Its All Too Much

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?"

MacBreak Weekly 47: Merlin's picks

Merlin — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 07:06:51 -0400

MacBreak Weekly 47: That’s Our Shooby!

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, and Alex Lindsay

Universal challenges iTunes, iPhone hacks, and our software picks of the week…

Here’s a direct MP3 download of MBW 47.

This time we did our usual weekly software picks, but I also got to choose our Audible.com audiobook of the week. Can you guess what it is?

Audible.com Audiobook Pick - It’s All Too Much - I was glad I got a chance to mention the book that inspired 43f’s current series on clutter. Peter Walsh offers a perspective on getting rid of clutter that goes beyond shufﬂing and organizing “stuff,” to breaking down the emotional barriers that make you keep so much crap in the ﬁrst place. Highly recommended for rethinking the way your current possessions (and the space they inhabit) map to the life you want. Also, if you’re not up for joining Audible, the audiobook is also available on iTunes, plus there’s always the dead tree edition.
(Hear Merlin’s Audiobook Pick at 00:59:10 of the podcast.)
Software pick - Mozy - Mozy (say: MOH-zee) is an online service that securely backs-up your ﬁles in the background. It’s easier to use than most online and S3-based services and much more robust than Apple’s .Mac and Backup.app. Mozy has a “set it and forget it” functionality that might save your butt. You can even schedule backups and throttle bandwidth usage during the day. The Mac-friendly version is in beta, but seems to work ﬁne; free account gives you 2GB of storage while $4.95 gives you “unlimited” space each month.
(Hear Merlin’s Software Pick at 01:11:56 of the podcast.)

”MacBreak Weekly 47: Merlin's picks” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 06, 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?"

My War on Clutter: Never "organize" what you can discard

Merlin — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:32:11 -0400

One of the most basic concepts Peter Walsh talks about in _It’s All Too Much_ brought a total breakthrough for me. If the stuff that you accumulate doesn’t help get you closer to the life you want to have, it’s simply not worth keeping. Period.

Obviously (and unavoidably), this goes for a family room that’s turned into a junk drawer for DVDs and books, and you can clearly see it evidenced in a kitchen where no ﬂat surface is free of junk mail, bills, and newspapers. Those you can’t miss.

But, for me, the real story is about the ways you try to solve clutter problems solely by getting more space or obtaining more containers – jamming all those DVDs into cabinets and stufﬁng those newspapers into bigger volume baskets. The clutter doesn’t need a prettier package; it just needs to go. Now, and in very large quantities.

Historically, my “housecleaning” has almost always consisted of precisely this kind of illusory shufﬂing – just getting things out of sight with only minimal discarding. If I could cram random stuff into a spanking new “solution” from The Container Store, I’d tend to feel like I’d really made progress.

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. In fact, in my own experience, it makes the matter ten times worse, since you generate an entire underworld of physical goods that mean nothing to you. Your home or ofﬁce becomes little more than a costly bucket for dead and useless crap.

So, above all, my ﬁrst change in attitude has been about making things that deﬁnitely don’t belong go away quickly – not by generating false relevance by “organizing” them. For me, this means the opposite action; disinterring every sarcophagus of crap in my house and, item by item, evaluating how it’s making my family’s life better. You can’t believe how emotionally complex this is for a craphound like me, but once I get started, it’s completely exciting – the illusion that all this junk is making me happy melts away with every scrap of paper or broken piece of equipment I can get out of the way.

Also, I’ve found that something unbelievable and almost magical happens once I get into this mode: I start seeing things that I hadn’t ever noticed. Like the phone cords and SCSI cables.

See: during my last attempt at “cleaning up,” I (seemingly sensibly) focused primarily on organization, or the idea that most of my problem came out of not keeping like with like. So, I was very proud of myself after I’d spend the better part of two days ensuring that USB cables, ethernet cables, ﬁrewire cables, SCSI cables, and RJ-45 phone cords were all neatly separated and stored in their proper boxes.

Whoa, wait a minute. SCSI cables? Phone cords?

About half a day into my current scorched earth purge, I glanced across the ofﬁce to see a box with eight different phone cords in it. Eight. This notwithstanding the fact that I have a single VoIP line and haven’t used a dial-up modem in 6 years. And SCSI cables? My God! I haven’t had a SCSI device hooked to my Mac in almost as long. Yet there they were, nicely organized and ready to serve their non-existent purpose.

Now they’re gone.

I’m ﬁnally getting my head around the idea that organization is what you do to stuff that you need, want, or love – it’s not what you do to get useless stuff out of sight or to impart makebelieve meaning. And even though that 50-pin SCSI cable cost me a fortune in 1998, there’s zero reason for me to have it today. And, yet, there’s an invisible but very real cost associated with keeping it around.

As you wage your war on clutter, you will have many moments where you pause, item in hand, over the trash or recycling and feel resistance and fear. Sometimes its for cause, and you’ll elect to keep it, but also be prepared to let go on an unprecedented scale. Think volume and be brutal in your evaluations.

GTD‘ers know not to let pointless actions into their projects; why would you suffer pointless physical crap in your life?

”My War on Clutter: Never "organize" what you can discard” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 02, 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

Merlin — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:44:14 -0400

As I mentioned the other day, I learned about the anti-clutter book, _It’s All Too Much_, when its author, Peter Walsh, was interviewed for the Unclutterer site.

Well, the timing must have been right, because I bought a copy, and by the time I’d ﬁnished the ﬁrst chapter, a switch had ﬂipped in my head. I say “timing” because, while the book is pretty good (if perhaps not particularly groundbreaking), the author’s observations on why people allow themselves to live with too much crap were an overdue existential bitchslap for me. And, I’ll admit, he has simple cures for dealing with this seemingly intractable challenge, and for me that’s a hard combination to beat.

Clutter of every kind has been the default state of my physical world forever. 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. Bad habits formed early, bad habits stuck, and, for the most part, bad habits remain intact to this day.

It’s All Too Much
by Peter Walsh

I lugged unnecessary crap through 3 moves a year in college, then entered a young adult life of unopened cardboard boxes and the omnipresent cruft of consumer existence. In addition to being a bit of a pig, I was also what Cory Doctorow calls “a craphound.” I had ersatz collections of stuff everywhere. But it wasn’t just ephemerabilia – I also lived with last week’s dishes, last month’s beer cans, last year’s TV Guide. You name it, I was not throwing it away.

Despite at least two purges of epic proportion in the late 90s, I moved to California with a lot of those same boxes – still unopened – and, although I did leave the empty beer cans in Tallahassee, the bad habits happily ﬂew cross-country with me. Today, despite 7½ years of gentle intervention from a wonderfully tidy woman, I can still see ample evidence of my bad decision-making, twisted sentimentality, and utter failure to sensibly incorporate my worldly belongings into the space that’s available to contain them.

This bit from Chapter 3 of Walsh’s book is typical of the sections I’d credit with highlighting my awareness of the need for a change:

The things you own are a distraction to getting started on the right path. The key to getting – and staying – organized is to look beyond the stuff and imagine the life you could be living. Put most simply: It’s about how you see your life before all else.

Good stuff.

The problem is about more than just cubic inches of physical space – it becomes about cubic yards of mindshare when the state of your surroundings starts to deﬁne the promise of your future. The mindless junk of your past crowds out opportunities and sets pointless limitations. Pretty soon those “collectibles” start to seem a lot less valuable, and the baseline junk begins to look a lot less harmless. At least that’s been the revelation for me: clutter is not without its very real costs every day.

Anyway, this is all in the service of saying I’ve now spent the better part of the last 5 days throwing out crap, and I’m just getting started. This has been so alternately exhausting and exhilarating that I wanted to share some of it with you.

So over the next couple days, I’ll be writing about and linking to ideas that might help you wage your own war on clutter. Most of this won’t be brand new insight by a long shot, but if you have the clutter (and the ears to hear about some solutions), maybe you can join me in digging a tunnel to a more crap-free life.

”My War on Clutter” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 02, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"