Save Yourself From Clutter: Tame the Clutter Beast
We all need as many tips as we can get for taming the clutter beast. Here are ten that you can implement today!
- Decide now. Clutter is often caused by putting off decisions.
- Never leave a room empty-handed until the only things in the room are ones that belong there.
- Glance over your left shoulder every time you leave a room. Pick up the clutter you spot and take it with you to where it belongs.
- Never go up or down stairs empty-handed as long as there is something that should be taken up or down.
- When de-cluttering a room, start at the doorway & go right if you are right handed or left if you are left handed. Then if you’re interrupted, you can see where you stopped.
- Take five minutes whenever you can to tackle a small section of clutter (or do it during the commercials of the first hour of watching TV).
- Make a place for everything, such as special papers and each child’s school papers. Make a place for mittens, scarves, hats, boots, and so forth.
- Put everything in its place. Teach your family to put things where they belong. (One way to teach: “If everything is where it belongs, you can come with me to the mall or you can watch TV. If not, you can’t.”) The corollary to this one is
If you take it out, put it back.
- If you haven’t used it in a year, get rid of it.
- Don’t de-clutter & clean the same day. You might keel over, poor thing.
© Rita Emmett, author of The Procrastinator’s Handbook; The Procrastinating Child: A Handbook for Adults to Help Children Stop Putting Things Off and The Clutter-Busting Handbook, is a “Recovering Procrastinator” and professional speaker. She can be reached at 847-699-9950 and email is Rita@RitaEmmett.com.
To subscribe to Rita’s free monthly “Anticrastination Tip Sheet” with quick short tips & ideas to help break the procrastination habit, go to the first page of her website www.RitaEmmett.com
And if you’d like more ideas to help you find balance in your space you will want to access the Get a Plan! Guide® to De-clutter & De-stress: A Dozen Ways to Decrease Your Clutter and Decrease Your Stress. This Get a Plan! Guide® will help you learn a dozen specific ways to start dealing deliberately with your clutter – and then experiencing a reduction in your stress.
