Organizing For the Cheap and Lazy

Show of hands-how many of you have looked around at your house and emitted a strangled cry of desperation at the mess? Well, let me put my hands back down so I can keep typing, and then let me tell you that you have plenty of company, based on the popularity of such shows as the Style channel's Clean House and Organize It! on TLC. I'll bet a lot of you watch those shows for the same reason I do: just making sure there's somebody out there who's at least slightly more hopeless than you.

But what makes our houses repositories of what Miss Neci on Clean House refers to as "mayhem and foolishness"? It's not actual dirt, although dirt may lurk when you can't reach anything to clean it properly. The real culprit is clutter: loose mail, magazines, clothes, toys, memorabilia, CDs, books, receipts and a host of other things can clutter up a house crazy fast. Why do we hang onto all of this stuff? Well, the thing about clutter is that it's not garbage, or at least we don't see it that way. Garbage is easy to deal with: either the recycling bin or the waste bin. Clutter's not so easy to part with. There is a value, either actual or emotional, on clutter. How could you get rid of those Beanie Babies you bought to fund your retirement? They'll be worth something some day, right? (Answer: Yes, they'll be worth something. You don't want to hear how much.) And you can't imagine ditching little Mikey's craft projects from his very first stay-away camp, could you? He might be a famous artist some day! (And yet, as Miss Neci points out, "Your child is not the first one to ever glue macaroni to a piece of cardboard, okay?")

How does clutter accumulate so quickly? Well, for one example, think about all the mail that comes into your house every day. You have to keep the bills; you want to keep the checks. You'll want to save any personal mail, like letters, birth announcements, wedding invites, graduation announcements. Maybe you hold on to the advertising circulars to take advantage of an upcoming sale. Catalogues are usually fun to browse, so you set those aside for later. Some of the ads and flyers you receive seem to have pretty good deals, so you leave those on your desk to think about or use later. Subscription magazines are obviously keepers, and maybe you also get free local magazines or periodicals from a charity to which you've donated. So what do you actually get rid of? And this is just the mail, people! Some people go shopping several times a week and always see stuff they just have to have (No, you don't, by the way. Maybe you need to take your parents with you, so they can tell you that.), or things that so-and-so would just love. Some people even come home with more stuff for their kids when they've been out alone than they would have if their kids had been with them, pestering for everything they saw!

So, now that we know where clutter comes from, what do we do about it? How do you go about tackling a mess that wears you out just looking at it? This is how we'll do it: the Cheap and Lazy way! Pick a category and start organizing!

Cheap, Not Necessarily Lazy:

Box it Up. It should cost you little or nothing to accumulate empty boxes from liquor stores, grocery stores, friends who have moved, etc. Start with the kitchen, because it tends to be the both the entry port and the nerve center of the house. If you actually have some space left on the kitchen table, set a few boxes in a row (otherwise, use chairs for your boxes, and start your clearing efforts with the table!). There should be at least one box for things that don't belong in the kitchen: Kids' toys; mail that needs to make its way to your office; stuff for the car; tools; stacks of magazines and books. Seriously, you know you have ALL this stuff in your kitchen, don't you? Winnow it down to what should be in the kitchen: articles involved in the preparation, serving and consumption of FOOD. So make boxes to go to your kids' rooms, to the garage, to your office, and if you get ahead of the game, a box for things to be sold or donated and one for recyclables (throw trash directly into the trash bin). Now rejoice at all the empty space! If you still have some gumption, give the kitchen a good cleaning, now that you have access to surfaces. Oh, and here's the secret: Leave an empty box IN the kitchen so that you will have one handy to keep new clutter from piling up. Repeat with as many rooms as you have. If there is not an available area to put the things you are transferring from the wrong room to the right one, just leave them boxed (except for the mail). You may find you don't really NEED any of it.

Build a Solution. Go to your local home-supply store and take a peek in the "organizing" aisle. There is a wealth of modestly-priced shelving systems, racks, and storage boxes, all of which you can use to create more places to put your stuff. I have noticed that a lot of the homes featured on these organizing shows are not making use of their wall space. Think vertically, as in running shelving units right up the wall to the ceiling! You will discover a vast area of footage that you never even realized you had. Put things you don't need but can't bear to part with or purely decorative items on the highest shelves.

Lazy, Not Necessarily Cheap:

Delegate. There are people whom you can hire to install closet or room organization systems and even people who are organizing experts. If you need a little tough love about parting with 20 years' worth of craft projects and term papers, an organizing consultant might be able to get through to you about setting priorities.

Cheap AND Lazy:

Cut the Spending. This is so cheap it will actually SAVE you money. Take a look at your spending practices and at your clutter. Is any of your clutter still in the bag from the store? Do any of your clothes have tags still on? Then you didn't really need that stuff, did you? Look, even something that seems like a bargain just turns into a needless expense if you never use it. And not only are you out the cash, now you have another pile of crap in your way. If you can't go to the store without buying something, don't go to the store until you NEED something. Then just go and get that. I promise it will feel better to have more money and less stuff than the other way around.

Tear it Up. If you read a magazine and find one or two of the articles or a photograph particularly interesting, do you save the magazine? Do you now have a stack of old magazines because of this? Here's the solution: Tear out the good stuff, recycle the rest. You will not only reduce the giant stack of magazines to a folder or two of stuff, you will make it easier to actually FIND the stuff you wanted to save if you don't have to flip through all those magazines.

So now you know how to get started on what seems an insurmountable problem. Don't try to straighten it all up at once-after all, the people on Clean House have a whole team of people helping them-but try to get a little done every day, or at least take a few hours each weekend. Once you make the initial moves, keeping things up will require far less effort, and that's what being Cheap and Lazy is all about!

Want to keep on keepin' it Cheap and Lazy? Check out my other articles:

Exercise for the Cheap and Lazy

Environmentalism for the Cheap and Lazy

Activism for the Cheap and Lazy