Читать книгу The Clutter Remedy - Marla Stone - Страница 8

INTRODUCTION

To live perpetually organized in a clear space using efficient and effective strategies makes your life easier, more relaxing, and productive. If you think getting organized is about getting rid of your stuff, it’s not. Instead my Clutter Remedy strategy is inspired by working with people who love their stuff but also feel encumbered by clutter. I see people, worldly goods, and space in a unique way. I don’t care how much stuff you own and how much space you have. I don’t care what things you keep or discard. It doesn’t matter whether you are a millennial, a minimalist, or you have gobs of stuff; what matters is there is a better way to go through your items, admire them, and keep it all rocking your world without upsetting yourself, your space, or your schedule. Instead of wanting to hurl everything out the window or into a dumpster, transforming your life — and space — with stability and confidence is the path to perpetual organized living. My goal is to help you become organized forever, which is accomplished by examining how you view yourself, your life, and your objects.

Reaching the truth about what you value in life is one of the most powerful ways of knowing yourself, your stuff, and your space intimately. By knowing what you truly value in life, you will know how to organize all that you own. Desiring a creative and simplified way to get yourself and your space organized is a normal response to living with clutter. Yet the life you want to lead — full of activity, fun, and purpose — is more important than being a weary and downtrodden clutter caretaker. You want to declutter with grace and dignity — and with a professional flair instead of feeling embarrassed and flustered.

Typically, the fluster and frenzy heighten when you want to find something important before walking out the door, and it’s nowhere in sight, making you late and anxious. Or you struggle with an inadequate, failing system of disorganized, ever-growing piles. To stay calm and functioning, day to day, you find yourself hiding your stuff, shoving it in drawers, moving it around, and storing it haphazardly — but you know this is not how to live with the stuff that you love. The round and round “human in a hamster wheel” behavior of going from clutter to clear and back to clutter is exhausting. It tires you out and makes you itch for more things to covet, instead of appreciating what you already own.

From my perspective, getting organized is not about cleaning up a closet or a pantry. It’s about analyzing the causes and personal challenges associated with cluttered and disorganized environments. Realizing that outer space is a reflection of the inner self helps motivate people to look deeper for the cause of clutter. When a person’s mood is off-kilter, it colors how their space will appear. Instead of living in a sacred and splendid space, they will end up living in a cluttered and out-of-control space. A cyclone effect within a home or workspace is often correlated with inner turbulence and commotion. The inner self will also influence how you look at what you own and how you feel about yourself and your appearance.

For instance, an outfit you loved a week ago will suddenly make you feel miserable, but it’s not the outfit that is causing your angst. Feelings come from your inner self, processing thoughts and formulating conclusions about your life. When the inner self is cluttered with self-doubt and insecurity, even the most elegant clothing won’t inspire feeling confident or beautiful. Your inner state can blind you to the beauty of life and all the things that you love. Since inner, emotional clutter will trigger physical clutter over and over again, it’s important to first declutter your emotions and your thoughts. This begins with understanding and articulating what matters to you most. Then and only then will you be able to move forward with the Clutter Remedy strategy. The strategy gives you well-thought-out and specific criteria for all the objects you own, and it helps you become decisive and make good decisions about what to keep in your life. The clutter surrounding you has more meaning than you realize. Matter matters. It has energy, deeper meaning, and charge.

I meet with people regularly who consider their clutter a “secret.” Their closest friends are not allowed to see their clutter or are sometimes not even invited into their homes. Some people remark that their excessive clutter or messy space brings on so much “confusion and derailment” that they’ve stopped enjoying life and feel desperate and isolated. Others share that they are what I call “décor challenged” with blank or overloaded walls, barren or cluttered mantels, and dated or misplaced furniture. However, most admit they have consistent and mild clutter challenges within their closets, drawers, cabinets, and garage, and they want tips for getting and staying organized. Some have overcollected for years with no idea what to do with anything, and they are caught up in the mire and muck, believing they are “tied” to it. Others have collected out of boredom and own doubles of everything with no space to store it all.

Ultimately you want to love your stuff and know that everything you own is in your space for a reason. You want to stop having a love/hate relationship with stuff. I know there are days of loving your stuff, your collections, your books, bags, clothes, shoes, jewelry, tchotchkes, and sporting goods, and other days the stuff takes over and becomes an irritant and you want to set it on fire or take an ax to it and bury it in the backyard. Remaining in love with your stuff instead of being at war with it becomes easier when things you own are in alignment with your ideal lifestyle. Then, everything you own will imbue the sparkle and radiance that is part of the inner you. You will shine in your space as much as your space shines back at you in its image of perfection.

Utilizing the creative, simple Clutter Remedy strategy in this guide, I will teach you how to declutter and organize all that you own, now and for the rest of your life. You will become a connoisseur and authority on how to get and stay organized. What does the Clutter Remedy process entail? On a practical level, it takes a commitment of time and some resourcefulness, though how much time depends on the size of your space, on the amount of stuff you own, and on your motivation to fulfill your goals. Yet the process is flexible and can be adapted to any situation and budget. Completing the entire process, from beginning to end, for one large room takes one to three days, while multiple rooms or an entire house could take longer. How fast it takes also depends on your preparation, your energy level, and sometimes the weather.

The Clutter Remedy strategy in itself is simple and easy to use, and once learned, it can be used regularly for effective long-term maintenance. When you make the effort to get organized in this way, it will save you time, money, headaches, and perpetual turmoil. The process teaches you how to live a finely tuned and categorized lifestyle, so that you will have easy access to everything you own, and everything you own will have its ideal placement.

In short, you start with an inner assessment, so that you identify what you truly value in life, then set life goals to achieve the things you are missing, along with clearing and healing any past challenges that are blocking you from getting and staying organized. You’ll learn a new way of communicating that will increase your motivation to stay organized, long-term. You then envision and plan your ideal space, and choose the optimal time to get organized. Next, when you start the physical process of getting organized, you arrange your organizing tools and containers, clear your space, categorize everything you own, use the Clear and Concise Criteria to make good decisions about what to keep, fine-tune your categories, and set up your space based on how often and where you use things. As you are quickly clearing your space, you will find things you thought were lost and gone forever — earrings, shoes, old letters, safe deposit keys, and more — and you will be surprised and shocked by laughter and tears.

In one to three days, you will know exactly how many umbrellas, blenders, and books you actually own. You will realize how many shoes, ties, and small electronic items you possess. Living a categorized life means no more “human in a hamster wheel” episodes with your stuff. Getting everything you own categorized and then ultimately fine-tuned is an eye-opening experience. It happens swiftly and efficiently. The adjustment to living clutter-free will be a defining and freeing moment in your life. It will happen with a zest of spirit for wanting order and a final and permanent resting place for everything you own. It will be an uplifting experience that will provide inner clarity and rhythm for keeping your space organized perpetually for the rest of your life.

I became a professional organizer because I love to help people. I also love to organize, plan, develop space, and decorate. Formerly, I was a social worker and psychotherapist in private practice. After seventeen years of practicing, I ran out of the analyst chair, and what did I do? I ran directly into helping people get organized. I found that I could create new and innovative ways to organize plasticware, paperwork, and any number of things. I had a knack for it and a love for designing spaces. Helping people create better lives for themselves was the icing on the cake. Being a professional organizer is my dream job, so I formed my company I-Deal-Lifestyle Inc., and I developed a highly integrative and precise way of empowering people to achieve their dreams, as well as to manage their stuff and their space independently.

When I first became an organizer, I thought it was only about arranging plasticware and making things neat. What I did not fully appreciate is how much being organized helps heal all aspects of our lives. Lindsay was the first person I helped to get organized. Lindsay was in an unhappy marriage. Her husband was preoccupied. Lindsay had been sleeping on the couch downstairs. She felt alone and shopped to cope with feelings of abandonment. Her house was overwrought with toys and clothes. We filled forty large trash bags with clothes that had taken over her bedroom and closet. She cried in her closet once it was emptied out. At that moment, I realized I was not only there to help Lindsay declutter and redesign her space; I was there to help her reshape her life into prime form. I was there to go into the thick of it with her. I was not there to pick up all the pieces of her life. I was there to pick up all her stuff and help her realize what held meaning for her. I was there to help Lindsay understand what an ideal lifestyle meant to her and to help her dream it up when she didn’t know how. I was there to help her make sense about what to keep or toss out of her life, in a way that made sense, rather than in a traumatic or dramatic way. Now, I am here to help you in the same way, with years more experience and so many ideas about how to get you organized for good.

Epiphanies about clutter manifest regularly as people unpack their junk drawers and empty overfilled cabinets and closets. Whether clutter is mild or perpetual or extreme, people experience self-awareness as they process and go through their clutter and mess. When people see the clutter replaced, in a short period of time, by organization and a clear, newly designed space, it takes the sting out of what could be a sensitive, sticky situation. I’ve discovered that even people who have barricaded themselves in insurmountable mounds of stuff can find insight and the desire and fortitude to get and stay organized for good. All these permanent changes require is taking a considered, deeper look into how you can live a more optimal lifestyle. The exciting thing is that you will learn a new way to make years of clutter disappear, like an abracadabra trick, and without having to get rid of a thing, when that’s not in the cards.

After many years of helping thousands of homes and businesses get decluttered, no matter what state they were in, I have honed this precise, easy-to-use strategy to get and stay organized. Creating a long-lasting permanently organized space is by far the best gift to give yourself. Think of it as engaging in a luxury service, but unlike a spa treatment, it will last forever.

Chapter 1 focuses on visualizing and creating your own personal ideal lifestyle and clearing out any emotional challenges that will get in the way of becoming organized. This chapter helps you understand how you became disorganized in the first place, while recognizing your innermost desires and what you value most in life. You will learn strategies to clear and heal old wounds and how to identify your most sacred truth about life. Chapter 2 discusses how changing your language will influence your productivity and keep you motivated to stay perpetually organized long-term. You will learn how the misuse of the word need, using indecisive language, and not sharing feelings impact every aspect of your personal and professional life. Understanding actual “needs” — such as air, food, water, shelter, sleep, elimination, and sunlight — is a priority for living a balanced and happier lifestyle. Additionally, putting the word will back into your language will change your life. Chapter 3 is the step-by-step Clutter Remedy strategy designed to help you clear your space of clutter, categorize everything you own, and go through everything using my proprietary Clear and Concise Criteria, followed by fine-tuning all your precious belongings and finally setting your space up for success. The Clutter Remedy strategy is designed to turn each and every space into organized and sustainable living and working areas. Learning to live in this unique and settling way is the remedy for clutter. Chapter 4 is centered on organizing room by room and space by space. The step-by-step practices for organizing anything and everything — including your paperwork, garage, kitchen, bathrooms, office, closets, and kids’ stuff — will empower you to want to go further and give your space a better design altogether. The process of attaining an organized space is achieved through a simplified and coordinated organizing process, alongside specific considerations for all areas of the home, workplace, and storage areas.

Chapter 5 focuses on how to stay organized throughout the year, helps you identify storage space options for items used infrequently, and discusses common challenges that prevent long-term organization. The suggestions in this chapter will help you stay organized year-round, with clever anecdotes and ideas for being creative with your space through the seasons, holidays, special occasions, and life transitions. Chapter 6 will help you design your space after you have finished decluttering. This chapter will guide you through interior design options and how to set up your space in a way that will keep you organized for good. Setting up your space with all the stuff you love is easy when you see your space with a whole new perspective and add storage options to create an aesthetically pleasing environment, without spending a lot of money. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the most serious challenges and situations that can get in the way of decluttering and becoming organized, such as overcollecting and accumulating, emotional and/or physical challenges, loss and grief, and mental health challenges (like ADD, OCD, OCPD, depression, and hoarding disorder). In these situations, it’s absolutely possible to declutter, but professional intervention can be helpful.

Ultimately, working on a better you and creating a better space is a great investment that will enhance all aspects of your life: your health, stability, family, work, and much more. You will be less stressed and experience more happiness by becoming more organized, which is a transferable skill you can use in most situations. You will discover bright and sparkly gems of insight, poignant stories and connections, and useful tools to help you meet any physical, emotional, and mental health challenges, with tips on managing health, well-being, seasons, schedules, family interactions, traveling, moving, and more. I wish you a journey through your clutter to your most organized self and space.