Home Life

Clutter War II: Attack of the Giant Baby

Merlin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:58:02 -0400

As of next Sunday, our lovely daughter will have been with our houshold for six months (Happy Half-Birthday, Eleanor). It’s a good arrangement, and we’re all pretty happy about the whole thing so far. But, to look around our house, you’d think we were raising a small army of babies, each of whom has their own Amazon Prime account and an addiction to things that are shaped like giraffes.

Oh my, the stuff. The baby stuff. Everywhere. Means of conveyance, swingy seat, Bumbo, squeaky toys, fuzzy toys, toys for biting and bending, jammies, jackets, socks that do and don’t look like shoes, amusing hats, blankets, books, rattles, paciﬁers, cleaning supplies, extra diapers – plus of course, there’s the raw tonnage of stuff belonging to the caretaking adults that has been displaced or disused as a result of the occupying baby’s needs. It is a scene, man, I can assure you. And there’s not an iota of blame to place on the actual baby; it’s all us (and mostly me). [By the bye, for an illuminating look at the perils of the creeping ParentCrap industry, have a look at Parenting, Inc. It’s chilling. And, for me, personally damning.]

At any rate, as we approach that august 183-day mark in our little girl’s life, you might be able to guess where my head is right now. Yep. It’s on clutter, and on what I need to do to get my face back into Peter Walsh’s excellent de-cluttering book as a means for regaining domestic sanity and striding toward the possibility of a life without tripping, piling, or losing what’s left of my sleep-deprived mind.

But let’s start with ﬁrst principles:

It’s All Too Much
by Peter Walsh

Well, obviously for me, it starts with re-reading It’s All Too Much (isbn.nu | library search). As I’ve said before, this is a fantastic book that distinguishes itself by helping you understand why you have clutter, rather than just trying to help you ﬁnd new places to store and “organize” it. Author Peter Walsh encourages you to imagine the life you really want, and then ruthlessly purge the items that are keeping that vision from becoming a reality. Pure gold.

Now, if you don’t have the time or inclination to look at the book with me right now, or if you’re one of those smarty bofﬁns who points out that this would represent yet another piece of clutter – or even just to bring existing Peter fans back up to speed – here’s some posts from my previous excursion into the world of It’s All Too Much. It was a bracing sprint that helped me rid myself of crap that had been doing nothing for my life for years:

My War on Clutter - “Although no ofﬁcial record of the conversation exists, I would not be surprised to learn that I tried to talk the staff who delivered me into letting me keep my ﬁrst diaper; just because — y’know — you never know when it might come in handy.”
My War on Clutter: Never “organize” what you can discard - “The truth is that this is like covering your tumor with a bandage, and without thoughtful paring-down, all those crates and boxes and storage spaces do nothing to improve the basic problem.”
My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG - “I cannot overstate the importance of making a zone like this early in your project. You must know without hesitation that whatever you run across — no matter how big or bulky — will ﬁnd a temporary home in your dump zone before quickly being whisked out of your house forever.”
My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day - “If my own clutter war is piquing your interest in improving your surroundings, tomorrow could be the occasion for you to put a few minutes toward making a dent in your own pile.”
Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure - Readers share their excellent suggestions on responsible, useful ways to repurpose trash into someone else’s treasure.
More from Peter Walsh on clutter, quality of life - “Capacity is only worth building when it’ll be used in the service of stuff you really want.”

Thing is, I now return to this book and this mission with a renewed level of resolve because I have to face the previously unthinkable; we must convert Dad’s entropic home ofﬁce into a nursery suitable for a shiny little baby who doesn’t appear to enjoy sleeping on USB cables and books about developing in ShockWave (yes, thanks, there’s still lots of “low-hanging fruit” remaining).

So this new adventure begins. I hope to share some of this parent-focused de-cluttering with you over the next couple weeks, so pop back by if that appeals. For what it’s worth, I hope it will also have tidbits that appeal to the child-free or child-neutral amongst you.

As I returned to It’s All Too Much in the last week, I was struck by a line that sounded like something straight out of my Time & Attention talk. In introducing a chapter on the excuses most people give for suffering clutter, Peter Walsh says:

Everything in your home is there with your permission.

And it’s true. Or putting just a slightly sharper point on it, it might be said that “Everything in your home remains there with your permission.” That clutter becomes a tiresome houseguest that you just don’t have the heart to throw out. And he keeps inviting his messy friends who also have decided to camp out on every available surface.

So, if you’re the sort of put-together life hacker who would never accept a lame project or a pointless task, what sense is there in not applying the same rigor to your surroundings? Exactly.

Anyhow, here I go. Wish us luck. And, as ever, I hope you’ll share your thoughts on how you beat the crap back after your little one arrived and took over. I’d love for Eleanor’s second six months to take place in a comfortable, clutter-free house that baby, parents, and giraffes alike can enjoy.

”Clutter War II: Attack of the Giant Baby” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 21, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Howard Rheingold, (Re)Sliced

wood.tang — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:12:55 -0500

Howard Rheingold, online pioneer and dapper man of the mustache and Indiana Jones hats, has started a new video blog to update his seminal 1992 essay, “A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community,” with how he spends his time online with today’s technologies. The ﬁrst video is a little remedial, but what caught my eye is his promise to clue us in to his daily process, including not only his ofﬁce time, but time spent on hobbies like painting and gardening. Looking back at that sentence, I know that sounds about as exciting as getting a ﬂu shot, but I’m a sucker for watching how smart people manage their days. Should be worth a watch.

Reading back through that old essay, one thing that made me stop was his explanation of how he found his online homebase, The Well:

I found this digital watering hole for information-age hunters and gatherers the same way most people ﬁnd such places – I was lonely, hungry for intellectual and emotional companionship, although I didn’t know it. While many commuters dream of working at home, telecommuting, I happen to know what it’s like to work that way. I never could stand to commute or even get out of my pajamas if I didn’t want to, so I’ve always worked at home. It has its advantages and its disadvantages. Others like myself also have been drawn into the online world because they shared with me the occupational hazard of the self-employed, home-based symbolic analyst of the 1990s – isolation.

I’m curious to see his updated thoughts on isolation of the self-employed, “symbolic analyst,” because as someone whose daily companions are usually a toddler and a dog, I can tell you that it still exists 16 years later.

”Howard Rheingold, (Re)Sliced” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 09, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Laundry Hacking

wood.tang — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:59:34 -0500

Making life easier isn’t always about massive, miraculous changes in habit, or chucking vast quantities of your belongings. Sometimes, preventing just one little hassle can make your day.

You know how the little bit of soap left in the cup after you dump it in the wash always manages to leak down the side of the bottle when you recap it? Usually, you don’t notice it until the next time you do the wash, and have to pry the jug loose from a sticky, lint-colored pool. To prevent this from happening, toss the cap in along with the wash instead of recapping the bottle right away. It comes out squeaky clean, and you just have to shake off a little water before screwing it back on the bottle. I suspect this would work with the top of a dish soap bottle too, though you’d have to ask Ray, the gallant cleaner.

I wish I could take credit for this one, but apparently there are some life hackers working at the Tide detergent factory. I found myself reaching for a sock to wipe the soap out of the cap last week when I noticed it said “Toss in wash or rinse after use.” Nothing life-changing, but one less sticky pool in my house, the better.

”Laundry Hacking” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 07, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ask MeFi on sane solutions for book clutter

Merlin — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 11:25:12 -0500

Advice for clearing literary clutter | Ask MetaFilter

There’s a thread on Ask Metaﬁlter about book-centric clutter that’s getting lots of good comments right now. It started when matildaben asked for “practical and creative systems for reducing the number of books I own,” saying:

The vast majority of my possessions by weight and volume consists of books. I would like to develop a system for getting rid of them that will have a very practical, behavioral, methodical approach to the emotions that compel me to keep them…

The solutions people offer are thoughtful and suggest that many of the better ideas are coming from fellow bibliophiles who’ve struggled with The Book Problem.

Like several folks in the thread, I think this comment from occhiblu gets to the heart of what makes clutter such an emotionally complex problem:

On kind of a meta note: To some extent, I think de-cluttering involves recognizing that regret is part of life, and being OK with that. Yes, I’ve given away books that I now often wish I still owned. But I’ve also screwed up relationships, made iffy career choices, etc. – you suck it up and move on. If you try to cling to every single thing (material, spiritual, or emotional) that you might need one day in the totally hypothetical future, you’re going to end up bogged down in a lot of stuff.

Yep, that pretty much nails the problem and the cause for me.

Recap: Merlin’s “War on Clutter”

As it happens, I’m about to begin the next phase of My War on Clutter. If you’re in the same boat, here’s links to my articles from that series.

Unclutterer talks with “Clean Sweep” host, Peter Walsh (Series inspiration)
My War on Clutter (Series introduction)
My War on Clutter: Never “organize” what you can discard
My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG
My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day
Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure

”Ask MeFi on sane solutions for book clutter” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 27, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

WWLD? No. 3: Organizing your environment

glassdog — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:43:30 -0500

Our great friend, Leslie Harpold, passed away in December of last year. In addition to being a swell pal and an old-school web mandarin, Leslie was an endless source of advice and opinion on ~~practically~~ everything.
To commemorate Leslie’s life and to help share her wisdom with folks who never got to know her, I asked our mutual friend, Lance Arthur to answer the question: What Would Leslie Do? Here’s part 3 of 4. — mdm

1. A place for everything.

This has been an especially valuable lesson for me. It’s easy and common to toss your keys and wallet somewhere when you enter your home. If you’re not tossing them in the same place every time, the next time you’re about to leave and need your keys to get back inside, you may not remember where it was you tossed them – or maybe you left them in a pocket without tossing them at all, but which pocket was it? What were you wearing, and where is that article of clothing now?

Getting organized doesn’t necessarily mean stopping by the Pottery Barn and gathering up a bunch of little containers and hooks and coat racks for everything, it’s more important – and easier – to simply designate a place for things, and keeping everything in its place.

2. Make your bed.

When we’re kids, we’re told to make our beds. When I was a kid, I thought this was the most supremely stupid and asinine idea I ever heard, but when you’re a kid almost everything sounds stupid and asinine. When we get older and can make our own decisions about things, some of us decide that we don’t want to make our beds any longer, because they’ll only get messed up again later.

Now consider your last vacation. Even if you were only paying $100 a night (or, more likely, a lot more than that) for a room in a hotel, and you came back to your room and found that housekeeping had not done their duty and made your bed for you, would you have shrugged and said, “eh, whatever, I don’t even make my own bed,” or would you have grumbled internally at how unkempt and messy everything looked?

Making your bed has a ripple effect, believe it or not. It only takes a few extra minutes in the morning, and the beneﬁt is that when you climb in at night, the sheets are crisp and smooth, the blanket lies where it’s supposed to without a lot of rearranging, and your pillows are already ﬂuffed and huggable. You get to have that soothing all-encompassing feeling of comfort every night just by making your bed every morning. And it’s amazing how much more put-together a bedroom looks with a well-made bed.

3. Schedule the simple tasks.

On which day of the week do you water your plants? Which day is set aside for vacuuming? When do you clean your bathrooms? When do you scrub the shower? When you’re doing laundry, when do you include the sheets and towels?

When you start to schedule the week-to-week or month-to-month tasks, they get done! It’s amazing! But when do you need to do them, and how often?

Here are Leslie’s Rules of Thumb for a few simple tasks. Adjust as necessary according to your own needs, of course.

Water your plants once a week on Thursday. Don’t do it on a weekend. Nobody wants to do anything on a weekend.
Except laundry. Do your laundry as early as possible on Saturday. Even if you live alone, you will always have enough dirty clothes to do one load every week. This may mean not sleeping in on Saturdays, but a non-standard sleep schedule is bad for your health, anyway.
You should wash your sheets and towels every week. Yes, every week. Do you know how much skin you’re rubbing off on your sheets? And towels gather moisture and can become musty. Nobody wants to step out of a hot shower and wrap themselves in fungus.
Vacuum your entire house while your laundry is in the washer. You can do that. Both things take between 20 and 30 minutes.
When you put your laundry in the dryer, dust the house. Dusting should take some time, because you have to move things around and dust under them. Yes, boys, dust under things, not around them.
Fold the laundry immediately. Don’t pile it onto the couch or bed and leave it for later.

One more tip for an awesome bed: Iron your pillow cases. Just your pillow cases. That will make your whole bed seem more tidy, and you can even spritz them with lavender water, so your nose can sleep tight, too.

4. Empty the kitchen sink.

Your kitchen can become a sloppy mess in less than a day, but you can prevent it if you just do one simple thing. Keep your kitchen sink empty. Don’t pile the dirty dishes in the sink, wash them as you use them. Get a soap brush (Oxo makes an excellent one) and rinse the glass with hot water and set it in a dish rack to dry. As you cook, rinse your tools and pots. If you have a dishwasher, you lucky thing, rinse things and put them in there. But do not leave anything in the sink.

The sink is like a magnet, or the core of planet Kitchen. Everything starts there and spreads outward. If you start leaving things in the sink until it’s full, you start piling on the counters. Then the stove top. Then inside the oven. You’ll start to pile things on any and every surface available because, suddenly, you can’t use your sink to rinse or wash anything. Keep your sink empty, and everything else tends to stay that way, too.

Lance’s What Would Leslie Do? Series

”WWLD? No. 3: Organizing your environment” was written by Lance Arthur for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 28, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Mathowie's decluttering project

Merlin — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 09:11:33 -0400

The Great Uncluttering

Matt Haughey recently posted a Flickr set documenting a dramatic, decluttering re-do of a spare bedroom that transformed it from the typical suburban catch-all/playroom into a tidy space for hanging out and watching Monsters with the familia.

before	after

I love how Matt worked around the challenge of the roof grade and closet doors and managed to get electrical stuff running without unsightly cords all over the place.

Say what you will about IKEA, but those crafty Swedes afford an economical path to transforming a space. I do love me a Billy bookcase.

Handsomely done, mathowie.

”Mathowie's decluttering project” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 22, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Peter Walsh's clever hanger trick

Merlin — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:39:40 -0400

Here’s one of my favorite life-hacky tips from Peter Walsh (guy from Clean Sweep, author of It’s All Too Much, and inspiration for my recent War on Clutter).

After you’ve done a major purge of your closet, remove all the remaining clothes that live on hangers, and put them back in backwards, such that the open end of each hanger now faces you. Got it?

Then, mark your calendar for six months (or whatever) from today, and go back to your business as usual. Except that after every time you wear a shirt or a jacket or a skirt or what have you, when you replace the item, make sure the hanger faces the opposite/usual way (with the opening in the back).

When your n months have passed, and your calendar reminds you that it’s time, open your closet and remove every piece of clothing on a backward hanger; the chances are good you can give it away without the slightest pain, because you just clearly demonstrated that you don’t wear it.

Here’s why I love this.

I’ve said before that, in my estimation, a life hack is any kind of trick that forces the Smartypants part of your brain and the Dumbass part of your brain to stay in proper communication.

You think to yourself “Oh, I wear this all the time. I couldn’t possibly throw it out.” But humans are notoriously awful at accurately estimating these kinds of things – I know I am anyway. And it takes stupid tricks like this to prove what inevitably happens when we let our Dumbass run off-leash.

In the same way that you can’t lie to your iPod, a good behavior-based life hack like this one will ensure that what you think is happening is supported by the evidence of what’s really happening. Just a trivial bit of physical-world intervention will – as my friend, Mr. Veen says – make the right thing into the easy thing.

”Peter Walsh's clever hanger trick” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 13, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure

Merlin — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 10:01:49 -0400

Quick way to dispose of lots of stuff? | Ask MetaFilter

Wow, talk about good timing.

I’ve noticed in comments on this week’s clutter posts that there’s a lot of interest from you all in the away part of “throw away” – people seem to have a lot of ideas on the most interesting, charitable, creative, and environmentally-responsible routes for converting your own trash into someone else’s treasure.

So far we (and that AskMe thread) have covered:

Recycling
Goodwill (and similar charities)
1-800-GOT-JUNK (and similar services)
Craigslist (and other classiﬁed avenues)
eBay (and other online sales ideas)
Freecycle
Putting it on the street with a “Free” sign

What’s your creative solution? Let’s try to avoid names of speciﬁc businesses and charities except inasmuch as they offer a truly creative and non-obvious solution to reuse or recycling. What’s the most interesting way you’ve cleared your crap while doing some good? Have you got any suggestions that are clever and convenient?

”Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 04, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day

Merlin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:08:15 -0400

Tomorrow is the Independence Day holiday here in the US, so a lot of folks reading this will have the day off from work. If my own clutter war is piquing your interest in improving your surroundings, tomorrow could be the occasion for you to put a few minutes toward making a dent in your own pile.

Here’s some inspirational (and cautionary) links to get you started.

Unclutterer: Tips - A major tip of the cap to Jerry Brito and his pals at Unclutterer; in addition to having great tips on doing more with less, this is the site where I ﬁrst learned about Peter Walsh’s book, It’s All Too Much, which I will freely credit with kicking off my recent spree of de-cluttering
Declutter 101: Declutter Strategies - This is the ﬁrst place I ever saw the “four box strategy.” While this amount of sorting is a little more nuanced than my own scorched earth approach, it’s much more appropriate for people with minor clutter issues or who are just in need of a little regular maintenance.
Declutter 15 Minutes per Day - If you can slice through the velvety nougat of prose in which they’re suspended, Fly Lady’s tricks are almost always fantastic. This page pulls together some of her best tips in one place. Highly Recommended and very life-hacky.
OC Foundation: Hoarding Introduction - Information on understanding and treating compulsive hoarding. Hoarding is real, widely misunderstood, and totally sucking for everyone it touches. While not the garden variety source of clutter, it’s something to be aware of if the clutter problems of you or someone you love are spiraling.
Squalor Survivors - A support site for compulsive hoarders and anyone living in squalor. The before and (yikes, even some of the “after”) photos from this site’s contributors are dramatic, to say the least (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Collyer brothers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Perhaps the most infamous compulsive hoarders, the Collyer Brothers lived and died surrounded by “over 100 tons of rubbish.” That’s in one Manhattan apartment, mind you.

Do yourself a favor, though. Don’t just read and gawk. Take at least one step today to do something that clears a single small area or that ensures one dead piece of your world gets delivered to the curb.

Whatever your current state of clutter keeps you from doing (or being), remember it all starts with the ﬁrst piece of junk you move out of your world. Talk about independence.

”My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 03, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG

Merlin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 05:43:44 -0400

[This is a ﬁrst-person account of what’s worked for me in preparing to gut the crap out of my house; you should feel free to do or not do any part of this – or just adjust the recipe to whatever suits your own needs, hangups, household fetishes, and budget. But you knew that, right?]

My past attempts at removing clutter have consistently bottlenecked at a few common points. Often I wasn’t really committed to the idea of a full purge, so I’d ignore whole boxes of memorabilia. Other times, my goal was primarily aesthetic, so I’d end up shoveling things into pretty boxes and “organizers”. But I ﬁnally realized what’s really been stopping me from accomplishing anything substantial. It’s so simple and so dumb that I’m embarrassed to admit it: my garbage can was too small.

Yeah, I mean that both literally and ﬁguratively. Because part of my success in purging this time around has come from thinking much bigger in every way – I want bigger changes from throwing out more stuff including the big dumb items that won’t ﬁt in a garbage can. Here’s some tools and processes that have helped me.

Basic supplies

The Brute Trash Can
Merlin’s new best friend

First, I went to the store and bought two 32-gallon Brute trash cans, ten 12-gallon boxes, and a huge-ass roll of contractor bags.

One Brute can is for straight-up trash, and the other is for recycling (primarily paper); each gets lined with a contractor bag. If you’ve never used a contractor bag, you’re in for a treat – these things are tough as nails and can take almost anything you throw at ‘em without tearing. You can even drag them to the curb without a peep.

The boxes I use to temporarily group and store stuff like DVDs, CDs, and books – stuff that has made the ﬁrst cut of de-cluttering, but that still need to be re-evaluated once I can see all of each item in one place (more on this in Walsh’s book and in an upcoming post). These boxes aren’t cheap, but they’re sturdy, they stack neatly, and you can see the contents without needing to mark them. To me, it’s worth the dough, because speed and convenience are factors, plus I can eventually reuse a few of these for actual long-term storage once I’m done (and any remainders will nest neatly in a stack).

Establish a “dump zone”

TIP:
Use red gaffer’s tape to lay down a perimeter around your Dump Zone. Make it easy to see when you’re ready to schedule another dump run or drop-off.

Next, we cleared a space in the back of the garage to use as a “dump zone.” Any non-perishable trash, recycling, and large, unbagged items go straight into this area as soon as they’re identiﬁed and ready to go.

I cannot overstate the importance of making a zone like this early in your project. You must know without hesitation that whatever you run across – no matter how big or bulky – will ﬁnd a temporary home in your dump zone before quickly being whisked out of your house forever. Seriously, if you could have gotten rid of that coat rack any other way, why haven’t you? Put it in the dump zone, and get back to work. Volume, volume, volume.

Schedule the funeral

Try Freecycle:
Freecycle connects people who want to get rid of stuff with people who want that stuff. Purge with a conscience, and do someone a proper. Learn more from Unclutterer.

Finally, decide on your strategy for how the stuff will get out of your house, and schedule it. Whether you plan on dump runs, putting stuff on Craigslist, donating to Freecycle, or renting a 9-yard dumpster (yeah, I did that once), do make a hard appointment in the next week for making sure that this stuff will disappear – even if that’s an appointment with yourself, get it on the calendar and honor it.

Want to know what I did? I hired SF Hauling (Yelp). Tell James that Merlin sent you. These guys were amazing. I set up a time, they came to the house, and for a surprisingly modest price, they loaded and hauled my stuff away to be recycled or dropped off at the dump. In 15 minutes their guys ﬁlled a pickup truck, and I didn’t have to lift a ﬁnger. (Hint: try searching Yelp or Craigslist to ﬁnd a similar service in your area.)

But why does this scheduling matter? Why is this crucial to success? Why can’t you just keep a casual pile of “to donate” stuff in a corner forever? Because you must not live with the stuff you’ve decided to get rid of, and setting a date-certain for when it will go away gives you incentive to ﬁll your dump zone with as much crap as you can. If you hesitate here, I guarantee that you’ll end up right back where you started – you’ll have wasted your time moving a bunch of shit from one place to another, then the cycle just starts over. Trust me: I had the coat rack to prove it.

Schedule it now.

Once more, unto the breach

10 Excuses:
Peter Walsh’s book, It’s All Too Much, explores 10 excuses people give for suffering clutter. Excuse #1 is “I might need it one day.” Know what? You won’t.

Once you have the tools you need and have scheduled your crap’s means of egress, then you can spend all your available time up til dump day ﬁlling bag after bag with dumb stuff – and you’ll never have to hesitate, thinking you’ll overﬁll your city trash can or overwhelm the recycling dudes. You can just focus on moving huge volumes of junk into the dump zone and out of your life.

Drawers full of broken pencils? Into the bag. Boxes of magazines you’ll never read? Into the bag. Cupboards full of “collectible” cups and baskets of single socks? Into. The. Bag.

Like I say, you should do whatever works for you, but like any life-hacky trick, remember that this works because you’re setting rules and accepting constraints. If you could do this without a system, why haven’t you?

These are the basics of my system, and they are working for me. More on the subtler processes of uncluttering forthcoming. But, whatever you do: think big and then get going.

”My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 03, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"