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Clutter


I hate clutter. Let's get rid of it.

Pick a spot in your house or office or even computer that you want to de-clutter. Let's say we're de-cluttering a drawer in a home-office.

Take out everything and put it all in one pile. Pick up each thing one at time and ask yourself why you have this thing. If you're going to keep it, you have to know why you have it. You should be able to name the purpose the object has and know when it will meet that purpose. The purpose of a yellow highlighter is obvious, but if you never highlight things, then it will never meet that purpose. It's clutter. This stapler and its little box of staples work like new. I've had them for years, I never use them. They have to go. Do you want them?

Start a new pile of the things that have no clear purpose. If you are rigorous in surveying your stuff, this pile should get big quickly. Everything in this pile is going to go; we just have to figure out where it goes. Now, you're going to sort it into the following smaller piles:
  • Stuff you can give away because you know someone who can use it (I take my extraneous office supplies to my departmental office where 20+ people can share them)
  • Stuff you can sell on ebay or craigslist (I prefer CL because I don't want to deal with all the shipping issues)
  • Stuff you can donate to thrift stores and charities
  • Stuff you recycle
  • Stuff that can only be trash
Keep that last pile as small as possible. Repeat this for all the different places that get cluttered. You'll make money on the things you sell and you'll save money as you learn what kind of stuff to stop buying since you obviously don't use it.

One final note: One of the biggest forms of clutter is books. Sorry bibliophiles, but it's true. If you're not reading and re-reading them, they are clutter. Pick out the ones you love and give the rest away. Then go join your local library.

Visit Katlamdo for more resources and tips.

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Comments

  1. JessAugust 22, 2009 at 12:12 PM

    The accumulation of *stuff* bothers me and I'm always battling my packrat tendencies and inner consumer. The book issue is something my husband and I go around and around on; we both love books, but I hate having to have somewhere to put all of them, and it strikes me as ridiculous to own things that I only use once a decade or less. On the other hand, both of us grew up in homes where we were surrounded by books, and having that kind of free access to browsing through them (as well as library access) was valuable to us. A set of encyclopedias takes up space, is obsolete before it's printed, but is still a potential goldmine for a child on a quest for any and all knowledge she can stuff into her mind.

    I have a similar love-hate relationship to creative supplies. We have a studio space brimming with all manner of materials. To me - and to my kids - it's food for our souls. Yet it still bothers me that making space for things like this takes up other resources that might be put to other uses.

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  2. Dustin KiddAugust 23, 2009 at 12:07 PM

    I'm not as creative as you. It sounds to me like you really should keep those supplies around. I have some supplies (glue sticks, markers, etc.) but I never use them. I recently took most of them to my office and put them in the supply cabinet. I figure I can afford to buy them when I want them. In the meantime, someone else should be using them since I'm not.

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