How to contain stealth clutter

Your home is clean. Everything is in its place. Then… the mail arrives. People bring home stuff they’ve bought and want to keep the packaging until they’re sure they won’t return it. People leave stuff out where they won’t forget to take it with them. Then the stuff that’s left out attracts other stuff that doesn’t seem to belong anywhere, or would have to be walked all the way over there on the other side of the room to be put away, and you find your home filled with teetering mounds of junk piled on other teetering mounds of junk. And something smells, and you don’t even know where to start looking for it.

That’s when you realize: you’ve been infiltrated by stealth clutter!

*Cue the scream music*

Don’t panic. What you need is a system, a set of rules to help you navigate the clutter, then nuke it. Start with trashing anything that needs trashing. Then move on to putting what’s left where it belongs. Stay focused on one room at a time – don’t get distracted when you go into another room to put something away.

Once you can finally see some surfaces, it’s time to clean them.

In the longterm, your best bet is to look into collecting less stuff in the first place. Do you really need to bring home everything you find cute or fairly interesting or it was such a good sale I couldn’t pass it up and I’m not sure what it is, but it looks so useful? Because if you don’t collect that stuff in the first place, you won’t ever have to clean up around it.

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Posted in Organization on January 11, 2008