BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality New Age Clutter Zones

I started to declutter and spring clean my Utility room today. It got me thinking about the effect that junk in this space has on the rest of my life. I've known about clutter clearing for years now- ever since I read an article in a women's magazine about space clearing expert Karen
Kingston whilst sitting on a beach on holiday. I could hardly wait to get home and start decluttering!

Here's an article I've written about the impact clutter can have on different areas of your home: Where is Your Clutter?

Where do you hoard junk? Is there a clutter question you need to ask? Have you got any decluttering success stories to share?

Personally, I know that whenever I declutter a place, be it a corner a shelf or a whole room, I just feel like I can breathe better (thought usually not due to dust allergies)

Here in this new house though, there aren't enough material goods to clutter anything, but my boyfriend likes to say that I have a plague of clutter bugs that follow me around

I hear you girls! The kitchen table is the first to come to mind. I want to sit there to drink coffee and enjoy my bright new decor- so I end up cleaning off that sucker three times a day. Aside from the paper stacks, my kitchen complaint is compounded by the fact that my husband smokes cigars, so he's in and out of the kitchen door to puff on the back porch frequently and he hangs his coat all winter long on the back of one the kitchen chairs. It drives me nuts and I've installed hooks behind the door, but to no avail.
After the kitchen table comes zone 2. Does anyone else have the top of the fridge filing habit?
Once I've cleared there, anything needing to be kept rather than pitched ends up going up to my office- Zone 3. I wonder if subconsciously I take it there in order to provide fuel for my procrastination habit... when I don't want to settle down to work, I clean. It makes me feel virtuous rather than bad for not doing what I ought to be doing. I can avoid sitting at the computer for a good hour or more just dealing with the clutter that ends up on my desk. So clutter might in the end serve a purpose for me...LOL. T

I do eventually start to get cranky if there is too much clutter in the house. That is probably why my husband and I have a "binge and purge" cleaning style. Clutter for a month, then one "Super Mega Cleaning Day" to take care of it all...

I'm not alone! The kitchen table is the biggest clutter, mail lots of mail. Twenty credit card offers a week mail. Then we don't have enough space for coats, I have hooks on both sides of the doors! Shoes, oh my. The stairway to the basement--things get half way down and half way up. The good news, we are adding on. A craft/sewing room is part of it, as well as the garage and a new large area for shoes and coats! The absolute worst is the laundry/storage room. Last summer I threw out three broken vcr's one stereo, one TV, two vacuums, and that was just starters. (The laundry room is also part of the new addition), I should be able to organize everything when this project is completed! I have developed a new habit twice a year. When we clean the closets we bag it up, throw it in the trunk, and drop it off at Goodwill. No more trips to the storage room for clothing.

Lauren, great article! I live in a split foyer and every room that you listed is a major room but there is not enough storage anywhere in the house. Closets are half of what they should be, so it is really hard to be organized. Even stuff that is important becomes clutter when there is nowhere to put it.

Trish, you laid it out pretty funny, in my book, because I have the same kind of zones. Everything happens at the dinner table and when that gets cleaned, it goes to zone 2, the top of the refridgerator, "real" cleaning time means taking down and dusting and moving zone 2 to the filing area of the office, or zone 3. Of course, zone 3 has to eventually get tackled and that is usually at tax time.

Lately my worst area is my living room, which in a split foyer is tough because it is the 1st thing you see when you come in the door. We're taking care of my 86 year old mother, for a few months, and she is not very ambulatory so we sit in the LR most of the day. I work on the laptop doing ancestry research and insurance stuff, etc and have files and paperwork "neatly" stacked on both ends of the sofa and the floor around me. That way I don't have to leave her and worry about her falling, etc.

It really does ZAP all my energy having all this clutter all around me but it keeps me from going crazy just sitting around all the time, too. Just 2 more weeks! I think then I'll start some REAL spring cleaning, but I think I'll start in my bedroom. That is the one place we can hide EVERYTHING (from the kitchen table, landing, sofa, etc) if we have visitors so it is desperate need after this winter.

Trish

I think you all know where I'm coming from on this issue! Like Wendy I actually feel healthier when I dejunk & clear.

The 'moving clutter around' habit seems to be strong Why do we do this...shift the stuff from one place to the next instead of dealing with it (I include myself in this bad habit)? procrastination springs to mind...I know my excuse is 'time' but when I finally dejunk the desk it takes me ages because every bit of paper has ended up there! The 'middle resting place' is interesting- top of fridge for Trish- back of toaster for me. Do any of us actually do things with the paper in these temporary places? Perhaps I'll try cutting out the middle place- at least.

I like Froggie's 'Super Mega Cleaning Day'. Some of us just aren't the kind to keep it neat all the time- I know I'm not- but designating a regular day and keeping cleaning and clutter clearing as top priority for that day seems a good way to go- as long as those days come round often enough...

iwonder seems to be tackling things well. Chucking out the broken stuff is easy for me. I get stuck when something is 'kind of' working- then the 'waste not want not' motto kicks in & I have a bit of an internal battle to get rid, even when a brand new and lovely version is bought. Cranky vacuum cleaners, printers and other electricals are the worst!

Babyquacker- clear just one room for starters- make one your clutter free sanctuary- especially as you are sharing your space right now.

Trishh brought up another good issue- what to do about other people's things. Any ideas?

We(me,Hub and 2 6 foot teenage boys) live in a tiny,tiny old house, which seems to of been designed without any thought for storage. Even if we purchase some storage device, that in itself makes things more cluttered! We are all pretty messy and like everyone else here everything ends up on the table (although you could'nt fit a table in our kitchen ) We do the'Super Mega Cleaning Day' thing too and its a dead cert we will all feel more energised when we've had it.....
I have visions of Richard Dryfuss in Close Encounters, building his mash mountain, maybe we are all receiving some "Paper Mountain" message? LOL

The UFO's are coming, disguised as giant sausages.

Reading all of your honesty makes me feel so much better about my own clutter issues. There's four years worth of baby and kid gear cluttering up my basement just waiting for one of my friends to get pregnant so I can give it to (dump it all on) them. Then there's my 4 zone paperwork filing system (glad to know I'm not the only one who does that!). The most ridiculous part of my paperwork filing system is that zone 2 is the left side of my desk. Then zone 3 is the right side of my desk, just within inches of my filing cabinet.

I love anyone who has home organization skills because I am completely lacking in this area. I have 2 home organization resources that I like. One is the site www.homeorganizeit.com and the other is a book called Making a Home, which is put out by Better Homes and Gardens. They're useful for helping me to stay out from under the massive piles of stuff that I like to create.