Strategic Clutter

Photo: qimono via Pixabay

Years ago, I participated in a blogging workshop with Sarah Reinhard at the Catholic Writers Online Conference. In it, Sarah suggested using our environment for inspiration when a topic for a post had failed to present itself.

Today is one of those days when a look around my office inspires little more than the urge to clean it, however I do have a few inspiration "nudges" that are part of the everyday scenery, no matter how cluttered. Here by design, they often help me out with a topic when no post is presenting itself.

Most mornings (at least the ones when I'm home alone), I say good morning to my Amazon Echo Dot.  Yes, I know she's not human (although the fact that I have to say, "Alexa" to activate her leads me to use female pronouns when I refer to her), but she tells me things like the weather and a fun fact about the day. The other week, for example, she told me it was the International Day of Happiness. Ironically, I'd already written a post about happiness that day, but thanks to Alexa, I found a great graphic to go with it. She'll also tell me the day and date, a helpful little trick when I'm on vacation and lose track.

Photo: Bucknell University Facebook page

But, since my office has no shortage of calendars, I can usually find that information on my own. On the wall behind my desk, I have a Bucknell calendar, featuring a different photo from my alma mater to brighten my office wall each month. In front of me is a smaller wall calendar purchased for the "just do it" kind of quote it provides each month. (March's quote was "Get it done." More on this month's quote next week). Finally, there's my page-a-day Happiness Project calendar, which has inspired several blog posts in the last several weeks.

There are those who prefer austere work spaces, and many organizers swear by "zones" and clear space. Although a clear desk top is my ultimate goal, being surrounded by inspiring things is also key. Things that bring back memories, make me smile and goad me into action are part of the ambience of my office, and too much clear space on walls and shelves feels as intimidating as a blank screen and no words to fill it.

Of course, clearing the stacks of paper around my sources of inspiration might give me a better view. Or, perhaps they provide a touch of irony. Either way, the next time I dig into the stuff on the desk, those sources of inspiration will be sticking around.

Saturday Special: Downsizing

AARP.org

Last Thursday was my birthday, and for some reason, I chose that day to tackle a mountain of outdated papers to be filed. The beauty of the "outdated" part was that most of the pile could be shredded or recycled, and so the mountain is no more.

So, when I came across this article yesterday on items to ditch when downsizing, it struck a chord with me. We're a ways away from actually downsizing, not ready to dispense with our vehicles or move into a smaller house just yet, but a few of the tips are useful even if you're not downsizing in the traditional sense.

I mean, after all, who doesn't want to reduce clutter? And a few guidelines often make the job easier.

Saturday Special: 10 Tips + 5 Minutes = Declaration of Independence from Clutter

barnesandnoble.com

Last spring, right around the time the semester ended, I made a trip to the library to drop off donations. Time to read was still around the corner, blockaded by papers and finals that needed to be graded, but sending an author to the library and expecting her to leave empty-handed is like sending a two-year-old to a candy store with the same expectation.

So, I went in search of books that might make worthy contributions to next semester's classes, and emerged with Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. Not only am I using it next semester, but I also enjoyed every chapter.

Today's Organization Extra, "10 Tips to Beat Clutter in Less Than 5 Minutes," is from Gretchen's Happiness Project Blog, one of many goals she set and achieved in conjunction with the writing of the book.

And who knows? These tips might actually yield that rare commodity: time to read a good book.

Saturday Special: Closet Cleaning Commentary

organizedcustomdesigns.com

What's the first thing you think of when you hear Buzz Feed? For me, it's quizzes -- silly quizzes that pop up on Facebook. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see Buzz Feed pop up in a different place: on my Google search for these Saturday posts. Not surprisingly, the same whimsy BF brings to its familiar posts runs through the more practical ones as well.

At our house, today marks the first Saturday of summer, so I thought I'd share a Buzz Feed post that's more amusing than practical. 102 Thoughts You Have While Cleaning Out Your Closet is a quick read that will inspire that wonderful "you mean, I'm not alone?" feeling, as well as a few chuckles. Maybe it will even inspire a first step toward closet de-cluttering...or maybe it'll just be good for a laugh.

Next Saturday, I'm bringing Buzz Feed back, with some practical solutions that we can implement after we clean out the closet.

Paths to Success

https://www.facebook.com/pageawards?fref=photo

So, how are those successes coming? Two weeks ago, I shared the first concept behind the STYLE acronym: Start with Successes. Today, I’d like to talk about some strategies to help create those successes, all of which revolve around the next letter in the STYLE acronym: Take Small Steps. 

clipartpanda.com

Because getting organized and staying that way is a challenge for me, I love it when I find baby steps that contribute to the process. I've already shared one of my favorites -- Give it Five! -- which is just what it sounds like. To Give it Five! choose one area, and allocate five uninterrupted minutes to making progress in that space. If you get on a roll, and time permits, Give it Five! is easily expanded into a longer chunk of time, but even if all you have is five minutes, that can be enough. Five minutes of clutter busting can provide a small success that inspires you to repeat the process in an hour, a day or a week. Give it Five! won't get major clutter under immediate control, but it can create a small feeling of accomplishment, which makes the whole process less intimidating.

I found another one of my favorites in an article I shared this time last month. In "10 Organizing Tips That'll Change Your Life," Cass Colin suggests this simple strategy: put small clean-up tasks into practice. This is one of those things naturally organized people (the ones I like to call Type A Organizers) do automatically, and it's an easy one to adopt. Instead of waiting for things to pile up, take care of them one at a time, which brings me to another one of my favorites....

zazzle.com

Don't put it down, put it away! As a recovering drop and run organizer, I sometimes have difficulty with this strategy, but when I remember to follow it, I create a lot less clutter in the first place. The pairing of this strategy with Give it Five! can be particularly useful for many of us whose default styles make spotless surfaces simultaneously desirable and difficult.

Finally, when all else fails and I'm feeling overwhelmed by stuff, I resort to playing little games with myself. One of my favorites is "pick up one thing," a twist on put small clean-up tasks into practice. It's simple -- each time I walk past a particular cluttered surface (usually my dining room table), I have to pick up one thing and put it where it belongs. In another version of this little mind game, which I often "play" before I sit down to watch TV or check Facebook, I assign myself a number (say, 15) and I have to pick up and put away that many things (from any location in my house) before I can move on to the fun thing that was next on my list.

While I'm sure that all of my Type A Organizer friends are shaking their heads at how complicated I'm making this, I'm equally sure that all of my overwhelmed wanna be organized friends "get" it. None of these tricks will solve major organizational issues, but they will allow us to take baby steps toward creating the organized world we want to live in. In addition, putting a dent in an overwhelming task leads to not only progress, but a sense of power over the very stuff that threatens to win the battle. And confidence is an important weapon in the clutter wars.

And that, my friends, is how we defeat clutter -- or at least call it a draw.

Maybe a Strong Gust of Wind Wouldn't Be a Bad Thing

I have a headache. While I'm sure much of it has to do with the intersection of my allergies with the rapidly changing Central Pennsylvania weather, I'm equally sure that I can blame the merry-go-round that is the impending month of May.

http://blog.dutchpt.com

The end of the semester is approaching, as are two writing events I love: my critique group's semi-annual retreat and the Pennwriters conference. This weekend, I'm going to a show at York Little Theatre and participating in a chapel choir concert in Lewisburg, honoring the retirement of our director, Dr. Payn. These are all wonderful things….so why does my head hurt?

Well, for starters, as a visual person, I've littered my living space with little reminders of all of the things I need to do, both for these events and on a day-to-day basis. Even when I am alone in a quiet house, everywhere I turn, something calls to me.

The need for visual reminders (beyond the usual lists) is a double-edged sword. Leaving things out where I can see them reduces my anxiety over forgetting to do them, but, at the same time, it increases my stress when my eyes have no place to rest.

Apparently I'm not alone. Researchers at Princeton have found that:

Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.

Um, yeah. What I just said. Too many reminders and I can't focus. My brain can't take it all in, and even if it manages to do so, it can't process what it took in. Or, in plain English, from an article in Psychology Today:

1. Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli (visual, olfactory, tactile), causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren't necessary or important.
2. Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on.
3. Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.
4. Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.
5. Clutter makes us anxious because we're never sure what it's going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.
6. Clutter creates feelings of guilt ("I should be more organized") and embarrassment, especially when others unexpectedly drop by our homes or work spaces.
7. Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brain storm, and problem solve.
8. Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the "pile" or keys swallowed up by the clutter). 

"But," I whine, "I need my reminders!"

So what's an overwhelmed visual person to do? Two things:

Make lists -- not just of what needs to be done, but of what I've accomplished as well. So much of what gets done in a day leaves no visual evidence behind (those emails I finally drafted and sent, for example, or the slides I created for class that live on my laptop and not amid the pile of papers on my desk). As a result, the things that are calling to me bully me into believing that I'm not accomplishing anything, even when I've put a sizable dent in the to-do list.

Corral it little by little. While I know that clearing my workspace is important, I'm at a point where I don't have time to get off the task treadmill long enough to do it right. So, as a stop-gap measure, I need to take short breaks throughout the day to stash like items in a (well-marked, brightly colored) folder, to pick up and put away a few things that have simply been neglected and to pool the clutter in one (or two) spaces rather than letting it call to me from all over the house. 

Ah. A plan. I feel better already.

Now if only Mother Nature would decide what season it is.

www.ebsqart.com/Art-Galleries/Abstract-Representational/51/Search/textured/
SPRING-WINDLILAC-BLOSSOM-and-WILDFLOWERS-FIELD/581831/

Day of Reckoning

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, the official end of the Lenten season. That means that today is the day of reckoning for 40 Bags in 40 Days. Did I make it?

I did not.

clipartbest.com

Over the course of the 40 days of Lent, I got rid of somewhere between 15 and 20 bags of donations, trash and recycling. The majority of the non-trash items went to two local consignment stores (clothing) and the local library (outgrown books and prizes for their summer reading club which included a Thirty-One bag and signed copies of Casting the First Stone and Diverse Divorce -- things I would not normally "get rid of"). Nearly everything else was recycled paper, including magazines that had sat untouched for months. While it was a great feeling of relief to get rid of some of that clutter, pieces of paper and issues of magazines don't add up very quickly when you're marking progress in terms of garbage bags.

Still, this was a valuable experience, one that reminded me of a few things:

1. A goal is a good thing to have…Even at the outset, 40 bags in 40 days seemed like a lot, but I opted to aim high, especially since I have no doubt there are at least 40 bags of useless stuff in our house. 
2. …but it works better if it's clearly defined. The 40 bags part was clear enough, but…what constitutes a "bag"? A plastic grocery store bag? A paper grocery store bag? A kitchen trash bag? A yard waste trash bag? Once again, I aimed high, classifying a bag as something between the last two. That's a lot of paper and magazines…which is what makes up the bulk of the ordinary, dust-collecting, "I know I'll get to that someday" clutter at our house.
3. An unreachable goal doesn't make me virtuous - just more likely to be disappointed. If normal, everyday trash and recycling "counts," then we hit our goal. But in the Lenten spirit of almsgiving, I included in my tally only those things I wouldn't have normally gotten rid of, and so I fell far short of 40 bags. 
4.  My daughter is a dynamo when she's in the mood to clean. Credit where credit is due -- a substantial portion of our 15-20 bags was a result of my daughter's self-imposed, well-timed spring cleaning. Without her, the final numbers would have been much lower.
5. Sometimes you have to move the endpoint. 40 bags is a worthwhile goal, and not hitting it in 40 days doesn't diminish its value. So I'm going to keep de-cluttering, and tallying those bags (something between a kitchen trash bag and a yard waste bag, depending on contents) on the kitchen calendar. I want to see how far we get by the end of 2014.

So, was "40 Bags in 40 Days" an epic fail at our house?

I don't think so. One of the things that made this a great goal for Lent was that it focused on simplifying and sharing what we have with others who might need it. Over the past 40 days, we've made a good start toward clearing things out, tackling overdue tasks (that mountain of papers to be shredded) and setting guidelines to avoid falling into the same trap again (no one is allowed to start a "to be shredded" pile. That's just asking for trouble). 

Best of all, I've gotten much better at answering the "do I really need this?" question in the negative…and finding someone else who might appreciate the thing I don't need.

Some of our best family habits and traditions have begun as resolutions for Lent or Advent, and I fully intend for "40 Bags in 40 Days" to be a Lenten resolution again next year. Unless, of course, my house is completely devoid of unnecessary clutter by then.

Okay, that one might just make me chuckle from now until Lent 2015.

Obstacle Course

I set aside time over the past two weekends to tackle the clutter in my office. In the past year and a half, I've moved the remnants of a work office (in which I spent almost 20 years) to home. I've made more than one set of revisions on a book due out this month. I took on a position as an adjunct professor. The result? A space that had become the dumping ground for mountains of paper. Some of it simply needed to be put away, some thrown away, and the rest needed to find a home. Since the beginning of a new year was also down time between semesters, it seemed like a good time to get to work.

After successfully attacking first the counter, then my desk, I ended up with two marvelously clear spaces in my office. Anything that remains on either of those surfaces is there for a reason and/or serves a purpose. What I'm left with is several small boxes of things that need to be sorted through -- homeless items and things I don't know what to do with -- along with a Thirty-One bin attractively (and temporarily) containing the papers and stuff I discovered when I cleared the counter. Intimidating as it sounds, everything that remains is easy to can chip away at, so it feels approachable, especially given the new, vast expanses of clear space in my office. I'd forgotten how motivating a clear work space can be.

I was so proud of my work that I invited my daughter to check it out when she came home from her basketball game last Saturday. "Wow," she said. "Looks good, Mom. Now if only we could get into the room."

Wow. She was right. I mean, I knew the aforementioned small boxes were stacked precariously in one spot but I'd completely overlooked the things I'd set on the step between the office and the living room.

Maybe it's the fact that I just finished teaching a psych class, but I had to wonder if it was Freudian. I'd set one box on the step as a visual reminder that it needed to go somewhere else, but when combined with the organizing materials (hanging file folders and now-empty accordion folders) I'd stashed on the other side of the step -- temporarily, of course -- only a footstep's worth of space remained on the step down from the living room to the office.

Did I want to keep my family out of my work space? Of course I did. But had I gone so far as to create a barrier that would discourage them from entering?

Hmm.

My husband and I just had a talk last week about how hard it is to work with constant interruptions, a work-from-home liability I'd all but forgotten about until I foolishly thought I might get something accomplished over Christmas break. We'd even looked for a portable folding screen that I could "close" when I was working on a project that required sustained attention.

In the absence of a door, had I created a physical barrier that made it more difficult for people to actually enter the room to interrupt me?

It appears I had.

While I maintain that my intentions were innocent, I must also admit that I bookmarked several sites that had folding screens I liked. And, I'm not at all shy about admitting that I get quite cranky when my train of thought is interrupted for no apparent reason (e.g. "Whatcha doing?").

That said, I have now been embarrassed into removing said items from the step.

But I have no intention of halting the search for a folding screen.

Organization Games

I'm not a big fan of household chores. I do what I need to do to keep things running, but tend to put straightening things up near the bottom of the list. Consequently, I tend to tidy in spurts, and in sneaky little ways.

courtesy of all-free-download.com

Last week's magazine-a-day campaign is a perfect example of one of those sneaky little tricks. The magazines were (once again) taking over more than their fair share of space, so it was time to take action. The action I chose to take was hardly efficient (get rid of one magazine a day for a week), but it worked. In retrospect, I realized that I used the basic behavioral principle of pairing a pleasurable task (reading the magazines) with a necessary one (reducing the clutter). When it comes to theories, behaviorism isn't one of my favorites, but I have to admit that in this case, it worked. By the end of the week, I'd gotten rid of eight magazines -- painlessly -- and jump-started the desire to keep going. I'm aiming slightly lower this week (reading all those magazines took a bite out of my book-reading time), but hoping that going deeper into the pile will mean uncovering outdated issues I can toss without reading.

courtesy of www.freepsdfile.com

One of the women in the organizing class I taught last spring has an even better system -- her junk mail never makes it into the house. She picks up the mail and sorts it in her garage, dumping the junk before she even walks into the house. Lacking a garage, I've never been able to adopt that strategy, but am working to adapt it instead, sorting the mail immediately instead of dropping it onto to a pile and moving on to the next thing on my list. Because I am by nature a drop and run kinda girl, this is more challenging than it sounds.



This drop and run style often leads to more than just magazines and mail piling up, and has served as -- ahem -- inspiration for another one of my pick-up tricks. Since much of the clutter in my house tends to accumulate on my dining room table, which is centrally located on the first floor of my house, I use a simple strategy of picking up one thing and putting it away each time I pass the table. Simple. Easy. Immediate reinforcement.

Oops. There's that sneaky behaviorism again.

courtesy of amny.com

While adopting the Nike slogan ("Just do it!") would probably make things happen a whole lot faster, my silly little methods end up making an unpleasant task more pleasant. I'm sure my naturally organized
friends -- the ones I've affectionately dubbed "Type A Organizers" -- are shaking their heads at my silliness as they sip their iced beverages in their spotless houses, but the rest of you -- the ones, like me, who struggle to keep up with the clutter that seems to be an inevitable part of life -- know just what I mean.

Please, join me in the games. And if they work at your house too, please let me know by commenting below or contacting me on Facebook. I'd love to hear about it.