Jeff Campbell - Clutter Control: Putting Your Home on a Diet

Jeff Campbell of The Clean Team. The unrivaled master of modern home cleaning and organization. In San Francisco, Jeff and The Clean Team whip an entire house into shape in forty-two minutes flat. Nobody does it better. Nobody even comes close.

He knows the secrets of your home better than you do. The stuff you need. The stuff you dont. And he can find amazing places to put your stuff so its right at hand if you really need itbut out of sight and out of your way.

Whats the catch? Do it his way. No arguments. No discussions. No compromises.

Why? Because it works!

FOR THOSE WHO WOULD RATHER BE
WINNING THE WAR AGAINST STUFF!

A DELL TRADE PAPERBACK

Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036

Copyright 1992 by Jeff Campbell
Illustrations copyright 1992 by Axelle Fbrtier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

The trademarks Dell and The Clean Team are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79695-0

Published simultaneously in Canada

v3.1

Ask a dozen people what drives them crazy around their housebesides their spouse, of courseand chances are most will mention clutter high on the list. If its not a universal irritant, its surely an all-American one.

The consequences of clutter are lamentably too familiar:

You cant find things, and you waste time looking for them, over and over again.

Any sense of beauty or order in a room is out of the question.

Youre continually stymied trying to complete simple daily tasks.

You cant even begin to clean the house.

Your living space is uncomfortable and depressing.

Youve surrounded by evidence of what a colossal failure at housekeeping you appear to be.

The house is too much of a mess to have company visit, and when they do pop over, its humiliating.

Youre perpetually living in the past, and never have a sense of catching up with the present.

Certain accumulations in your home can be a fire hazard or even a health hazard.

Its pretty clear that clutter is the bane of many existences. But what is the nature of this beast? The root of the word clutter is Middle English clota lump. Just as a blood clot stops the flow of vitality in the body, so household clutter blocks the proper flow of a home.

To us, clutter appears to involve one or both of two undesirable events: One of them is related to things. You have too much stuff, and/or the stuff you have is in a state of chaos. As we become a more affluent and object-oriented culture, the accumulation of more and better stuff is a phenomenon that has become a way of life. Its difficult to limit and organize this accumulation. The other undesirable event is related to time: interruptions of it, not enough of it, and not knowing where to start.

To some people, household clutter is all those things that get in the wayespecially when trying to clean or organize, or to prepare for a visitor. To others, clutter is the relentlessly growing mountains of paper in their housebills, mail, magazines, newspapers, recipes, invoices, receipts, notes, lists, and scraps of paper that accumulate faster than they can be read, filed, paid, given away, or discarded. For other people, clutter is mostly an organizational problemthe lack of a system for paying bills, keeping appointments, or arranging the closets or drawers so things can be successfully and painlessly retrieved once theyve been put away. And for you it may be the closets filled to overflowing (but nothing ready to wear), or the packed bookshelves (but nothing new to read), or the garage (where its nearly impossible to find anything or cram anything else into, let alone the car).

For many, whats annoying about clutter is the lost time caused by itstarting with the wasted time looking for misplaced things, but also including the cluttered feeling caused by too many things to do in the time available, and the clutter of interruptions when you finally find the time to try to get something done. Clutter even has a financial impact if you pay for storing stuff you never use, if you buy things youll never need, if you end up buying more of something you already have an ample supply ofor if you come home from a tiring and time-consuming shopping trip without the most important item you went to the store to get in the first place.

No matter how were personally afflicted by clutter, most of us already have some idea what to do about it. If you have too much stuff, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out that youll have to reduce the volume of it in some way. But even after youve gotten rid of as much as youre willing to, youve still got to organize whats left, or the mountain starts to grow again.

The idea is to take the germ of the solution that you already know, feed it, give it light and air, and let it bloom. Thats one of the goals of this bookto give you confidence and encouragementto move you to action so you put your hunches to work. Plus well fill in the gaps with some field-tested remediesa team approach in which youll get all the credit!

In the meantime, your stuff is driving you up the wall. You already know that having a garage sale would be a good idea. But not only havent you had one, you still dont have the willpower to resist other peoples garage sales. More stuff! Just what you need! And your house looks more and more like the flea markets you try to avoid. Even if youve managed to get everything in sight tucked away, do you know whats in your closets, cabinets, drawers, and garage? Heck, no!

Dont beat yourself up if youre a clutterer. Youre not alone. And this situation isnt a lot different from trying to lose a few pounds. People who are overweight certainly know that it would be helpful to change their eating behavior and to exercise more. However, just being armed with these sterling facts does not make the pounds drop off in awe. The hard work is putting what you know into practice. Thats why diet books are so popular. Many, many people would dearly love to find a system that makes losing weight easy and palatable: somethinganythingthat will take the work out of losing weight. Or that will deliver the willpower necessary for the undertaking. Or that will give us the encouragement we need. Or that will just teach us how to prepare food that tastes so good well hardly notice were dieting.

Likewise with clutter. Getting rid of clutter is like putting your house on a diet. But just wanting to get rid of it wont make it happen. It can be painful to let go of our material goods. We may view them as a reflection of our lives and of our very impact while here on earth. They enhance our feelings of self-worth and security. They can represent our memories of family, loved ones, and days gone by.

So a big part of ourselves may not want any part of a household uncluttering project, thank you, despite the fact that the clutter is driving us crazy. At some level, uncluttering appears to be asking us to throw a chunk of ourselves away. Hence one of the reasons for an impasse over clutter: It torments us and we have a good idea of what to do about it, yet remedies appear to threaten some basic feelings about ourselves and our world. So we do nothingbut watch, helplessly, as the clutter, in blissful ignorance, piles higher and spreads wider.