what our family was living in: C.H.A.O.S. , or Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome. How apt, because I would panic if we had unexpected drop-in guests!

According to FlyLady, the first step in dealing with a chaotic disorganized home is to get rid of the clutter — and anything you don’t use frequently or wholeheartedly love is clutter. You can’t clean around clutter, you have to just get rid of it. And she is absolutely right.

Following FlyLady’s instructions, I started to clear up our clutter that very day, spending only 15 minutes per day on the task. This is critical. For those of us with serious clutter and hoarding problems, the clutter can be so overwhelming that we can easily become overwhelmed and burned out from trying to deal with it. As Marla says, our homes did not get cluttered overnight, and they don’t have to get cleared out overnight either.

Once I committed to clearing out clutter a little bit every day — and of course I sometimes neglected the task but then I just got right back on the wagon — our home gradually became clear of junk. I think it took about six months total! But once the junk was gone I couldn’t believe how much easier life got.

*FlyLady calls this phenomenon “Mount Washmore”

Remember:

Choose no more than one tweak per month – don’t try to pile them on! Practicing a single tweak for at least a full month gives you the best chance of forming a real habit and life change. Do not try to add another tweak until the previous tweak has become a habitual part of your life (this can sometimes take longer than a month).

This is all about loving yourself and creating a joyful life! Therefore, when choosing a new tweak to practice, pick one that is appealing and gives you a sense of anticipation.

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorywithserifs/