Sheila Chandra - Banish Clutter Forever: How the Toothbrush Principle Will Change Your Life

How The Toothbrush Principle
Will Change Your Life

SHEILA CHANDRA

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Epub ISBN 9781409003106
Version 1.0

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Ebury Digital, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

Ebury Digital is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright Sheila Chandra 2010

Sheila Chandra has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Vermilion in 2010

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780091935023

Introduction

14. A final word

For Sue Roberts,
without whom Id never have thought
to become an author

Sheila Chandra has been a successful singer and songwriter for 26 years with 10 albums to her credit. Her first single was in the Top Ten around the world. She manages herself, runs her own music publishing and production companies, and oversees all the various aspects of her career. Consequently she fully understands the challenges of remaining organised and disciplined whilst working from home, plus the benefits of living and working in a harmonious environment. This is her first book publication.

Why is it that even the most disorganised person never seems to lose their toothbrush?

How can this simple fact solve all our clutter problems?

The Toothbrush Principle is a simple yet inspired approach to de-cluttering your home. Whether you live in a mansion or a bedsit, this book will show you how to:

organise according to the unconscious blueprint that naturally tidy people have, so that you live clutter free all the time, effortlessly

know what to throw away with confidence

organise your wardrobe so you get much more use out of the things you have

work from home productively in a clear, designated space, and tame your inbox!

Step by step, room by room, youll soon find that you hardly ever lose things, massive clear-outs will become a thing of the past and youll never spend more than 10 minutes a day tidying up.

So stop drowning in piles of clutter and start creating space to live out the life of your dreams!

Have you always wanted to be one of the glamorous people in those lifestyle ads? The ones who look flawless and exist in a perfect, comfortable and luxurious environment? They always seem to be relaxing, dont they? Or perhaps your dreams are more modest? Do you just wish that the physical chaos in your house wasnt making it so hard for you to get the simplest thing done? Do both of these visions of your possible future seem impossible to reach?

Living in a well-organised and even very tidy space, all the time, without spending huge amounts of time maintaining it, is not just possible, but is actually easier and less stressful than living in chaos. Yes, read that sentence again. Not just possible, but once you have the principles in place, it is EASIER. I know, because I have lived that way for many years and helped many of my friends to do so too. I wasnt born knowing how to do that, either. There is no such thing as having a tidy gene. Tidiness (or the ability to be well organised things dont have to look tidy if you dont want them to) is a skill that is usually unconsciously learned but it can also be consciously acquired whatever age you are. I discovered how to do that and Ive set out all the principles I discovered here for you, in the easiest system possible. Perhaps you dont believe that I was ever messy. Or perhaps you think your mess is just far worse than I can imagine. Not so. Here is a little of my story.

I grew up in an incredibly untidy and inefficient household. Both the systems for organising time and for organising things were very chaotic. As a child, I wondered how other people managed to live differently.

I lived with my extended family in an old and crumbling Victorian house. We had originally rented one floor and gradually taken over another. One whole room on that top floor one of the biggest, lightest rooms in the house was filled from floor to ceiling with junk and furniture. As long as I could remember no one had gone into it, although I had peeped into it once. I longed to know what was in there. I imagined, as a seven-year-old, that I would find some treasure that had been overlooked. I wanted to have an adventure in it and I was sure that the tangle of furniture legs would be my Amazonian forest.

Money was very, very tight in my family. We rented that draughty, broken-down and difficult-to-keep-clean house with lead pipes, broken sash windows and peeling paint. As a child I thought that the reason that our house-hold felt so chaotic was the fact that the house was so bad. When the council decided to knock the whole block down and promised to re-house us in a newly refurbished home, I dreamed of having my own room instead of sharing a bed in a sort of bed/sitting room with my mother and my younger sister. I dreamed of privacy, and most of all, I dreamed of living in a beautiful and tidy space.

My mother had stored away umpteen things that were too good to use now with the promise that we would use them in the new house. I hated the chaos. I hated the way I could never find anything. I hated the way it wasnt safe to put something down because someone would move it and youd have to spend hours looking for it. I hated the way we put things by and never enjoyed the good things we had. I was sure this wouldnt happen in the new house the new house was to be the promised land.

When I was 12, the council finally fulfilled their promise, and a couple of very surprising things happened. First of all, the day I had waited for, when I could explore the junk room, never came. My mother never even unlocked it. Who knows what was in there? She just couldnt face sorting it out and left everything to be destroyed and taken away with the rubble. She had told me it was full of antiques, and as the room had got filled up in the 1960s, when many people sold their old-fashioned furniture for peanuts, it quite possibly was. We were never given the chance to benefit from their use or from their sale because she was overwhelmed with our other, very tatty possessions.

The other interesting thing that happened was that when we finally got to our new home, there was a room for everyone. However, my mother filled her room with spare furniture and other items and moved into my room. So my room was never beautiful or tidy or coordinated. I was very disappointed. I noticed that other family members also compulsively filled their bedrooms with junk that they never used to the point where there was hardly any floor space. The cellar was packed; the attics were packed; the cupboards were bursting. It was as chaotic as ever, even though we had had a fresh start, within three months of moving in.