Taming the Clutter Beast in Your Home

For women who work from home organization seems to be the elusive piece to every puzzle. We lead busy lives and when we work from home, there is little to draw the line between family, business, and pleasure. For this reason we need to establish clear boundaries in order to protect the time and space we need for each as well as our sanity. More importantly we need to rid our homes and our offices of the clutter that often gets in the way of productivity.

While I am quite aware that there are probably people in the world that the following will not apply to, I do not know personally know anyone who feels that they have too much space in their home and need to ‘clutter it up’ a bit. If you are one who feels this way, drop me a line. I’ll send my kids over for one day and that will be the ends of that. At any rate, many of us have a great deal of difficulty living within the space we have and for that reason we will find little bits and pieces of clutter from our office, kitchen, and bathrooms strewn from one end of our homes to another.

One way to stop the endless line of clutter is to have a clearly defined space for everything and make a daily goal of everything going into its place. I know this is much easier said than done, particularly in the beginning but if your family practices this each and every day it will quickly become a habit that is second nature rather than a new and harsh rule that needs to be enforced. The key however, is in tossing all those items that do not have a space in order to minimize and reduce clutter that inevitably flows from one room to the next.

In the beginning you should set aside two hours each weekend day to devote to identifying the items you must have and those you can live without. When it comes to the closet if you haven’t worn it in a year, throw it out. I know it’s painful but the patent leather pants aren’t likely to come back into style and if they do would you seriously wear them? The same holds true for the bear straw hat and countless other odds and ends resting in your closet shelves and buried under layers of sweaters in your drawers. There is no reason to let any area of your home become the black hole of clutter. It robs you of that space for more useful things.

It’s tempting to hang on to things from our pasts but do you need all 50 teddy bears from your grammar school collection? Choose one that represents a particularly fond memory and donate the rest to a charity that can find good and loving homes for them. Use this time as an opportunity to teach your children about letting go of things that are no longer important to them as well. Our children learn by example and as they watch you reducing the clutter in your life, chances are they will be more willing to minimize the clutter in theirs.

One thing you should keep in mind is that if your closets, pantries, kitchen shelves, drawers, and toy boxes are free of clutter you have a better idea of what you do and do not have. In many cases you may have just freed up enough space to go out and buy a little something new as a reward. Before you buy however, you should really ask yourself if you really need it or if it will be contributing to the clutter content in your home in a matter of days.

These small but simple steps can help you remove the clutter from your home that often makes productivity impossible. This is particularly important for women who have families and work from home. If you are constantly being torn between your need to work and your need to deal with the clutter problem in your home it is time to tame the clutter beast.