Gratitude Monday: Addressing chaos

Today I am grateful for space. As in, uncluttered space. Meaning, space that I have made a conscious and concerted effort to de-clutter. Space that is now clean and beautifully empty, waiting for me to do anything (or even nothing) with it.

My problem is that I have a tendency to just dump things. Well, by “have a tendency”, I mean “always”. Yet I hate clutter; it not only gets on my nerves, it makes me feel constricted and out of control at the same time. I spend way more time looking for things than is rational, which makes me feel like I can never quite get to doing whatever needs doing.

Well, a few weeks ago, a woman named Kathleen Ronald was the guest speaker at one of my meetups. Her topic was “De-clutter Your Way to a New Job!” To be honest, that sounded just the teensiest bit of a stretch to me, but she had me at “de-clutter”, so I went.

There was indeed some woo-woo involved (“Each mess is a lock on the gate that keeps abundance away.”) But this one resonated: “Open up space and something new can come in.”

Ronald spoke of getting out of the “just-in-case” mindset. You know, the “well, I might need this for some unspecified activity at some unknown time in the future so I’d better hang onto it” line of thought. Which is also the road to clutter.

She had us list all the areas in our physical environment that could use a good clear-out: closets, garage, office, bedroom, kitchen. And then she suggested some ones we hadn’t thought of—like the car; that alone would take me half a day.

She gave us some guidelines: get rid of things you don’t use or love, things that are untidy or disorganized, too many things in too small a space, anything unfinished. (Think about that last one for a minute; how much could you chuck using that criterion?) And then the usual advice: divide it, like all Gaul, into three parts: one to ditch, one to keep, one to give away.

But the true game changer for me was: “Every thing has an address. Your hairbrush has an address—probably in the bathroom, maybe on the counter or in a drawer. Give everything an address so you know where it lives.”

Well, let me tell you I found this inspiring, energizing and liberating. In my first 15-minute spurt I cleared off two dining chairs of papers, holiday detritus and miscellanea. Then it was the basket next to my armchair. I’m not going to tell you what was there. But this was just the perimeter of de-cluttering.

Because the ninth circle of clutter hell is the loft. And it’s not even just “bunch-of-stuff”, it’s all papers (and books and some stuff), but mostly papers. The magnitude of this problem—because for three years I basically just heaved stuff up there and then ran back down the stairs as fast as possible—was beyond daunting. And even though I only see it when I run up to heave some more papers there, it’s like the Sword of Damocles—I always know it’s hanging there, waiting to cleave my head wide open.

So, I developed a plan:

First round of de-cluttering: go through the loft and put everything into stacks. Don’t try sorting papers, putting away books, finding the “addresses” of things; don’t do any thinking beyond papers-books-things. Just a stack of papers, a stack of books that need to be shelved, a box of things that don’t fit into those two categories.

The next round was sorting through the papers, filing things that already have addresses and putting everything that didn’t have a known place into a “TBD” box. Then shelving the books. Then sorting through the miscellaneous things.

And you know what? First thing that happened was I discovered my clips (my writing samples), which I literally have been trying to find for more than two years. (Thinking I'd lost my clips was like thinking I'd lost photos of my children; it was a cataclysmic loss.) They weren’t in the filing cabinet (which was their rightful address), but in a stack about four feet away, where I wouldn’t have ever thought to look. 

This alone was worth the effort.

After three or four passes, I had both printers on the printer stand, a big bag of paper to go to recycling, all the stray books back on the shelves and a whole lot of crap in their proper files. Papers that I need to refer to currently, and those I know I want to take action on (story ideas, reference materials, etc.), are in a file box I can access quickly. I still have to do some major sorting of that TBD stack—what things I should let go of and the keepers I really do love or will use. And in the latter cases, they need to get addresses and put away.

Meanwhile—that god-awful sword has become considerably smaller and not quite as sharp.

Then, I got so annoyed by the pile of papers, mail, coupons and whatnot on my kitchen counter that I hauled out a carton and just swept everything off the counter into it. No sorting, no putting away, just off the counter.

All that stuff still needs to be addressed, but in the meantime it’s no more poorly “organized” than it was on the counter, I pretty much know (generally) where it all is and I’ve got that beautiful, clear expanse of space in the kitchen. I see that space first thing when I enter my flat, and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see it empty and waiting for whatever I might like to cook or bake.

Now, one thing I have to work on as an ongoing project is that tendency to just dump. I’m too lazy to put things away when I bring them in or when I’m done using them, so I just leave them in situ. (E.g., knives. I leave washed knives next to the kitchen sink. And for why?—the knife block is right there!) It’s amazing how quickly that “I’ll put it away later” or “I’ll figure out where it goes at some point” stuff metastasizes. I started doing it with that counter space, so I’ve developed a solution: I created a “To Be Addressed (TBA) Depot”, a basket where I put things that don’t have a current address. Everything else has to go to its rightful place. Right away.

Even when “right away” means I have to go back and deal with it in 30 minutes when I realize I just dumped it.

This part is going to be ongoing, but it’s totally necessary if I don’t want the chaos to encroach on my exquisite empty spaces.

I have plenty of work to do on this, of course. But if I take it in 15-minute chunks, it’s totally doable. And the thing about de-cluttering is that—even in little bits—you see results immediately, which motivates you to keep at it.

There’s also work to be done on non-environmental clutter, but that’s another story. And today I’m just so grateful that Kathleen Ronald was speaking right at the time I was ready to clear the clutter.