The timing of this article could not have been any better. I have been wanting to tackle my clutter for some time and yesterday I made my first steps. I cleaned my kitchen and living room and it feels so good. I threw out, recycled and donated so much stuff, the dog and cat were nervous. I haven’t been able to sit at my kitchen table in so long, it is great to see it again. Today will be my dining room and bedroom. Thanks again for the inspiration and in a couple of weeks you want to create an article on painting, perhaps I could be inspired to get some new paint on the walls.

I love that book! Other organization books tell you how to organize but Walsh’s book gives you the philosophy that will motivate you to actually do it and do it right so it makes a difference in your life on an ongoing basis.

We all have our specific clutter hang-ups. Mine is sentimental stuff. My husband’s is not throwing out trash (everything from food wrappers to electronics that don’t work). The trick to getting past them is realizing like Walsh teaches that it is holding back other areas of our lives and using that motivation to overcome it.

We’re still working on that at our house but getting better…

Well, this is eerily timely. Moved into current (first real) house 11 hrs ago. Strong tendency to save this and that out of economy and ‘just in case’. (I’ll not digress but to say my mother was a certifiable hoarder.) Recognition of frightening state of attic (the repository of last resort). Appreciation of feng shui warnings of negative affects of clutter. Mild but meaningful medical event prompted reflection upon limit of life’s time and narrowing of focus (ie: too many things are fascinating; I do not [know that I] possess multiple lifetimes in which to explore them). The final impetus? Mouse evidence. Now: weekly trips to the local charity thrift store (check if your state offers tax deductions for specific charities; doubly nice) and/or library (they were thrilled with the 78 VHS tapes). Occasional eBay sales. A feeling of lightness. A true focus in my personal and creative life. Next: Get my business GTD-ized; going to try utilizing Curio for this.

A few years back, I had a girlfriend who had the habit of throwing all my stuff in the garbage when she felt it wasn’t of any use. She threw out my collection of Guitar Player magazines witch dated back to 1987 (yikes!), but beside that, I think she was right.

I kept kept that habit over time, and even started giving away musical instruments and computers I was no longer using. As a result, I have a very small amount of clutter and I can move with one Econoline truck. Quite handy when you have to leave the country in a hurry ;)

(PS. Get the iPhone Merlin! I live in Canada and would give my right arm to be an eligible US citizen right now…)

You want clutter? I went to Monticello this weekend. That place is absolutely littered with art, curios, natural specimens, historical artifacts, musical and scientific instruments, and books. I don’t know how Jefferson every had any time to Get Things Done (tm)!

TJ in fact had three vast libraries in his lifetime. The first was destroyed by fire. The second he sold to the federal government to form the nucleus of the Library of Congress. The third collection, which is the one he had upon his death, he amassed after selling the second, telling his friend Monroe(?), “I cannot live without books.”

On that point, by far the majority of my clutter is in books, music, and other media. And to an extent the infrastructure needed to support that media. (Less for music now of course, but then came the Wii.) Most of the rest of the crap can go for all I’m concerned. My glass eye, rat skull, and wooden frogs serve only to fill space on the bookshelves.

Tell me how to live without books and in no time I’ll be down to a polo shirt, a pair of Dickies, a pair of chucks and a Macbook.

I applaud your efforts, Merlin. I’m with you in spirit whenever you trash the next lot of stuff.

Like an alcoholic/addict, it takes a constant effort to keep on the narrow path. But it feels so good when the effort is made and one is successful.

All of the pieces have been falling into place for me. I too suffer from clutter, but I wasn’t worried about that. My obsession lately has been about the environment. When I learned how much I personally was responsible for polluting and looked for ways to reduce, suddenly the magnifying glass was on my consumerism. I don’t need as much shit as I have, it doesn’t make me happy, it doesn’t make my life better. Generally, it pollutes and wastes my money. I’m even thinking about joining the SF Compact (12 months, don’t buy anything new http://sfcompact.blogspot.com/ ) to see how far I can go with this. LESS IS MORE!!!! No, really!

Merlin, I refer to those afflicted with the need to compulsively save stuff as having a “hoarder disorder.” Many in my family are so afflicted. Sadly, the disorder affects everyone in the home, or those asked to help them move, or clean the garage, or find that thing thats gotta be here somewhere…

Merlin, I refer to those afflicted with a strange need to maintain “stuff” as having a hoarder disorder. Many in my family are so afflicted. Sadly, the disorder harms everyone in the family, or shares the home, or is asked to help move, or clean the garage…

I’m going to be following this series with deep, passionate, personal interest. Packratting is my fatal flaw… but every time I ‘decrapify’ my life, within two weeks I have an urgent need for something just offloaded. I suspect there’s a solution to that, somewhere - will be reading along, in hope that you’re able to uncover it!

One breakthrough for me (though it is of course an ongoing process) was the realization that so much of the stuff I wanted to save was redundant. So what if I do decide, three years from now, that I wanted to re-read that cover story from the July 12, 1997 issue of the Nation? Someone else is worrying about keeping that available — the Nation’s website, the local library…I can probably get it if I need it. Start with: How much time/effort/cost would be involved in replacing the item as opposed to storing it?

Michael Vanderborght: I’ve found this helpful as well, and good for back-up purposes. It’s a lot easier to back up image files than hard copies. An all-in-one office printer/scanner type machine with an auto document feeder (the ADF is key) helps a lot!

Phew! Don’t get me wrong, I like when people say that they are perfectly organized, but it’s also good to hear that my websphere heroes are a mess like me. I’ve been trying to decrapify for the last 3 years, and it’s been hard and wonderful. I think I learned to live with a lot less but I’m still messy. I’m waiting to hear more from you! And hey, if you have any beer cans around they have to be full and cold, then you can empty them and throw them away…

Merlin- Glad to hear Unclutterer got you to look at lightening your load. We’ve had a great response to the Peter Walsh interview and we’re looking forward to your clutter series. Cheers, Jerry of unclutterer.com

Peter Walsh and the show Clean Sweep is a major motivator. The show is on Saturday Mornings in my area and I find myself and my wife motivated to go through a major purging session after a couple episodes. The people they help started out with a clean house, and built the clutter over time. We have found it really easy and amazingly fast to grow the amount of stuff in our lives.

After my wife died in 2005, I realized that I needed to start removing a lot of the excess physical objects (shared and hers) from my life. I haven’t made much headway since, but this post inspires me. My mantra is “Each item you discard adds value to each item you keep.”

Aside from “I’m sorry your biz model is broken” I think my favorite Merliin-ism to date is the “overdue existential bitchslap” comment made while referring to the start of the war on clutter. I’m presently in a guerilla clutter conflict myself which isn’t going well - ‘m happy for some new ammo. I started the war with no exit strategy - I’m sinking the ships as either the clutter goes or I do.

Thanks!

Nice post Merlin! Reading this made me decide to make an entry in my Inbox “Remove clutter from cupboard”

Merlin,

Great post. I bought the book right when you mentioned it last week (Amazon Prime is too easy…) and have enjoyed reading Unclutterer.

One of my biggest problems is crap paper and have tried the GTD filing method, but I have to say, Freedom Filier (which I read about on Unclutterer) is just amazing. It reall makes sense. I look forward to more posts.

M

A little system by the unlikely name of “flylady” (worth a google search) has been helping me declutter. 2 minutes of attacking a ‘hotspot’ in the house serves as an anti-entropy move, and periodic 27-fling-boogies (again, a goofy name for a worthwhile project in which you swiftly fling 27 objects into a garbage) are slowly but surely imposing order in my house. Progress. not perfection.

I’ve seriously been wanting to de-clutter my office with the tons of books, magazine, and stuff I’ve collected over the years. But hardest part is just knowing what to let go and what not. I keep thinking that I’ll look back on the magazine collection someday. I think I could relocate the books to the garage, but it’s clear that I need to get rid of at least a third of them. I think de-cluttering would make my life easier, but it means finding a way spend to a couple of weeks just getting rid of stuff.

Great post, this really resonates with me, I’ve been in a purging mood myself. A lot of stuff was easy to get rid of, but one thing I really struggled with were books. I had all sort of books from college years (early 90’s) that I had hauled across the country. I had’t read them (since school) but when I’d look at them I’d say “someday I’ll read them again and be a well read, educated individual”. Somehow my identity was defined by them, and they represented one more thing I’d failed to do. A few weeks ago it dawned on me, I couldn’t see the work clearly in front of me because to get to my desk I had to stumble across 15 years worth of accumulated “best intentions”. Now my goal is a room set up to help me stay on the path of today’s goals, not yesterday’s forgotten ones. There definitely is a price for the clutter.

The book sounds excellent, but I don’t think we should clutter up our house with yet another book… will look forward to the posts here.

I have always struggled to square my desire to become a minimalist with my memorabilia hoarding tendencies. One method I have employed with some success is to digitize and dispose. I scan ticket stubs, post cards, etc; photograph old t-shirts and other objects that don’t conform well to scanning, and keep it in a folder titled “Archive of Discarded Inventory.” This allows me to maintain my memory lane without cluttering up my closets. Ironically, I am more prone to enjoy all this junk now that it is in digital form because I can access it from anywhere and it is easy to find; and with Flickr, I can share the wealth.

Awesome idea for a series here. As a collector of various things, I have waaaaay too much useless junk around that I’d like to rid myself of.

Hurricane Katrina uncluttered my life for me. It did have its upsides.

It’s funny what we’re each anal retentive about. As an outdoor athlete, I have a hard time throwing away anything related to my cycling, climbing, skiing, swimming, etc. gear. I still have a race Speedo from back in 1993 sitting in my drawer. I’m too embarrassed to wear it now but just can’t bring myself to throw it away.

On the other hand, I have no problems ditching regular “work” clothes, magazines, books, papers, etc.

My wife is just the opposite. EVERYTHING is memorabilia to her and we’re working on resolving her pack rat tendencies.

There’s a Buddhist philosophy of periodic renunciation that I try and live by. If you’re not using or enjoying something, give it to someone who can use it. No strings attached. I try and do that every six months…although the Western capitalist in me would prefer to sell it on eBay!

hak

I picked up a copy of It’s All Too Much and something clicked for me. I really like lots of stuff and I have always thought that my biggest problem was that I didn’t have enough space for it and it wasn’t organized well enough. I just needed a bigger house, more plastic storage bins, bigger closets, a bigger garage/workroom, etc. After reading this book I decided that my clutter was a major part of my stress. When I needed something, I knew that I had it around somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. When I needed to fix something or build a project, I put it off because I couldn’t find all of my tools. Cleaning the house became an exercise is stashing things because I didn’t have a place where everything belonged.

So, I started room by room and, so far, I’ve carried away five or six pickup truck loads of stuff to charities and thrown away about an equal amount. I actually got rid of shelves and plastic storage bins because they encouraged me to stash and hide. I decided that my library would contain all of the books I could own at one time and started a “one comes in, one goes out” plan. I combined this cleaning with a reboot of GTD (since they go hand in hand) and so far, about four weeks in now, I’m happier, more productive, and more organized.

Here is a blog post about my experiences in my garage alone:

http://cmpalmer.blogspot.com/2007/05/note-to-self-always-take-before.html

There is an uncluttering television show called neat that I like a lot because it explores this idea. Much like The Now Habit proposes that procrastination is not so much due to laziness as a psychological resistance to what certain tasks represent for an individual, neat looks at clutter as an attempt to emotionally hold onto something in one’s life. Getting rid of it opens up a space for new creativity and mental bandwidth. It’s a Canadian HGTV show, so it’s not fantastic, and the clutter-control solutions they come up with often seem more pretty than effective in a long-term sense. But it is fascinating to see how and why people bind themselves up with clutter, and inspiring to watch them get rid of it. Worth 00:30 on the TiVo.