Two Powerful Hacks To Fight Clutter

Why do our homes get cluttered again so quickly? Partly because we have too much inflow, but also because we’ve adopted unhelpful habits and systems that sabotage our decluttering efforts. That’s why you and I need these two powerful hacks to fight clutter.

Unhelpful habits or systems that keep us in the endless decluttering loop

• Too many clutter hot spots
• Allowing any and every surface to become a drop zone
• Setting things aside to deal with later
• Not having a designated place for each item
• Storage systems that are too difficult or complicated to maintain
• Storage systems that don’t fit your space and your family’s lifestyle
• Trying to squeeze more into a space than it can functionally hold

The Solution? Two powerful hacks to fight clutter

The first concept that will guide you to better clutter-fighting strategies is this:

Make the right thing the easiest thing.

Many of the problems listed above arise because putting things where they belong requires more effort than you and your family members are willing to give. The answer isn’t more nagging, more color-coded labels, or more willpower.

Rather, it’s finding ways to make it easier to do the right thing—put stuff away. The easier it is to put things away, the more likely it will happen. (Read on for three key ways to accomplish this.)

The second concept that will help you fight clutter is:

Create time and space boundaries.

There is no hack that will magically make you and your family quit putting things down to deal with later. But you can create physical boundaries and time limits that keep those drop zones from getting out of hand.

How time and space boundaries help you fight clutter

Give your piles a time limit. Let’s face it, piles happen. You bring in the mail or armloads of stuff from the car and it has to go somewhere. So you set it down on the first convenient surface, promising yourself you’ll deal with it later. (Ha!)

But you don’t. And the longer it sits there, the more stuff accumulates, because clutter attracts clutter. (One of those little-known forces of nature.)

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. Set a time limit for how long items may sit. Decide on a reasonable limit and then try your best to keep it. For example: tell yourself you will put the mail away before dinnertime each day. Or let the family know the kitchen island will be cleared off each week, and anything left there will be placed in your donate box.

Give your drop zones a container. Every household needs drop zones to put car keys, purses, and other similar items. But remember, clutter attracts clutter. Setting a few things on a surface invites others in the family to put random stuff there, too.

You can limit this problem by placing containers in strategic locations. A small bin or basket in a drop zone does three things:

• Corrals the items so they don’t fall or get lost
• Limits the useable space to keep other junk from collecting there
• Looks more decorative than a jumbled pile

Honor the space limits of your home. Too much stuff in a space will feel cluttered, no matter how organized it is. Each room, closet, shelf, and cabinet in your home has a functional limit to how much stuff it can hold.

We honor space limits of a closet by not over-stuffing them to the point that hangers are too jammed-in to remove or replace easily. We honor the space limits of a cabinet drawer by not filling it to the point where we can’t open it—or find anything once we do. We honor the space limits of our home by not filling every wall and corner with storage units (because we don’t want our homes to look like a warehouse).

Make it easy to do the right thing by reducing friction

The more complicated it is to put something away, the less likely we are to actually do so. Successful storage makes it as easy as possible for your household to put things where they belong. For example, pegs for young kids to stow their coats because hangers are out of reach and too difficult to use.

Here’s the deal: each tiny step in the process of putting something away matters. Every door that must be opened, every lid that must be opened and replaced, and every item we must move before we can get to the object’s home—these are all bits of friction.

Also, ultra-sorted storage creates friction, because it requires a decision for each and every item. Deciding among three bins of toys (stuffed animals, vehicles, misc.) creates much less fiction than choosing the correct bin out of ten highly sorted ones.

As an example, decanting your pasta, dried beans, and other dry goods into matching clear containers may look lovely on Pinterest, but it’s a LOT OF UNNECESSARY WORK.  It’s way easier to store pantry items in the containers they come in.

For more thoughts on organizing systems that might not work for you, watch this video on organization system falis from the amusing YouTuber Clutterbug.

Make it easy to do the right thing by giving each item a good home

First of all, any object that doesn’t have a specific home is by definition clutter. A homeless item gets shifted from one random spot to another, cluttering up wherever you put it.

Secondly, deciding where to put something is the hardest part of putting it away. If that decision has been made, (and the location is consistent and communicated) the family doesn’t have to waste time thinking and more things will be put away instead of piled to deal with later.

Which brings me the last phrase, a “good” home. A good home may not be the location you think it “should” go. A good home for an object is a location that fits as many of these criteria as possible:

• Near where you use the item
• The first place you would think to look if you were looking for it
• Easy to access without moving a bunch of stuff
• Not too overcrowded
• Accessible for those who most often use the item (i.e. not too high or too low)

For example, if your kids or grandkids like to do crafts at the kitchen table, consider finding a craft storage location in the kitchen rather than the office at the opposite end of the house. This is where the “good” vs. “should” mindset comes in. You may think craft items “should” be stored with other office supplies and “shouldn’t” be kept in the kitchen.

Can you see how this “should” expectation is adding extra fiction, making it harder to get the craft supplies out and put them away again? Why not make space for one bin of selected craft supplies in the kitchen where they will be used and enjoyed.

For another example, families who tend to go barefoot might choose to keep a bin of socks near the door, so they’re handy when shoes need to be put on, rather than in the bedrooms where they “should” be kept.

Make it easy to do the right thing by working with the flow of your home

The layout of your rooms dictates a certain flow of traffic. Family members will naturally want to take off coats, shoes, and backpacks near the door they usually enter. Trying to store those items elsewhere is likely to end in frustration.

For a more detailed explanation of working with the flow of your house rather than against it, check out this video by YouTuber Clutterbug.

Which of these strategies will you try this week to gain an edge in the war to fight clutter in your house?