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Diary of a Clutterbug
by Betsy Fein

Description: Tips for decluttering your home from an ex-clutterbug.

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Dear Diary:

December 1:

As you know, for what seems like two or THREE YEARS, I have told you how SICK I AM of living in a permanent disaster area known as “My Home”. When we got married, Gary and I set up a nice neat house—everything had a place, and we even had an extra room for odds and ends. Soon this “extra room” filled up, then the kids came, and when I started working, there just was not enough time or room to keep things straight. Although Gary tries to help, neither of us have the willpower or the energy to truly tackle our entire clutter problem once and for all. All these years, I’ve been embarrassed to have people over because I’m afraid they’ll open one of my closets and be suffocated by the piles of junk that may fall on their head! I’ve read several books on how to get organized, but my house is so overwhelmingly cluttered, I don’t know how or where to start. But now, I am determined to once and for all resolve this. My motto from here on out is: “NO MESS WILL SURVIVE IN 2005!! !”

December 5:

I spoke to my friend Nancy (who has always been a big clutterbug) and she told me all about how great life is now that she decluttered her home and home office. I remembered Nancy’s house as being right out of Messy Monthly. After visiting it yesterday, it looks like a photo from Architectural Digest. Nancy went on and on about the benefits of being clutter free. She told me how she now never loses anything or misses an appointment. How she feels proud, not embarrassed, to have friends come over. How she has improved her credit by setting up a bill system so she never misses a due date. How she can get so much more work done in her home office because she knows where to find what she is looking for. O.K., O.K., I said. I get the point! That night I resolved (for the 837th time) to get rid of MY clutter as well.

December 6:

After staring intently at my clutter for at least 15 minutes, I have even more resolve to tackle this project.

December 7:

Still intent on tackling the clutter!

December 9:

Yesterday, I finally got the energy and willpower to try to tackle the problem in my home office. I timed myself—2 hours per night—no more, no less. I even set the oven timer to remind me when the time was up! Nancy had given me some useful tips, and it turns out my main problem is I don’t know when to throw things out. Her tip was to use the “Retain, Act, Throw” method, or “RAT”, as in, don’t be a “Pack-Rat”. I need to Retain only those papers that I absolutely need and which are irreplaceable. I need to set up a folder of papers that require Action. And I need to Throw anything I can replicate, or anything that has already been acted upon (not bills, though!) Things like catalogs—they go in the trash. I can go online to shop in any of these catalogs if I want. Any newsletter, newspaper, or magazine more than 1 month old gets trashed. I have already made great progress, and the piles on my desk are slowly dwindling.

The most important questions to ask myself in deciding whether to RETAIN or THROW are: (1) What's the worst thing that could happen if I threw this away? In almost every case, I have found that, at most, a minor inconvenience would occur. (2) If I THROW it away and discover I need it later, could I replace it? Again, it is a very rare occurrence in which a notice or its contents cannot be replaced, and (3) By the time I might need it, will it be obsolete? While it’s always hard to predict the future, I find that most papers have a “shelf life” of a few weeks at most, after which the information they contain goes stale. I figure that as a rule of thumb, there should be approximately a 4-to-1 ratio of "THROW" to "RETAIN

December 11:

I made a note in my schedule to do 2 hour of organizing and here goes—I want to work on my closet and as a reward for my work, I’m going to the movies. I’m setting my microwave on a timer for 120 minutes. First I need to go through all the clothes and REALLY decide if these are all the clothes I want to keep—if not, I’m going to give them to Goodwill. I’m not going to try to design systems that take more than a few minutes a day to sustain. For example, when organizing my closet, I’m not going to get caught up trying to organize by color, size, and season, or I’ll spend a lot of time trying to keep a system that takes too much effort and will not last. Instead, I’m going to group my clothes by type (blouses, skirts, slacks, dresses, etc.) so that it will be easy to see where to put everything.

December 12:

I woke up this morning and could actually see all my clothes in the closet and getting ready took a lot less time. Today I’m going to push and do another 1-2 hours. I really need to figure out why I am late for things all the time and keep missing appointments. I think it’s because I have all my flyers posted on the bulletin board in the kitchen, a calendar for home stuff and a calendar for work stuff, and yellow post-its everywhere!! I need to find something that can combine everything into one central calendar. I’m going to see what my options are— I just did some research and found a great day timer that will keep all my schedules in one book. Now I need to take all the post-its, flyers and papers and add them into my new book, and I plan to keep this with me at all times.

December 15:

I already feel that the chaos in my life is going away—today I set aside 3 hours to tackle my kitchen. I took everything out of the cupboards and decided if I’m still using everything. It turns out that I have way too many Tupperware items that don’t have lids to and that I don’t even use anymore. I got rid of those. I also got rid of the 97 free mugs that fill up space that I don’t use and the broken or chipped items. I bought a plate organizer that gives me 2 tiers of plate space. I also took all the bulky items (food processor, popcorn maker, lobster pot etc) that I rarely use and brought them into the basement. I can’t believe how much room I now have!

February 18:

It’s been a while since my last entry but I am so happy with all the organization changes that I’ve been able to make and don’t feel embarrassed if someone pops over without calling first—I’m not saying it’s not hard to maintain but with just a little effort each day, I’m able to keep the systems that I’ve established. Now if I can just get Gary to pick up his dirty socks from the floor, I’ll be all set…

Betsy Fein is the President of Clutterbusters!!, a professional organizing firm based in Rockville, Maryland. For more information, go to http://www.clutterbusters.com, 301-309-9614, feintimes@aol.com.