Household clutter is made, not born. Its hidden cause? Deferred decision-making. Each item of clutter in your home represents a frozen decision or an incomplete action. Worse, the stale energy of piled clutter attracts more clutter, accreting together into an avalanche of pent-up “must-do, should-do, wanna-do”
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| Clear clutter: the STOP clutter method |
For example, bringing in the mail, you notice a catalog you’d like to browse, so you set it aside on the counter. Next day, three more catalogs, a stack of bills, and a page of pizza coupons land in the pile, and by the week’s end, the lone catalog has mushroomed into an unwieldy stack of magazines, letters, bills, permission slips, and store receipts that will take an hour to sort, file, and finish—and you still haven’t found
time to peruse the new catalog. The STOP clutter method fights clutter at the heart by thawing the decision-making process. It’s short, sweet, and powerful, and is designed to help you blast through all those frozen decisions quickly—no more sitting on the fence in the face of chaos! By forcing you to make decisions rapidly, you cut through the mass of clutter and regain your organized home. Using the STOP technique, you’ll attack clutter in four easy steps: Sort, Toss, Organize, and Put away (see opposite).
STOP clutter tools:
The tools you’ll use for each STOP clutter session are simple. They’re designed to set limits, encourage decision-making, and make it easy to wrap up each session of cutting clutter.
You will need a kitchen timer, three large boxes, and a garbage bag.
A timer Stopping clutter, like acquiring it, is a long-term process of short steps. Too often, the initial excitement of attacking the clutter problem causes people to bite off more than they can chew—or decide, store, or put away in a single session. Result: torn-up drawers, stacks of “Idunno” items and a sense that the job is never finished.
Using a timer to keep STOP clutter sessions short and complete keeps the declutter momentum going, and
prevents burnout. You’ll use your timer to start—and stop—each session so that you can finish the put-away
step and leave the newly decluttered area clean and ready for use.
Three boxes The put away, storage, and sell/donate boxes lie at the heart of the STOP clutter method. Labeled “Put Away,” “Storage,” and “Sell/Donate,” they’re the decision-making engine that drives the declutter process.
Use sturdy, good-sized boxes, preferably with handles and lids. Look for records boxes (sold in office supply stores), or scour supermarkets for lidded produce boxes. Handles make it easy to circle the house at the end of each STOP clutter session, emptying the Put Away box. Lids help you stack the Storage and Sell/Donate boxes as you gather out-of-season items or set aside boxes for donation or a yard sale. Lids also help to cut the temptation to peep inside and return decluttered items to their old haunting grounds.
Out of sight is out of mind!
A garbage bag An opaque garbage bag or garbage can is star player in a STOP clutter session. Here’s where you’ll entrust all the true trash, the quicker, the better. Black garbage bags prevent the declutterer (or
family members) from having a change of heart. If it can’t be seen, it won’t be returned to the scene.
Taking it a step at a time
To harness the power of the STOP clutter method, assemble your boxes and garbage bag and set the timer
for 15 minutes. The timer’s bell will tell you when it’s time to stop deciding and start putting away. Working
in 15-minute increments (plus another 5 minutes to return put-away items and stow the tools), you stay fresh and motivated to do the job.
1 Sort Turning to the day’s chosen clutter cache—the area around the telephone, for example—take the first
step and sort the items being decluttered. Quickly move through the pile of clutter that surrounds the phone,
making a quick decision about each item: should I keep this here, put it away, sell it, or throw it away?
If the item belongs in the area being decluttered, sort it into a pile of like items: pens with pens, paper clips with paper clips, and notepads with sticky notes.
If the item is an intruder that must be put away in another location, such as a pair of socks, consign it to the Put Away box. Surplus items that can be donated to charity or sold are tossed into the Sell/Donate box, the proper place for the plastic flower pen and the clunky grocery list holder. Items that more appropriately belong in household storage areas—such as light bulbs left over from December’s holiday decorations—are tucked into the Storage box.
2 Toss As you sort, toss trash straight into the garbage bag. Expired coupons, supermarket receipts, scribbled bits of paper, non-working pens all go straight into the garbage bag.
3 Organize When the entire area has been sorted and the trash tossed, it’s time to organize. Take a good look at the newly decluttered area, and find ways to organize the items that belong there. Corral pens next to the phone in a pretty coffee mug. Place the phone book neatly beneath the phone base. Consider ways to organize the area for best use; can you replace messy message slips with a hanging write-on/wipe-off
white board?
4 Put away When the timer rings, or the area is cleared, it’s time to put away any out-of-place items identified during the STOP clutter session. Take the Put Away box and circle the house, returning items to their proper places. Toss the garbage bag into the garbage can, and return the timer and boxes to a closet or shelf, where they’ll await the next STOP clutter session.
As the storage boxes fill, add them to a storage area and begin a new box. Decide when you’ll attack the household’s next clutter magnet and note it on your calender. Finally, admire your new, organized telephone area. Using the STOP clutter method, you’ve created a working center for phone calls and messages.
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