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How My Husband and I Finally Got on the Same Page About Clutter

11/03/2018 - 11:00 AM

Clutter triggers me in the worst way — toys scattered across the living room rug, clothes piled on the bedroom floor, papers hogging precious table surfaces, the junk drawer you can barely close — all of it feels like a giant roadblock to relaxation for me. My husband does not have this relationship with clutter. He can block it out for the most part, file it in the "to attend to at some point" mental folder, and relax right around it.

For a while, the two of us wrestled with our differences, but when we became parents, our adorable toddler's clutter transformed a snowballing issue into a full-on avalanche that demanded a compromise. The resolve ended up being pretty straightforward: set up a system that simplifies the entire process and is easy enough to actually maintain. Is our home perfect? Of course not, but we feel good in it. After sifting through my fair share of podcasts and books on the subject and enduring our own trial and error, these six tips have made the biggest difference for us.

Purge Like Your Sanity Depends on It

The first and most important step for tackling clutter is to ruthlessly purge. In A Simplified Life: Tactical Tools For Intentional Living [1] by Emily Ley, Emily reminds us that the lack of organisational tools isn't the problem; the overabundance of stuff is. She suggests beginning the process by making a list of every space in your home — all rooms, wardrobes, cupboards, bathrooms, storage spaces, and so forth. Start with the most overwhelming area first to give yourself the confidence boost and gratification to slay the rest. Remove everything so you can see what you have and only keep what you absolutely love and really need. Keep a bin bag and recycling bags handy for everything you're dumping and boxes or bags for everything you're donating.

"Imagine the lightness I felt when our home held only absolute necessities and cherished treasures. Picture how much easier cooking dinner became when, instead of rifling through a cluttered utensil drawer and overflowing cupboard, I only had my best spatula and favourite dishes to choose from. Imagine how easy it became to dress three children every morning when the clothes in their drawers were neatly folded and fit perfectly (I can't tell you how many hours I've wasted digging through outgrown toddler clothes). Life suddenly became a lot easier. I breathed a little easier and had fewer chores to do, less junk to pick up every day, and less visual distraction. I underestimated how much physical, mental, and emotional effort I was giving to maintaining all our stuff. But when the clutter was gone? Everything in me quieted in a noticeable way," Emily writes. After going through this process in our home, I can't emphasise enough how empowering and motivating this practice is.

Find a Home For Everything

Even after purging, I realised clutter was still slowly accumulating in certain areas because we didn't have an easy system for putting things away. We were used to keeping a random assortment of seemingly miscellaneous things together in every room, like the extra pack of batteries on the living room table, the light bulb in the kitchen junk drawer, the nail file on the nightstand. Once we designated a spot for everything and began grouping like things together, we knew exactly where to put things when we were done with them: batteries with our cords, headphones, and other small electronics; light bulbs stored in the garage next to our tool box; nail file with other grooming tools. This small act helped us become so much more organised. Having a place for everything eliminates visual clutter and makes it easier and faster to pick up after yourself and find things when you need them.

Recruit Your Family

Another thing that helped my husband and I kick our clutter habit was getting on the same page about what we wanted to change. We talked about a timeline that worked for tackling our priority zones, took turns organising the biggest problem space each of us were drawn to, tag teamed the ones we were both invested in, and chose where and how it makes sense to store things. We're slowly starting to get our son involved as well. This list of age-appropriate chores [2] has loads of suggestions for how kids can help and when.

Time Yourself . . . Seriously

If you're like me and tend to get easily distracted while tidying, this next trick will help. In Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess [3], author Rachel Hoffman suggests setting a time limit for being productive and following it up with a period of rest. She suggests either a 20:10 or 45:15 ratio of work and relaxation, and I can't recommend it enough.

I've found that setting my oven or iPhone timer for as little as 15 minutes can even reap some huge benefits on the days I'm feeling especially drained. When every minute counts, you'd be surprised by how quickly you work, how well you focus, and how manageable keeping a tidy, clutter-free home can be if you exert a little energy on a consistent basis. This list of nine things people with clean homes do every day [4] is a great one for getting started.

Keep Yourself Entertained

Introducing an element of joy and fun to make mindless work less boring is a game-changer. My trusted hack for powering through housework is to put on a pair of headphones and tune into my favourite podcasts. I become so absorbed in the conversation and storytelling that I don't even pay attention to the work I'm doing and it goes by in a flash. If you used to enjoy reading but don't have the time to get through as many books as you used to, use this time to listen to audible books instead. If neither of those are your thing, put on some good music! If you're stationary and can keep an eye on your screen, try streaming your favourite series on a laptop. Treating myself to a pair of noise-cancelling headphones has been one of my all-time favourite purchases, and boy do they come in handy here.

Make a Power Hour Habit

I was introduced to this concept while listening to Gretchen Rubin's Happier podcast [5], and it's brilliant. The idea is that we all have those small, nonurgent tasks that we don't prioritise because there's always something else that seems more important. As these tasks add up, they start to weigh on us.

Gretchen's solution? Power hour. Once a week for one hour, she recommends steadily working to knock out the list of these nonrecurring, unrelated chores that you'd otherwise put off. My last one was dedicated to taking the stickers off all of the new windows that were installed in every room in our house with a razor blade and cleaning solution. For perspective, we moved in six months ago. Some of the stickers were as small as my pinkie and others were as big as my hand, but removing them made it easier to enjoy the view without being reminded of my to-do list.


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