There is an entire industry devoted to helping the world conquer clutter. In fact, I am part of that industry. The thing I see over and over is a series of mindsets that are simply inaccurate.


It's not the space, it's the person

As much as you want to believe that your space is your problem, the reality is that people who are ingrained with organization will find a way to make a space work for their needs. This is the heart of every professional organizer's job: find a way to make the space work.

Usually, people have far more "things" than they truly need. This is especially true if you grew up in poverty, were raised during the Depression, or were raised by someone who grew up in poverty and/or during the Depression-era. The mindset is that you "might need it someday" and therefore, you need it. The reality is that if you haven't used something in 6 months to a year, it is highly unlikely that you NEED it. There are certainly exceptions, but they are just that--exceptions. Once you pare down to what is truly necessary in your life, you'll find the space is suddenly more adequate. Then you can start looking at your spaces and finding a way to make them work.

People who convince themselves that their space is inadequate (and many have truly brainwashed themselves this way) will never be able to make a space work for them. I counseled a family of seven living in a 3 bedroom 2-1/2 bath townhome (with a full, finished basement that included a huge storage area) and they had convinced themselves that the home was just too small for their things. Truly, it was: because they had way too many things. It was easy for them to convince themselves that the house was too small for them because it wasn't common for that many people to live in a home. But when you opened spaces that contained things that were not dependent on the number of people in the house--like cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink--and those spaces were literally spilling over, you saw the problem.

On the flip side, I saw a family of four living in a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment that was almost military.

It's not the space--it's how you view the use of space.


Organize around how you live, don't try to change how you live to accommodate organization

Too many people have gathered ideas about the space they want and try to conform themselves to living life to accommodate the space they want. In their mind, the key rack belongs in a certain place in the home (usually the kitchen or some similar utility place). But their lifestyle is such that the keys keep winding up on their bedroom dresser. It doesn't occur to them to find a key solution that accommodates the way they live--maybe a top dresser drawer divider for their keys). Instead, they try to "train" themselves to put the keys somewhere else.

Trying to change yourself and your habits is the harder of the two. It's by far easier to look at how you live and arrange your spaces to accommodate how you live. It requires far more time and effort to change your personal habits and lifestyle (especially if you're tackling more than one at a time) than it is to organize around who you are.


If you can keep these two very critical ideas in mind, you will come to view clutter and organization very differently. Think about them. Let them soak in. Think about how these ideas might change how you've been tackling your clutter problem. Hopefully, with this renewed mindset, you will come to know a more clutter-free life.