Hello neighbor! I see you. It’s January and your coat closet looks like this:
Also, let’s talk about your playroom. You and I both know that there are crushed Cheerios and sticky popsicle wrappers hiding in the Lego box. If you have girls of a certain age, there is at least one naked, decapitated Barbie stuck under the sofa. Also, the power cords for your video game console and the various attachments look like a knitting project gone wrong. It would take a MENSA member to untangle them.
Don’t even get me started on your master bedroom closet. I know, without even looking at it, that it contains broken jewelry and one mate-less, grungy summer flip flop. Also, your dirty t-shirts have been on the closet floor so long, they have ceased to be “clothing” and are basically serving as alternative flooring for your home. Amiright? Well, God bless you and your mess. There ain’t no shame in your game, friend. You are in good company.
It’s a new year, the holiday haze has passed and it is time to clean up! Everyone is an organizer in January. So I thought I’d help you along by telling you the answer to the number one question my business partner and I get asked by our organizing clients. As we burrow through piles of stuff with weary homeowners, every single one of them asks this at some point: “Should I keep it or get rid of it?” This is the million dollar question. The true answer is: “It depends.”
Let me start at the beginning. The purpose of organizing is very straightforward. Organizing is meant to make you the boss of your belongings instead of the other way around. It is a way to maximize the joy and pleasure you receive from spending money on items for your family and from living in the home you paid for. When you become disorganized, your belongings start to control you. They litter your floors and make you feel inadequate instead of satisfied. You have to spend weekend time dealing with your stuff instead of playing with your kids or conversing with your spouse. You may even have to donate a precious hour of weeknight time to finding items that have been misplaced. At that point, you have basically paid for something that is making you sad. That is, in a nutshell, the greatest cost of disorganization. Your own hard-earned money is working against you! How rude!
When and if you decide to do something about it, you’ll need to winnow down your belongings to an amount that is easier to manage and store. How much stuff should you try to boss around? Well. It depends.
Do you have space to store it? A person with a five thousand square foot house and basement full of cabinets can happily and neatly store boxes of their children’ elementary school art if they will actually use it and look at it. If a client assures me that he or she will go downstairs a few times a year and shuffle through drawings of birds and tractors and smile delightedly then, by all means, they should buy some great storage boxes and they should keep the drawings! However, if that same person is living in a six hundred square foot apartment in an urban area then there simply will not be enough room to store copious amounts of art. That person should pick their five favorite drawings from each year and frame them. They could also place the drawings in a file marked “art” and tuck them inside a small file cabinet. The key is, you should never keep more than you can neatly store. Otherwise, you end up like the client we had whose entire entryway was filled with towers of DVDs. Yes she loved DVDs, but once they became unwelcome sculptures blocking ingress and egress from her home, they became a source of embarrassment and pain. She paid lots of money to feel terrible. When that starts to happen to you the answer is: Toss it or donate it because you don’t have room.
Do you lack the money to replace it? I have clients who literally have stacks of dirty plastic bins from Target blocking access to the tools in their garage. Every time they go to get a hammer, they have to pretend they are in an Olympic hurdle race in which the hurdles are grimy storage boxes. They hate the situation they are in but when I suggest that we donate the bins they say, “But I might need them later! And they are good bins!” Ok. Yes, all of that is true. However, here is the calculus that is missing from that statement. How much is storing ten bins that cost two dollars each costing you in happiness? And secondly, if you had to spend twenty more dollars buying similar bins when and if the need arises, how much would the loss of that money decrease your level of satisfaction and joy? If you are a person who can spend twenty dollars on household supplies without depriving your family of food, shelter or fun in any given month, then donate the bins or put them in the recycling can. By doing so, you are actually helping your money to function as it should! You paid for a garage, in part, so that you would have space to store cars, tools and other outdoor supplies. If buying another set of bins is not a huge deal, then let your garage be a working storage space instead of an obstacle course. Now, on the other hand, if you are person who is living paycheck to paycheck and you have room to store them (see above), wash and then keep the bins! Don’t deprive your kids of their weekly Chik-Fil-A treat because you threw out bins you couldn’t afford to buy again. That is a happiness killer.
Are you keeping it for purely positive reasons? There are only two good reasons to keep things. First, the item is being used or will be used in the next year. Second, the item makes you happy. Everything else should go to someone who can use it, to your favorite charity or to the trash. Most of our clients have gotten into dire organizing straits because they kept things for negative reasons. For instance, many people keep things they don’t like because “it was a gift and I feel guilty donating it.” Don’t. Gifting is about blessing someone you care for. If the gift is actually a giant storage headache or a piece of clutter for the recipient, then keeping it accomplishes exactly the opposite of what the giver intended. Clutter is a curse. Let the giver bless you by refusing to keep gifts that burden you. Pass them on to someone in need who would surely appreciate them. Then think happy, grateful thoughts about the person who bought you a gift and keep on truckin. Other bad reasons for keeping things that aren’t useful or actually make you unhappy? Because someone made it (sometimes people’s handmade gifts are not cute); because you got a great deal on it (then you aren’t losing much when you throw it away); or because it makes you feel like you wasted your money (if you bought it and never used it, yes you did. Acknowledge the loss, put on your big girl britches and move on. Don’t compound the loss by now letting it turn your home into a crap storage warehouse).
Final Thoughts:
If you can answer yes to all three of the questions above, then keep it! If not, you must let it go even if it hurts. Your reward for all this amazing mental discipline? A house that whispers, “you got this” every time you walk through the door.
In addition, people who stock a manageable amount of stuff in their homes don’t waste money repurchasing things that they already have. They know what they own so they don’t accidentally keep buying duplicates. They also don’t lose nearly as many items because of the simple fact that there is ample storage for everything. People who stay organized and save money year after year eventually get to ask a different question: “Shall we go on vacation?” The answer to that question is always a resounding “yes!”
P.S. For more awesome and inspirational organizing photos see http://www.houzz.com/pro/amazingspace1/amazing-space-professional-organizers. Admit it! You want to clean something out right now! Get going!
Linda McKeever says
Good stuff Amy! Just in time for my packing! I need to remember to “keep on truckin'” as you recommend!
Chuck Barnes says
I see that you have been sneakily looking into my private chaos, for my world resembles those images all too well. Nevertheless, mea culpa! I have sinned mightily, and now chortled mightily. The latter was more fun than the former ….