Default design

When we don’t intentionally design a system, one will form anyway and it probably won’t be an optimal system; it seems to work for us, so we just continue to mindlessly use it. But using complicated systems for doing things like chores, cleaning, gardening and errands produces unnecessary stress.

Let’s look at a complicated system for cleaning our house that might get formed if we don’t deliberately design it:

Rita and Dhruv Gupta, a couple with two children, intend to keep a clean house. But the kids keep Rita busy and she can’t find the time to clean the glass showcase that is slowly accumulating dust. Dhruv is too tired to do it when he gets home from work. They also have a broken couch, chipped cabinet and paint peeling off the walls that they need to attend to. One by one, things start to pile up and the house starts to get messy.

One day the Guptas have guests coming over. Dhruv rushes around pushing the kids’ toys under the sofas to keep them out of sight. Rita quickly dusts the house, hiding the broken items and they are yelling and screaming at each other. So though the house looks ‘clean’ on the surface, there’s still a lot of hidden clutter and mess even when the guests do come over.

When we don’t intentionally design a system, one will form anyway and it probably won’t be an optimal system

Now, your house might not be this bad, but you get the idea. Things get problematical because there is no process by which to keep the house tidy and we get stressed out by the last-minute maintenance and constant mess. We clean only when we have people over and then let things deteriorate again until the next guest comes over, or until we’re sick of the way things are. A look around our house could reveal there are dust bunnies under the furniture, grime in the fridge, and we don’t even want to talk about what’s in and around the bathtub.

Designing a system that works

The solution to eradicate the mess is to design a simple system and create a routine that works for you. Here are some systems that might help you get started; you should modify them to suit your convenience. An important starting point is to write your ‘simple systems’ down, put them somewhere you’ll see them and focus on making them a habit for at least a month.

Here’s a sample system for house cleaning:

1. First, allocate a weekend dedicated to cleaning, so you can start your simple system with a clean slate. Get the whole family involved, and clean one room at a time, from top to bottom, clockwise, until you’re done. It helps to get rid of clutter.
2. Once your house is in order, have a clean-as-you-go routine. When you’re getting ready in the morning, do a quick wipe around the sink, toilet and bathtub. Put things away as you go through the day. Wash the dishes when you’re done using them instead of piling them to be washed at night. Mop the counters and table when you’re done cooking or eating.
3. Also have a daily routine: every morning, make your bed, take out the trash and restore anything that is out of its place to where it belongs. In the evening, sweep the kitchen/dining room and do a quick pick-up before hitting the sack.
4. Have a weekly routine: either designate one day for a quick one-hour clean [it shouldn’t be that dirty if you’ve been cleaning as you go], or have different days designated for different things—for example, wash the linens on Monday, vacuum clean the living room on Wednesday and so on.
5. Every few months, do a deep clean: wipe down the refrigerator and oven, clear out the cabinets.

Get the whole family involved, and clean one room at a time, from top to bottom, clockwise, until you’re done

Other chores

Besides cleaning your house, you probably have other chores you need to do on a weekly basis. It’s good to get a weekly routine going so you never forget to do them and you know when you have to do what.

Here’s a sample:

• Monday: Prune plants
• Tuesday: Clean the car
• Wednesday: Pay bills, update financial documents
• Thursday: Errands, groceries
• Friday: Change linen
• Saturday: Tidy the closet
• Sunday: Family Day

Efficient errands

By continuously doing chores everyday throughout the week, you will keep stress at bay, and also save time and money. Here’s a simple system that works well for me:

1. Keep an errands’ list and add to it as you think of things, so when errands’ day comes, you know exactly what you need to do. Also keep a running grocery list.
2. The night before your errands’ day, plan your menu for the next two weeks, jot down other items like—stationary that your kids require, or hardware like nuts and bolts you might need. Then look at all the tasks on your errands list and plan out the best route.
3. On errands’ day, you spend a couple of hours doing all the errands on your list and then buying all your groceries on the list. One trip, planned resourcefully, saves fuel, time and multiple shopping trips.

Once you get things in order serenity follows, with a knowing that you don’t have to rush around cleaning things up at the spur of the moment.

I advocate doing the important things first; don’t put them off by focussing on the small things. But the small things add up to big things. They weigh on you till they become a burden.

Instead of waiting for that long weekend or holiday to clean the house, do it one day at a time. Clean everything and put it where it belongs as soon as you finish using it. In the end, your house looks immaculate, and you feel incredibly relieved because the clutter and the list of chores were weighing on you mentally as well.

Keep cleaning your house. Try it. You’ll love it.

A version of this article was first published in the January 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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But don’t get disheartened. By unlocking your creativity, art can help you prevent and even reverse the harmful effects caused by your suppressed emotions.

The Therapeutic Power of Art

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”
— Twyla Tharp

I once asked a distinguished art therapist in Japan, “What is it about art that gives it its therapeutic quality?” She said, “It silences your mind and, if required, empties it and brings it back to its truest and most natural state of being.” She went on to tell me how she had used art to relieve people of challenges like stress, body aches, worry, as well as cure people of cancer, heart ailments, depression, strokes and bipolar disorder.

Even for those of you who aren’t directly involved in the creation of art, merely visiting a good art gallery to watch an art exhibition or display of paintings helps. The silence of the art gallery, the beauty of the pieces displayed and the stillness and serene energy slows the mind from its usual breakneck pace.

Here are a few ways to help you embark on the journey of unlocking your creativity and discovering the therapeutic value of art.

Also read » Creativity: The secret of happiness, wellness, and positive change

How to Unlock and Liberate Your Creativity

Being here and now

One of the qualities of creating a piece of art is that it forces you to step into the present. Since most of our mental fog is either about the future or the past, merely being in the present for an extended period of time helps in creating the mental space required to gain clarity and process other information later. While several other activities could also offer the same benefit, art does so in a cajoling and non-threatening way, especially if approached in the right manner.

The best way to start painting is to not keep any specific deadline or visual outcome in mind; simply go with the flow. Even if you have no clue about what you are going to paint, allow the blankness of the page to guide you. Let your intuition and instincts guide your hand and keep following it. If you are used to starting with a definite image or goal in mind, try one of the following if you like:

• Try to get that image completely wrong in all possible ways and enjoy the process of doing it
• Try to create that entire image with scribbles and splashes of color rather than with well defined lines. This will help you loosen up
• Try the minimalist approach: reduce the image to its bare essence by stripping off anything unnecessary. Ask yourself what would be the simplest form of the image; then only paint that.

This can teach you valuable lessons about going downstream and not being an obsessed perfectionist. And just for the record, an hour spent in creating a painting is equivalent to an hour of mindfulness meditation.

Emotional de-cluttering

Color has a direct effect on the emotional part of your brain. The amygdala, responsible for emotions and motivations—especially the more rudimentary ones—is the seat of several intense emotions like fear, anger and pleasure. Also, the right side of the brain is more intuitive, imaginative and creative than the left. Art greatly stimulates the amygdala and the right side of the brain. With the use of different colors, creation of vivid images and exercising of intuition, a lot of the suppressed emotions are released. This gives us a renewed sense of ability to deal with life’s challenges.

If you’re suffering from mild headaches or even severe migraines, take up some form of art immediately. Emotional de-cluttering is seen to be very beneficial in these conditions.

Related article » Banishing clutter: The wisdom of living with less

Feeling good

With the constant struggle to meet strict deadlines, following rigid processes and doing routine work, many of us have lost the sense of how it feels to create something new. Painting or sketching puts us back in touch with our ability to create. It clears the mind of repetition and ushers new energy like a whiff of fresh air. The feeling of having created something beautiful brings in a sense of accomplishment, the gains of which we carry to other areas of our lives as well.

Back to basics

Art creates a clear outlet for expression in a fundamental and intrinsic manner. Drawing, painting, sketching, scribbling, splashing colors, etc. are modes of expression. It is normal for people involved in any form of art to feel light and rejuvenated after completing a piece. Those involved in art long enough, develop a deep appreciation of doing art for art’s sake. A painting is created purely to express oneself in a manner that is most real and natural. The process of expression is embraced for the sake of experience rather than for social approval or to impress the world. People who have understood this also carry this mindset to other areas of life. They become more interested in experiencing life rather than clicking pictures of experiences to share on social media.

Related » Boredom and burnout: The two sides of a coin

There are Umpteen Ways of Unleashing Your Creativity…

While most of what is discussed above is in reference to the fine art of painting or sketching, the same applies to any other form of art. Music, dance, any of the martial arts, writing and photography are good examples. In short, it applies to methods and techniques of art and any product of human creativity. Here are a few ways in which you can liberate your creativity.

• Join your kids in their school art project and create something along with them
• Do you have a friend or colleague whose birthday is near? Create a greeting card, photo frame or bookmark for her
• Art does not have to be done on paper always. You can even paint on vases, pots, fabric or mugs
• Ditch the brushes and try painting with fruits, vegetables or your fingers
• Try your hand at some DIY décor artifacts to style your home
• You don’t have to always wait for an occasion! Take out your box of colored powders [gulal] and draw a rangoli just for the fun of it
• Even if you’re not good at dancing, put on some music and dance with your kids; it will not only make you feel relaxed, but young as well
• Download a few karaoke tracks and put your singing skills to test
• Take out some lovely pictures from your albums, prepare a collage and frame it in your room.

This was first published in the September 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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“Baby, are you sitting down?” Her tone instantly got my attention. After all, it was midnight in Paris, and she had called the group leader—a number I didn’t even know she had. I sat down. “Our house burned down,” she said calmly.

“What?”

“No one was hurt, we’re all okay. Even Lando.” My heart warmed with relief. My family was okay; even our dog was okay. “But, it was a serious fire. Most of the house is damaged.”

That fire was the beginning of my transformation from a dedicated pack rat to a joyful minimalist.

Minimalism is all about you

What do we mean exactly when we say “I’m a minimalist?” Well, the answer varies for each person; but first and foremost, a minimalist lifestyle is about increasing your joy through simplicity. It’s all about what makes you happy, and nothing more.

What it is and isn’t

Minimalism is

• Letting go of that which does not serve you
• Designing your life based on how you want to live it, not the expectations of others
• Letting go of negative or obsessive thoughts
• Looking around and seeing your personality reflected in your living space
• Being surrounded by colours and textures that make you feel good
• Putting furniture in rooms to reflect how you really live, instead of how other people live
• Creatively using one item for more than one purpose
• Borrowing from friends or neighbours, or renting, if you use something rarely
• Giving unused things away now, not later
• Knowing that you have what you need and it is enough
• Spending money on experiences and adventures.

Minimalism is not

• Saying “yes” to every request of your time
• Keeping things out of guilt or a sense of loyalty to someone
• Making sure your home looks like it could be in a décor magazine [unless that’s truly your passion]
• Having a couch and a TV just because everyone else does
• Having a gadget for every possible whim you might have
• Filling an attic, garage, or basement with things for the kids in case they ever want them
• Keeping something because it’s easier than recycling it or giving it away
• Keeping something only because it’s worth a lot of money
• Renting a personal storage unit
• Spending money on possessions that require maintenance or management.

Stuff = Stress

Let’s think about the process we go through when we acquire something—when we begin our relationship to a ‘belonging’, say, a gadget. First, we buy or are given the gadget. It’s such a wonderful new addition to our lives. We’ve always wanted one, and now we have the newest, most high-quality gadget on the market. It’s going to make our lives easier. We will be happy, attractive, healthy and rich because we own this gadget.

We take our gadget home, and now we need to take it out of its packaging. The first ping of stress happens, because it’s packaged in hard plastic, and we have to wrestle with it and pinch our fingers getting it open.

Then we throw the packaging away, and feel some more stress about the environment and that giant floating trash island the size of Texas that is out in the Pacific somewhere.

We use and enjoy our gadget for a time, but then it breaks. So then we hire a professional or take it to a shop for repair. It turns out our gadget just needed cleaning and maintenance. This maintenance time takes away from our loved ones and our larger life goals, adding stress as we ask ourselves: where does the time go?

Life is busy and it’s not always easy to remember to clean our gadget when so many other things call for our attention: our jobs, relationships and other activities. With everything going on, the gadget just sits there, gathering dust. One day we are de-cluttering the living room, and we see the dusty old gadget. It’s taking up much-needed space, and we need to find a different place to store it. Somewhere out of the way.

Briefly a thought occurs to us: Will I use this again? Maybe I should give it away. Well, I’ll probably use it sometime in the future. Just not right now. Anyway, I’m cleaning up. I don’t have time to deal with dusting this off and finding a new home for it. Maybe I’ll use it later.

With that, we put it on a high shelf in a closet or in a box in the attic, straining our neck and back in the process.

Then, much later, we think that it would be nice to use the gadget. We look for it, but we can’t find it amongst the overwhelming amount of stuff in the closet or attic. After getting dirty and dusty, we promise ourselves we will clean out our home, but for some reason, we put it off.

This stressful process is how our homes become stuffed full of things we don’t need.

Life is short—enjoy your stuff

Stuff is not evil. We enjoy what we own—when we use it. In fact, our belongings can bring great joy to our lives when they help us connect to each other or pursue meaning and goals. But there’s only time for so many pastimes. There are only 24 hours in the day. We may dream of the dinner parties we’ll throw, the golf we’ll play, or the songs we’ll write, but if we aim to do too much, we may simply spend our time moving, sorting, and maintaining our paraphernalia rather than enjoying it. It’s unlikely that when we find ourselves bored, the existence of the gadget in the attic is going to occur to us and we are going to dig it out, dust it off, put in fresh batteries and enjoy it.

Giving for joy

Another truth is that as you simplify, you’ll probably end up giving away belongings to friends or charity. The act of giving leads to joy. Kelly Palace, my aunt, had an entire wardrobe of cold weather clothes, formal, professional attire, as well as casual wear. After moving to Florida, Aunt Kelly didn’t need most of her clothes—she was able to dress more casually and for the warmer climate. So what she did was spread her entire old wardrobe out on the floor, take a picture of it, and post the photo to Facebook with a short message that said, “This is an entire wardrobe for a woman who is a size 4 – 6, and it’s free to anyone who will come take it off my hands.” What happened was wonderful. A woman came and picked it up. She gave it to a friend who had just escaped an abusive relationship and had left most of her clothes in her old home. This act of giving was a blessing for the woman who received the clothes, but also for Aunt Kelly, who told the story with so much joy.

Designing a joyful life

Minimalist living applies not just to your belongings, but to your time. Do you feel out of control of your days and wonder where the hours go? If so, you may want to de-clutter your schedule. If you aren’t sure where the time goes, you may want to use a computer tool like Toggl to track your time for a week and see how you spent it. Being an anchorless boat tossed about by the oceans of TV-watching, web-surfing, over-commitment, or other people’s expectations can mar your joy just as much as overstuffed closets.

If you’ve committed to something, backing out can feel like a blow to your integrity. Yet your own joy is most important, because your happiness spreads. If you’re doing something with stress or resentment, you might as well not be doing it. You aren’t doing anyone any favours by doing something with a negative attitude.

Have you ever wished you could watch less TV and paint or [insert activity of choice here] more? Where is your television? Does it have pride of place as the focal point of your living room? What if, instead of your television, that was the spot where your easel and painting supplies were?

I ask these questions to illustrate what a strong impact our home environment has on us. The average urban person watches almost three hours of television per day. For someone born now who will live to age 80, that’s a total of eight years of television watching. If someone replaced this television time with self- growth activities, he or she could become an expert in seven different fields according to Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s theory of 10,000 hours.

I’d argue that our excessive television watching is at least partly due to the fact that it’s so common to own a TV; it’s odd not to have one. As humans, we are very good at responding and interacting with our environment. What is around us is what we will place our attention on.

Adapt your settings to your needs, not the other way around Using this knowledge about the way we are wired to adapt to our environment looks like this: if you want to eat healthily, get rid of the junk food and replace it with wholesome food. If you want to improve your sleep, remove everything from your bedroom except your comfortable, well-clothed bed. If you’d like to be more sociable, remove your computer and books, and replace them with a big dinner table, games, and comfortable, welcoming décor. If you’d like to be more introspective, remove your big dinner table and games, and install an armchair and a nice lamp surrounded by books, notebooks, pens, and highlighters.

You see where I’m going with this. Options are overrated; they tend to overwhelm us and lead to mediocre lives. When we have too many options, we spend our lives maintaining those options instead of exercising them. “But I like having options,” you may be thinking. “After all, I like to read, and I like to socialise. Can’t I do both?” Of course you can, and you should. However, right now in your life, what do you intuitively know is going to be good for your overall joy? You can always go out of your home for variety. Home needn’t be a place that meets all of your needs. Create your home such that its environment feeds into the essential values and goals of your life—only the essentials.

 This was first published in the July 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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The newspaper shelf is flooded, the centre table has dozens of unopened envelopes, the drawers are in utter chaos, the cabinets are a mess and the closet is overflowing with surplus clothes. There’s stuff all around the house. And then you wonder why you can never find your keys, blaming some guy called Murphy!

To the layperson, clutter seems a harmless, if inconvenient, phenomenon. But make no mistake. Clutter can, and frequently does, affect all aspects of your life. It drains your energies and makes your environment vulnerable to small and big hazards. Perhaps the worst consequence of physical clutter in your surroundings, research points out, is that it diminishes your ability to think and act clearly, leading to poor performance and increased stress.

There’s more. Peter Walsh, author of Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?, actually found an association between excess weight and the amount of clutter in your kitchen, your pantry, and your home. Who could’ve imagined that clearing out your closets and cabinets could be the best exercise for getting rid of that extra flab, which by the way, is akin to clutter in your body.

OK, you are convinced of the hidden dangers of clutter. Now what? Go to the cover story right away and let Andrew Mellen tell you the rest. An organisational expert and best-selling author of Unstuff Your Life!, Andrew has used his years of experience to explain the value of living a de-cluttered life and offers easy and fun ways to getting and staying organised.

First he tells you why identifying your core values is fundamental to successfully de-cluttering. Later, he shares The Organisational Triangle®—an easy to understand and easier to implement method of clearing the mess and bringing back order into your life.

I particularly like his ideas on how to stay motivated through the process of de-cluttering, especially when you are aiming to reverse years of accumulated mess. His approach to deciding the value of a possession strikes a chord too. There’s a lot more well-meaning advice in there, which I’ll let you discover.

But once you’ll finish reading the cover story, you’ll appreciate, as I do now, the real meaning of the old adage “less is more”.

Don’t forget to write to me about your experiences—it’s a pleasure to know that we made a difference.

The post December 2013 issue: How clutter is stealing your joy appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Ask anyone if they’d like to be more organized, and almost everyone will answer, “Yes!” The benefits of being organized are many. You can manage your time more efficiently, so that you’ll have more of it to do the things you love. And stress levels are reduced since you won’t be racing around your home anxiously looking for misplaced or lost items.

These benefits and others create a path towards true liberation. Not one necessarily free from all material objects, although you could certainly pursue that goal. But freedom and happiness don’t require you to give up all your worldly possessions—merely to hold them more loosely.

If you are willing to relax your grip on the objects that surround you and learn to recognize the stories you tell yourself about these objects and their significance in your life, the stuff of your life will find its proper places and everything around you will open up—literally and figuratively. Even his Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “If you want to practice meditation, first clean up your room.”

And yet, getting and staying organized is often portrayed as the province of uptight, overly fussy and dull people. Naysayers typically reference this quote from Albert Einstein as their defense for clutter and disorganization: “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?”

But it’s a little disingenuous to attribute Einstein’s brilliance solely to his disorganization or reputation as an absent-minded professor. After all, we don’t have to choose between being an ascetic, renouncing the material world, a creative genius leaving a trail of debris in her wake or a repressed obsessive attempting to control every aspect of life. We can choose the middle path of balance and integration, where everything we surround ourselves with has a practical function, is beautiful in design or application, and serves our greatest sense of self and wellbeing.

Fortunately, walking the middle path by getting and staying organized is not as difficult or complicated as most people imagine, and it can be surprisingly easy and fun.

What do you value?

Whether you’re trying to become more fit or learn how to get and stay organized, you need to know if it’s important to you and why. Answering these two questions isn’t some form of whimsical navel-gazing. Rather, it’s the kind of work necessary to build a strong foundation for your desired skills.

New behavior that isn’t tied to your core values stands little chance of surviving the first setback or distraction. Even the best intentions are often not strong enough to keep us motivated when we run into a bit of resistance or experience an unrealized expectation of the way we thought something would turn out. That’s why it’s essential to rely on your values to keep you aligned with your goals rather than your feelings.

Being busy is not a viable excuse

A client of mine, Ruby, struggled for years to get and stay organized. She would allow clutter to build up over time, then force herself into marathon sessions of organizing. She had a familiar story she would tell herself—that her time was valuable and she couldn’t afford to put things away consistently. While she didn’t like being disorganized, she saw it as a necessary by-product of how busy she was. She had yet to discover that being busy doesn’t always equate with being productive.

Every few months, she would reluctantly set aside a full day to tidy up, but resented these all-day sessions. Once finished, she would become defiant almost immediately and lapse back into her story about how precious her time was, which would undermine any attempts to maintain her new order. As a result, whatever progress she had achieved would quickly disintegrate.

When I began working with her, I suggested she work through the core value exercises so she could find something she valued as much as her time and her story. That way, she could attach the new habits to competing value.

Ruby is an award-winning filmmaker and teacher. She has an editing studio and office in her home, and she is always being sent movies from students and fans to review. This constant flow of mail, coupled with the accumulation of source material for her own films, results in piles and stacks that grow on every available surface. One consequence of this dysfunctional system was that she couldn’t easily find tapes that held raw footage and various revisions of her own work. Yet, even though she had spent thousands of dollars on duplicate efforts, casual labor and replacing lost and damaged equipment, the financial cost of disorganization wasn’t enough to motivate her.

Identifying values can help

What finally got her attention were two values she identified while doing the exercises. The first was that she valued home and nesting—she loved to entertain but would seldom have people over because of the condition of her home. The second value was her pursuit of excellence as a filmmaker. Disorganization had harmed her in several minor ways in the past, but she was finally compelled to act when a disk containing critical footage was misplaced. Its loss resulted in a disappointing cut of her film, and that was a consequence she could not bear to repeat. These two core values became the foundation for organizing her home and studio in a way that she could maintain.

Although organization in other parts of her life still lags behind, Ruby has been successful and diligent about keeping things in their place in both her living room and studio. A once frequent visitor to the locksmith, she hasn’t misplaced her keys since completing the exercises. Perhaps more importantly, Ruby is happier and invokes her story about busy-ness less and less. We both attribute her achievements to an increased clarity around what has significance and value for her and a sincere desire to honour that value rather than denigrate it.

Getting and staying organized

Getting organized and staying organized are not the same thing. Getting organized involves dealing with everything you’ve accumulated up until this point. You may choose to think about it as cleaning up your past. Staying organized is about the present and the future, where good habits consistently applied prevent more clutter from building up.

Here’s the big secret about clutter—it’s nothing more than deferred decisions. Each time you set something down with a promise that you’ll get back to it ‘later’ or ‘someday’, you create clutter. Look around you right now. If you see a stack of newspapers or magazines or mail or clothes or books, each stack represents individual choices you didn’t make then that are now piled up one on top of the other.

That’s also the way you’ll dispatch clutter. You’ll finally make each of those decisions and assign each object its own home.

The Organizational Triangle^®

My discovery, The Organizational Triangle^®, is made up of three simple and easy principles or rules. They are: One Home For Everything, Like With Like and Something In, Something Out. These rules are the only rules you need to remember.

One Home For Everything

Everything has one home, and only one home. It doesn’t matter where that home is as long as it is someplace you can get to easily and that you will remember consistently. By applying this rule, things will either be in their home or in the hand being used. There are no universal homes for anything. You may put your keys anywhere that makes sense to you and where you will remember to look for them. Mine are kept in a dish by my front door—yours might be hanging from a hook. Neither is a better choice than the other, the decision is based on convenience and practicality.

Like With Like

Along with deferred decisions, clutter accumulates when you have multiples of the same object. It may seem easier in the short run to acquire a new pair of scissors when you can’t find the old pair of scissors, but inevitably when the original pair surfaces, the result is redundancy and waste.

Knowing exactly how much of any one thing or type of thing you have is essential when establishing homes for things. If you don’t know how many office supplies you have, you are likely to assign a place to them that is either too small or too large which wastes space.

Something In, Something Out

Achieving stuff equilibrium occurs when you have enough of everything that serves you, and nothing that doesn’t. There are no rules about what constitutes ‘enough’.

If your resources and space allow for more things, you may have more things. Our physical spaces do an excellent job informing us on what is enough. It’s when we don’t listen carefully to our surroundings that we run into trouble.

My client Stewart ran into this problem when he and his wife downsized their home from a 3-bedroom, 3-bath house to a 2-bedroom, 1.5 bath apartment. Even though the square footage of the homes was only a few 100 feet different, the configuration of the closets and other cabinets in the new apartment was significantly smaller.

Stewart and Tina struggled for several weeks to cram more things into the new space than it could easily accommodate before they called me. By laying everything out on the floor and other surfaces, we were able to group ‘Like With Like’ and get a much more accurate sense of the volume of things they were trying to store. From that point, it was easy to match belongings to containers and cabinets, sifting through categories of things to identify surplus items they could now let go of.

It’s when we don’t listen carefully to our surroundings that we run into trouble

Once you’ve determined what enough is for you, commit yourself to maintaining that level of belongings. You needn’t deprive yourself of anything, if you have room for it. Conversely, you shouldn’t hold onto anything that doesn’t have a place and can’t be assigned one, simply because you want it. If you do, you create clutter.

When your desire to hold onto something is so strong that letting it go seems inconceivable, the choice becomes finding something else you care less strongly about and letting that go in its place.

Celebrate when you achieve stuff equilibrium as a milestone of your progress. From this point forward, with few exceptions, when something new comes in, it must mean that something old is on its way out. Practicing this rule rigorously ensures that you will stay organized for good.

Some core concepts of getting organized

Doing less

If the thought of getting organized, of finally making those deferred decisions, begins to feel overwhelming, remember that getting organized isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing less. You’re already overwhelmed trying to keep up with all your current responsibilities and tasks. It only makes sense that trying to add anything on top of your current obligations will further complicate your life.

That’s why there is so much emphasis placed on returning to your core values. If you don’t know what’s important to you, it will be very easy to be distracted by what is urgent. Sometimes urgent and important are combined, but often urgent is just the louder of the two.

When you create your day based on what is important first, it becomes much easier to allow those things that are not significant to fall away or take their place at the bottom of your to-do list.

Organizing is about taking action

Unlike psychotherapy but every bit as beneficial for your mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, getting organized is not a talking cure but a series of deliberate actions. It means actually interacting with your physical environment and the objects that surround you. No amount of conversation or planning can take the place of handling each possession, assigning it a home and putting it there, or adding it to a pile of items destined to leave your home or office for good.

A client we’ll call Steve works as a fashion photographer. Steve is very friendly and personable, and he gets great results, in part, because he’s so warm and engaging. When on the set, he’s chatty and informal which allows the models to relax. This great quality, however, was a detriment to Steve when it came to clutter. He would tell anyone who’d listen about his disorganization, even to the point of mis-identifying himself as ‘flaky’ or ’forgetful’. Steve can remember what a particular model was wearing on a shoot five years ago, down to her or his socks—so he’s definitely not flaky or forgetful about things that matter.

That’s where core values come in. Steve values his memory for detail when it comes to his professional efforts but discounts retention when it comes to his home life. Although he lives alone most of the time, his two children spend every other weekend with him. His forgetfulness at home has led to several arguments with his ex-wife over insignificant items one of his children have left behind. She uses these transgressions to fuel her enmity, claiming that this lack of attention was a leading factor in their separation.

Steve understands now that talking about his disorganization wasn’t the same as doing something about it, but at the time he was stuck in a habitual pattern. Although he never whined, at times his constant refrain began to feel like he was complaining rather than describing. It didn’t take long for me to suggest to him that if he spent just a fraction of his time organizing rather than talking, he’d have plenty of time to get things in order.

Many of us can easily fall into the same trap of complaining rather than dispassionately describing a situation or even better, actually getting stuff done. If you’re prone to complaining about your current state of affairs, consider using some of that time to actually affect change.

These three questions are also a helpful tool in determining what needs to be shared and when. Ask yourself the following: Does this absolutely need to be said? Does this absolutely need to be said by me? Does this absolutely need to be said by me now?

If you answer ‘no’ to any of these, it may be wiser to remain quiet and redirect your energy into an activity that is more productive.

A side benefit of moving into action is the potential this principle has to change how you feel in the moment. Often, people wait until they feel like organizing to begin the process of organizing. But that is unreliable at best and dangerous at worst. If you didn’t want to put something away in the first place, it is unlikely you will ever feel like putting it away sometime in the future. The future never arrives without its own agenda and demands on your time and energy, so it’s only wishful thinking imagining that the future will bring with it the motivation to do something you don’t feel like doing today.

Rather than depending on your feelings for motivation, rely on your values to encourage you to step up and accomplish those things you say are important. And once in motion, it becomes that much easier to stay in motion since being active can also change your mood. As you move around and get the blood and oxygen moving through your system, you feel better and get more accomplished.

A means to an end

It may surprise you that the ultimate goal of getting organized is not a tidy home or the absence of clutter. The real goal is having enough time for the things that are important—and those things are seldom things at all. They tend to be relationships, creative expression, philanthropy, giving back to our community, and caring for others.

Once you achieve stuff equilibrium, you should have plenty of time to stay organized. If you have to spend all of your time interacting with objects even after you’ve got organized, chances are you still have too much stuff. The purpose of getting and staying organized is to remove any obstacle that stands between you and living your passions, engaging with your life and exploring your place in the world. Finding your mobile phone or keys is merely a delightful by-product.

Some core concepts of staying organized

Vague is not your friend

It’s that unflinching clarity of vision that dispels the myth that, without ever getting into the swimming pool, you might become the next Olympic champion. The same clarity is required when getting and staying organized. Pay attention to the times you feel confused or uncertain which action to take next.

My client Becky was fond of saying, “I’m confused,” whenever she confronted a large task that required several smaller decisions to make progress. She wasn’t really confused about what was involved in moving forward, she was confused with which solution to pick since none of them were ideal. For example, when Becky wanted to re-upholster her sofa, she adopted an attitude of confusion when selecting fabric. Rather than accepting her budgetary limitations upfront, she “confused herself” by reviewing fabrics well beyond her means. Failure to address this financial issue upfront only resulted in frustration and delays.

No doubt there will be times of genuine lack of clarity. However, often you know more than you are willing to admit or acknowledge. We often mask truths we find unpalatable with a general, “I don’t know,” when in fact we do know, we just don’t like what we know and hope it will go away or change if we delay long enough without choosing.

Two kinds of procrastination

‘Someday’ and the undefined ‘later’ don’t exist. There is a later that does exist—that is the later that is assigned a particular date and time. Note whenever you choose the first ‘later’ to get out of doing something you don’t want to do rather than committing to a clear time you’ll reschedule the task to be completed.

Where to start

Once you’ve identified your core value, you’re ready to start doing something physical. The tools you need on hand are a simple timer, a digital camera [the one in your mobile phone will do fine], a stopwatch and The Organizational Triangle^®.

The timer

Every task has a beginning and an end and the timer helps you to define when to start and when to finish. If you have any amount of historic accumulation or clutter, chances are dealing with it all will take more than one session. That’s where the timer comes in. Instead of attempting to dispatch all your piles and stacks at one time, you’ll set the timer for a finite amount of time—no less than 15 minutes and no more than three hours at a time. You can schedule more than one 3-hour session in one day, you just need to take a break between each of them to refresh and refocus yourself.

Failure breeds failure and success breeds success. If the last time you tried to tackle an enormous project in one day and were unsuccessful, chances are it became that much more difficult to motivate yourself to try it again. You already imagined failing before you even began. Students often share with me that once they started using a timer to establish limits for work sessions, their enjoyment and success rates improved dramatically.

With the timer, organizing for a specific amount of time becomes the goal rather than conquering the closet, the shed, the attic or the office in one sitting. When the timer goes off, you feel satisfied and successful. You actually accomplished what you committed to doing. You begin to feel more confident that when you declare your intention, your word means something. You discover that you do have what it takes to follow through, even one minute at a time.

The camera

In addition to the timer, taking pictures of the current state of things before you begin working is the best defense against negative or cynical thoughts and feelings. It’s quite possible that even with the timer’s assistance, you will feel that you’ve made less progress than you expected, or worse, that nothing has changed at all. Though you may intellectually know this to be false, your feelings of frustration and disappointment may be so strong that you tell yourself that for you, getting and staying organized is impossible.

You have the ability to get and stay organized as long as you have the willingness to do the work required. Your feelings may not be the most reliable guide in this process, which is where the camera comes in. If or when you find yourself doubting your progress, just pull out the photographs of what things looked like before you started and you’ll have all the evidence you need to counteract any negative talk or internal bullying or shaming.

Some more things to consider

All the organizing tools, tips and suggestions above will be less than effective if you remain stuck in a story about specific objects or clutter and disorganization in general. Stories are essential for building and maintaining intimacy. The trouble begins when you seek to replicate those intimate relationships with inanimate objects. Sometimes, even when confronted with the sad truth that our belongings don’t love us with the same degree of affection we feel for them, we concoct new stories to close the gap between what we know to be true and what we wish were true.

Story, or the stuff behind the stuff

Once you start digging into historic accumulation, particularly when you begin sorting Like With Like, often patterns begin to emerge. Not only of the kinds of things you seem to collect, but also the stories you tell yourself. The deeper you delve into the process, the more you may see that it’s the story, or the stuff behind the stuff, that is driving most of your relationships with objects.

One of the ironies about stuff is that there isn’t necessarily a better reason to hold onto something. You like it or you don’t, it serves you or it doesn’t. Feeling guilty when you consider letting something go is almost always a sign of being caught in the grip of a powerful story, regardless of how current or accurate it may be.

We often feel we must defend our choices to some outside judge, but in most cases that’s merely a form of projection. It’s to oneself we must justify our choices, and it seems easier to imagine that resistance outside rather than inside. This happened to Sarah.

Sarah had a stereo system she had received from a former boyfriend. They were not on speaking terms and, in fact, the gift of the stereo had actually been one of the major causes of their break up. She rarely used it to listen to music, preferring to stream audio on her computer or iPod. Yet she held onto it as a symbol of this failed relationship. She would tell herself that it would be a betrayal of their time together if she let the stereo go, but she also admitted that every time she looked at it, it caused her grief and shame.

On the surface, the stereo represented a financial investment since it had been expensive. It also demonstrated that even though her heart had been broken, she didn’t leave the relationship empty-handed. Underneath those two premises lived a painful truth that caused suffering every time she looked at it.

When I asked her what she would advise a friend to do in the same situation, she stated that she would suggest her friend get rid of the stereo immediately. Without her own story informing her choices, Sarah could see the greater value in letting the stereo go. Without story, eliminating a source of pain was more important than money or justification. Once she saw this, she was free to act and donated the stereo to a local children’s center.

The next time you feel as if you are on trial and searching for a ‘good reason’ to keep something you could let go of, pause for a moment. Unless someone is actually demanding an explanation for your attachment to an object, recognize that this is your way of playing out an internal conflict externally. A little quiet reflection will usually allow you to soften your grip and surrender the argument.

Returning to the third leg of The Organizational Triangle^®, Something In, Something Out, we remember that our goal is to achieve stuff equilibrium, not to win a debate. Have enough of everything that serves you and nothing that doesn’t. From there, rather than struggling with should, would or could, the only real question becomes, ‘does this object still serve you on any level—physical, emotional or spiritual?’

Whenever the answer to the question is no, it becomes easier to release the object, particularly if you can see that the thing you’re now letting go of will soon benefit someone else.

When everything is precious, nothing is precious

Similar to being able to distinguish between urgent and important, it’s essential to recognize the difference between trash and treasure. I believe we have a moral and ethical obligation to keep as much out of landfill as possible—there is almost always a way to recycle, repurpose or reuse our cast-offs without them becoming trash.

Assuming responsibility for the entire lifecycle of each and every object you bring home will accomplish at least two things. First, it will slow down consumption when you consider the consequences of caring for each item from its first introduction into your life until its final departure. Second, it will guide your choices of materials and encourage you to seek out greener and lower-impact versions to maximize your options when letting things go.

Practically speaking, whenever you feel stuck in determining the value of any item, remember it takes two people for something to have objective value—you as the owner and the other person as the buyer or recipient. If you cannot find one other person who agrees with you that the object in question has value, it only has subjective value—it only matters to you. That in and of itself doesn’t mean you have to let it go. It just means you have to let go of the story you’re telling yourself about the object’s intrinsic value. This is particularly useful for people who like to collect things.

There are no exceptions when it comes to stuff

You may be quite exceptional in many ways. You may be a Nobel laureate, a brilliant artist, an extraordinary homemaker, or perhaps even all three—but when it comes to stuff, we are all equal. You may tell yourself a story that you believe would convince any listener that you have an exceptional reason for keeping something, but as I mentioned above, there are no better reasons. Either you like it and have room for it, or you don’t.

Gratitude and abundance

Recognizing the passive nature of things is essential when it comes to staying organized. For those of you who have tried and failed to get organized, you may see that you approached the process with a degree of frustration, anger or haste. I’m going to make a radical suggestion. Instead of fighting with stuff, say thank you.

Regardless of the quantity or quality of things you have around you, if you have more than you need or more than you can manage, you have a problem of abundance. You have too much of a good thing. It’s safe to assume that you brought each item into your life for a particular purpose, even if you or the object has long since outgrown that purpose. Even inherited items are not just dropped on your doorstep without your consent.

Acknowledging this abundance and expressing gratitude for its presence in your life allows you to soften your stance and release the compressed emotions of anger, fear, confusion, or frustration. Since stuff is inanimate, it stands to reason that it will outlast you in any battle. It will lie exactly were you placed it for as long as you leave it there. It will never get up and move itself, regardless of how desperately you implore it to or want it to.

A simple sentence acknowledging your previous desire and attachment followed by your desire to now release this object will do wonders to move you forward in your process. The small act of stating, “Thank you for being in my life. I am now finished with you and release you,” seems to unlock resistance and make letting go of something suddenly eminently doable.

Final words

Art, textiles, tools, furniture, and dwellings—all these things make our lives more comfortable, convenient and/or beautiful. Stuff in and of itself is neither good nor bad. The problem, as is so often the case, lies within us.

It is our desperation, our clinging or our greed that, when unchecked, leads us astray and creates the perfect conditions for clutter to accumulate. Fortunately, it is our calmness, our kindness and our generosity that is the perfect antidote and solution.

No one ever lied on their deathbed wishing they had only spent a few more minutes rearranging the contents of their closet. How fortunate then, that simply by opening our hands and hearts, we have access to lasting, sustainable freedom.

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