Tag Archives: Clutter

Decluttering Mom for Mother’s Day

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , ,

Mother’s Day is this Sunday in the U.S., and though it’s been a tradition for years to inundate Mom with all sorts of gifts, from perfume to clothes to housewares to stationery……don’t do it!

If your mom lives with lots of clutter, the last thing she needs is more of it. And if she doesn’t live with clutter, it’s logical that she probably doesn’t want to clutter up her place with things she doesn’t need but feels she should keep because they’re from her kids.

So what should you give your mom for Mother’s Day?

Speaking as the mom of several adults, I think I vouch for most moms when I say we’d just like to hear from you. Seeing you would be even better! You don’t have to give us lace hankies, or cutesy dishtowels with clever sayings on them. We prefer your presence over your presents.

But if you can’t be with us on Mother’s Day, and you feel you must give us a gift, consider the options that are either temporary or experiences:

  • Cut flowers are beautiful. We can enjoy them for a few weeks until they wilt. We’ll always remember that they came from you.
  • Flowering annual plants are wonderful; they are so pretty and last all summer, making our porches and balconies look lovely.
  • A sweet treat is always appreciated; there are many sugar-free and gluten-free goodies available if your mom is diabetic or has specific dietary requirements.
  • Gift cards are always nice, and the gift of an experience is even better, like tickets to a concert, or a few hours at a spa.

The very best gift, of course, would be an experience with you. No clutter, just joy!

Decluttering a Working Kitchen, Part 3

By Claire Posted in Clutter, My Books, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

Whether the eating area in your house is located in the kitchen, next to it, or in a separate dining room, the table in it is likely to be a magnet for anything you need to set down instead of taking time to find a place for.  That’s why it’s so hard to keep a table clear of everything except place settings.

If you eat in front of the television, this may not be a concern for you. But my family likes to eat at the table where we converse while we eat (no phones allowed), so a clear table is a necessity.

It’s also a necessity when I’m cooking, because our kitchen has so little counter space. So when I bake cookies, there may be a few cooling racks on the kitchen table. Every year, we decorate dozens of Christmas cookies on that table. We even set bags of freezer meals on the table while assembling them. But whatever we put on that table, it has to be gone before suppertime so we can eat.

In a small house, it isn’t just food that ends up on the kitchen table, as I noted in my e-book, Secrets of Small-House Living:

Most rooms in a small house need to be multi-functional, and the eating area is no exception. Our kitchen table sometimes serves as a gift-wrapping station, a crafting area, a work area (especially at tax time), and a parking zone for the groceries as they transit between the driveway and the kitchen. For that reason, we’ve had to get in the habit of keeping it clear. We can’t let it become a catch-all, because we need that space, even when no one is eating.

Often the mail tries to pile up on our kitchen table. I go through it daily, shredding and filing, but occasionally I can’t get to it. It’s amazing how quickly other papers are magically drawn to that spot! Before I know it, I’m sitting down to dinner next to a paper pile. I have to be very diligent to stay on top of that potential mess.

If you have children at home, I’m sure your table attracts far more than just paper. But even for us, it’s been a challenge to find other places to put the things that are so easy to throw on the table:

It helps to keep some filing places nearby. There’s a small basket on the wall, near my calendar. That’s where I put the bills. A few nearby kitchen drawers hold personal financial paperwork, sale flyers and coupons. Junk mail goes straight to the recycler or shredder. Everything else goes to the far end of the table, which is near the basement door. I’ve gotten into the habit of taking whatever’s on the far end of the table down to the basement with me when I pass by. (The basement is where we keep our filing cabinets.) Some days I feel like I’m just taking pieces of paper up and down the steps. But there’s no room upstairs for a filing cabinet.

Inside the kitchen cabinets that face the eating area, I keep information taped to the doors. My phone number list is there; it includes our doctors’ and dentist’s numbers, among others. (I’m old-school, so I don’t keep it all on my cell phone.) The insides of kitchen cabinet doors are great places for keeping information that needs to be easily accessible.

Since I wrote that, I did make a change in how I do things in the eating area. I got tired of constantly taking papers down to the filing cabinet in the basement. So I now keep an accordion file in a large kitchen drawer next to the table. Every six months or so, I take that accordion file to the basement and file everything. Then I bring it back up and put it in the drawer. It saves me a lot of steps, and allows me to easily access recent files.

Ultimately, the key to keeping your eating area clear of clutter is to make sure you have places to put the things that end up on the table. Backpacks should go on coat racks by the door, or on your children’s bed posts. Groceries should be put away promptly. If these things have a place to go, they won’t be left on your table. And having a clean table goes a long way toward making your kitchen, and in fact your main living area, look comfortable and uncluttered.

Why Japanese-Style Decluttering Isn’t Optimal for Most Americans

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

With her new Netflix series, writer/declutterer Marie Kondo is leading the decluttering boom that continues to grow. There is no doubt that her work is inspiring to many people.

But she lives in Japan, where the average home is 700 square feet in Tokyo, 1023 square feet in Japan as a whole, and 1600 square feet in small cities outside of Tokyo. Compare this to the U.S. where it’s been estimated that homes are twice as large as in Japan, approximately 1800-2000 square feet in the cities and almost 50% larger than that where there is new construction, and it becomes obvious that decluttering American-style requires a completely different dynamic than the way Ms. Kondo declutters.

Yes, her ideas are often clever, but she can’t address the special kind of desperation that results when you’re overwhelmed with clutter in multiple rooms and levels, not to mention offsite in a storage unit (or two). Her techniques are useful, but you need a plan to work through such a lot of stuff, step by step, so that you don’t get discouraged or run out of energy and give up before you’ve gone through everything.

Just the fact that Americans tend to have more children than the Japanese results in larger homes with more kiddie clutter that reproduces faster than one can imagine, thanks to generous doting relatives and friends. Like everything else, when it comes to clutter, we Americans do it up big.

So when you consider the quantity of stuff we’re talking about, it could literally take years to say thank you and goodbye to each item you’re giving up (as Ms. Kondo recommends) in a major decluttering effort. Personally, I’ve learned over the years that sorting everything, keeping only the most useful and beautiful items, and filling the car with the rest of the stuff and dropping it off at the Goodwill without a backwards glance is quicker and less emotional. But that’s just me 😉

His and Hers Clutter

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal Tagged , , , ,

Within our extended family, there is a pair of married packrats. Their house achieved hoarder status long ago, with tall piles of junk lining paths through rooms. No one has been in their dining room for 20 years because the floor is covered with piles of stuff; you can’t even see the table or chairs.

It sets off my claustrophobia to see teetering piles of stuff on every surface. I don’t really like eating at their house on holidays or birthdays because their kitchen counters have so much stuff on them that I don’t see how they can possibly keep them clean enough to prepare food. My adult kids won’t go there anymore because it’s too hard to keep their toddlers safe.

So I have a very hard time visiting these two relatives. I just want to back up the truck and clean that place out. I don’t know how they stand all that mess. But I suspect that there’s some kind of competition going on.

You see, they use each other’s clutter as an excuse for keeping their own. When one brings home more stuff, the other declares that they shouldn’t have to give up any of their own clutter just to make room for their spouse to bring home things they’ve bought. The result is a steadily filling house.

It’s hard enough for an individual to conquer their clutter issues. But it’s twice as hard when it involves a couple. There’s no one there to encourage them to get a handle on the mess. Instead, they keep adding to it.

Interestingly, no one in the family ever comments on the piles of stuff surrounding us as we sit and visit. After all, they’re both middle-aged adults, and we’re not their mommies. But I guarantee, many of us are thinking, “Get a dumpster! STAT!”