The Declutter Diaries is a series of posts I did for a former blog as a glimpse inside a real decluttering project [with occasional editorial comments from my present self]. You can start with Day One here.
The fact that I have company coming for dinner tonight inspires today’s project: I need to clean up the kitchen. Here we have a typical pile that grows on a countertop in my kitchen. This is a pile that spontaneously reappears no matter how often I clear it off. [Though this picture is from before we remodeled the kitchen, that counter is still the same size.]
Why Is This an Attractive Place to Put Stuff?
My first task: figure out why people (meaning me) leave things here. First of all, it is a small space, just the right size to build a towering pile on. It’s really too small for anything practical in the kitchen. Second, it is in the entryway to the kitchen, so it is a natural spot to put things down.
Third, whenever I am trying to clear things off the table (so we can eat, for instance), I tend to whisk everything onto that countertop, which is the only other place I can actually put things down in my kitchen (we’re talking VERY LITTLE counter space).
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[Good to think through why this is such an attractive place to pile things. Clearly I needed a better plan to deal with cleaning off the kitchen table so it didn’t get piled there. Hmmm….I still seem to have this problem!]
What’s in This Pile Anyway?
Next, I decided to list everything in the pile and came up with the following:
- prayer list
- grocery aisle list
- free sample plant food packet
- game instructions
- scissors
- receipt
- homeschool project
- seed packet
- jury duty record
- penny
- card game
- craft
- 3 books
- Spanish book and notebook
- 4 coupons
- 12 children’s artwork
- gift list
- shopping list
- 6 pieces of old mail
- 3 magazines I’ve already read
- clipped article
- old notes
- 4 mother’s day cards
- clothes cleaning note
- business paper
- catalog
- unwanted gift
- old photo
- newsletter
- zoo map
- 4 unread magazines
- letter
- battery
- crumbs and bits of trash at the bottom of the pile
[Well, the crumbs are a bit embarrassing, but this is reality folks. More about Pile Analysis here.]
Then I sorted these into categories:
- got put down instead of put away
- homeless
- need a system to deal with an ongoing project/problem
- trash
- things I don’t know what to do with
[This is the crux of figuring out why you pile things…the categories. Until you can understand the reason things get put here instead of away, you won’t make much progress.]
What Am I Going to Do About It?
The trash is a no-brainer—toss. Put-away items are no-brainers–put them away. Homeless things go into my homeless box to figure out what to do with after my decluttering project. The things that need a system are going to require some serious thinking to figure out how to solve this problem. [Preach it, Past Self! Seriously, you MUST have systems to deal with the ongoing realities of running a household. Read more about household systems here.]
My uncertainty pile is mostly made of things that probably should get thrown away, but for some reason I’m having a hard time letting go. Perhaps I need to put it into the emotional withdrawal box for the summer and re-evaluate it at the end of the summer.
Or maybe I just need to get tough and toss stuff now. I’m going to try just throwing it away and see if I really miss any of it later. [YES! Way to toss stuff, Past Self! Since I can’t even remember what that stuff was that you tossed, I’m pretty confident in saying you made the right choice.]
The Bottom Line
Overall the biggest problem seems to be putting things down instead of putting it away (including putting it in the trash). [Dang! Still have that problem!] The second biggest problem is not having systems for dealing with ongoing issues. In my house that includes what to do with the piles of artwork my children churn out on a daily basis, where to put books we are currently reading, what to do with ambiguous mail, and where to store current projects.
[Hmm….these sound like familiar problems. I guess I need to revisit making systems for some of these things AGAIN. Sometimes your system breaks down and you will need to reboot it. That’s okay! Systems don’t work forever; they need maintenance sometimes.]
To combat these problems, I’m instituting a new rule: Don’t Put It Down, Put It Away. If it doesn’t have a place to live, then it needs to go into a “Systems” box or a “Homeless” box so I can work on dealing with these things when I have some time. [Excellent rule. If only I could follow it…okay, okay… progress, not perfection.]
Have you figured out why you pile where you do? Do you know what is in your pile and why it is there? Maybe you need to have a new rule too… Don’t Put It Down, Put It Away.