Clutter leads to stress!
It’s true. Clutter-filled environments make for a clutter-filled life. When your surroundings are out of control, you often feel the same way. Clutter also has a knack for compounding itself, creeping into other areas of our lives like a fast-growing weed: your car, your desk at work, and even your mind! Creative people are sometimes thought to be unorganized and messy; but you can use that creativity to your advantage, by applying creative yet practical ways to conquer clutter in your life by using a strategic, prioritized approach.
It might be tempting to try and de-clutter everything at once; but remember the riddle: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Breaking a large endeavour into smaller pieces makes it manageable by allowing you to focus on one thing at a time. As a friend once told me, “if you want to clean out your garage, just picking up one piece of garbage and throwing it in the trash is the first step.”
Making a game plan
In a board game, you move from one square to the next. And the best place to start is SQUARE 1.
In a board game, you move from one square to the next. And the best place to start is SQUARE 1.
#1 – Home
A cluttered outside (your surroundings) can mean a cluttered inside (your mind), so the best place to start re-organizing is with your living environment.“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and neither was the clutter in your home. It didn’t build up overnight, so don’t put the expectation on yourself that your home can become de-cluttered in a single day, or even a year. So a good tip is to think about starting the process immediately following a major holiday. That’s the time when the decorations and special items need to get put away, and you can use that time to re-think the storage arrangements for them, what can stay and what can go. Similarly, give the kitchen and pantry some attention as you are cleaning up from a holiday meal or special event. When autumn approaches, putting away the kiddie pool or trampoline is the perfect time to revisit storage for all your summer items. This approach gives some forward momentum throughout the year, without overwhelm. Later on, you can use specific strategies for organizing individual rooms, as each room in your house has a different function.
#2 – Work
Like having a clean kitchen before you start cooking, a tidy workspace makes for a more focused and productive workday. Whether you work at home or away from home, set a specific time limit each day for decluttering your desk or work environment, say 30 to 45 minutes. No matter what, return to your work after time’s up; then repeat the process until it becomes a habit. Look for tasks that can be automated via software or other systems to free up physical time you can apply to things you must personally take care of.
#3 – Digital
In this, as my son keeps saying, the “information age”, keeping our digital life organized is sometimes even more daunting than the physical one. Our computers and other devices are being ambushed by information and messaging day and night, in addition to our own content, we must keep track of.
Decluttering your inbox can start with unsubscribing to lists that no longer have value to you, and deleting all the related messaging that has piled up. Be aware that your email may be on more than one list from the same company or source, and some list builders also allow other affiliates to access their lists. It may take a few layers of unsubscribing to shed them all, so stay strong!
For the rest of your emails, don’t even try to sift through them and waste valuable time. One trick is to create a new folder in your inbox and name it “prior to [date]” and move ALL your emails into that folder. From that point forward, deal only with new email as it comes in. Use the 3-D rule: “do, delegate, or dump,” keeping your fresh inbox squeaky clean. You can review old emails later if you like, but anything important can always be searched for by sender, topic or keyword.
Resident files on our computers can also get out of hand. Do yourself a favor by being a great file manager. Create folders either chronologically or by subject and establish a naming convention for files if possible. Remember that your file names will be displayed numerically first, then alphabetically. If you want items to always appear in sequence, use numerals at the beginning of the file name. A great rule for filing: file things in the way you predict you would look for them when the time comes. For example, if you wanted to search for a chocolate cake recipe, would your first inclination be to look under “chocolate” or “cake”?
For photos and other images, be sure to back them up on an external drive or let the cloud handle them. Users of Microsoft, Chrome and Apple devices have access to unlimited cloud storage with One Drive, Google Drive and iCloud. There’s no excuse for anyone to say, “oh, my computer crashed and I lost all my pictures” ever again. The same goes for any computer file, whether it’s your latest draft of the Great American Novel or last week’s grocery list.
#4 – Vehicle
Make no mistake. Your car is a “small” space, but serves as more than passenger transport. It can become a mobile office or ad-hoc delivery van, easily collecting random “stuff”. If it doesn’t already have them, add storage pockets to your seatbacks. Use containers (with lids) that can slide underneath seats, and always, ALWAYS have a bag or other collector for garbage that gets taken out after every trip. And let’s face it, the “glove compartment” has never, and probably never will, be used for gloves, and considering the low amount of space it provides, leave it for the owner’s manuals and your registration papers, NOT sixteen ketchup packets. A great rule to follow at the end of a trip, is that nobody leaves the vehicle empty-handed, or at least leaves with everything they came with.
#5 – Slaying the Papermonster
This may be the most important organizing task you can do for yourself. It’s equally important to stick to a filing system as it is to devise one to begin with. One of the simplest and most compact ways to store any kind of documents or papers is an accordion file, available at any office supply store. Keep several, label them by topic whether its mortgage papers, financial statements, insurance policies, property appraisal, etc. For monthly bills, keep a set of 12 folders in a file case or cabinet, labeled by month. Put everything for that month in the appropriate folder. Ditto for business receipts if you have a home or side business; you can sort and calculate them at the end of the year, just corral them into months for now. Better yet, store them digitally by taking a photo of receipts or request email receipts at the store instead of paper ones.
I have to say something about incoming mail here. It drove me nuts when asked to help an elderly person read their mail or pay bills, and have to re-open a pile of already opened envelopes with the contents shoved back inside just to decipher what they were. Once it comes out of the envelope, it should stay out of the envelope and go immediately to the designated file area you’ve established; the envelope then goes directly to the recycle bin along with any junk mail!! As for unopened mail addressed to the many residents of your home, make a similar ‘slot’ system organized by person–just like in an office. Famous last words: make sure all of the recipients are sticking with the same program as you are!
#6 – Schedule
Not all things that need organizing are physical. Keeping track of events and appointments for everyone is crucial to a stress-free week or month. The old dry-erase calendar on the fridge may do the trick, but let technology help, too. Imagine a Microsoft Outlook calendar displayed on a monitor in your kitchen every morning, with everyone’s daily schedule on it. It would be like stepping into a hotel lobby or office building where you can see the daily events at a glance an in real time!
