Wage War On Clutter!

By Marilyn Machlowitz

I am a sucker for California Closets. Matching storage containers are my jam. A walk through The Container Store is bliss.

By the time a person reaches our age, they have stuff. We’ve had years to (over)buy or hang onto usable, seemingly useful items. I don’t want to just add to the landfill, but clearing clutter lightens my mental load.

I’ve worked with a professional organizer, read organizing manuals and even watched videos on the subject to develop my own, perhaps unorthodox, approaches to understanding and curbing clutter.

• If you are saving stuff for someone, they don’t want it.

Your kids will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that they don’t want anything. Even thrift shops won’t take brown (wooden) furniture.

• If you think you’ll need it someday, you won’t.

The instruction manuals for all your appliances are available online. If you ever need another electrical power strip, Amazon will supply one tomorrow.

• Your junk drawer is full of junk.

The delivery packets of soy sauce and the hotel mini-bottles of toiletries don’t spark joy, to quote home organizing guru Marie Kondo.

• If you attempt to figure out where to take each item, you won’t get rid of anything.

I recommend joining Buy Nothing on Facebook. These groups are hyper-local so the item you picture and post will be picked up as quickly as cold pizza from the office kitchen. Those soy sauce packets will disappear by sundown. The wedding present you never could stand from a now-deceased relative will indeed be someone else’s treasure. Items will be picked up from your porch or doorman. (You can’t charge for anything so if you have particularly valuable goods, feel free to contact Christie’s or The Real Real.)

• High hopes may lead to aspirational clutter.

The Washington Post taught me this term. If you haven’t played golf yet, do you really need the set of clubs? My own rolling pin implies I might someday make a pie crust. I doubt I will.

• Flea markets and museum gift shops are not your friends.

I have never used anything I did buy or regretted anything I didn’t.

• Read digitally.

Ebooks, whether bought or borrowed from the library, take up no shelf space. Subscribing to newspapers online curbs mess and saves marriages.

• Don’t buy duplicates unintentionally.

Until I organized my spice cabinet, I unthinkingly bought multiple jars of ground ginger.

• The one exception.

Yes, your favorite bra, lipstick and nail polish will be discontinued. You may stockpile a few duplicates.

Marilyn Machlowitz is a Lustre member in Manhattan and an avid contributor to Lustre List.