Ducks in a Row

Sometimes, getting order into a room or house requires some extreme measures. You can spend what feels like forever sifting through drawers trying to decide what can go away, and make very little headway because it's hard to know what you really use on a day-to-day basis. But there's another strategy worth trying, and it only takes a month. I call it the Move or a Fire method.

When I moved to San Luis Obispo to go back to school last year, I took almost nothing with me, except studio supplies that I knew I would need immediately. Every weekend for three weeks, I would make a list of what I needed from home, and bring it down. Eventually I ended up with a stable collection of the bare minimum things I need to maintain a household, without a lot of extras.

If moving 250 miles away from home in a minivan is not on your agenda, you can get the same benefits by creating a mental move. Take everything out of a particular room -- kitchens and bathrooms are the worst culprits for random "I might use this" clutter, in my experience -- and put it in another room.

These are the rules:

1. Choose a small amount of stuff to keep in the room: maybe a bowl and two sets of silverware, or one place setting for every member of the household -- something very small. Definitely no appliances.
2. Everything else gets boxed up and moved to "offsite storage" -- another room or the garage or somewhere out of the way. If you have a storage locker and put it there, you have the right idea, but don't go rent one just for this.
3. Give the room a thorough cleaning. Start out on the right foot.
4. Live in the room for a couple days. If you need something, write it down on a piece of paper and get it the next day. The only exception is first-aid supplies or fire extinguishers. For everything else make yourself wait to get it.
5. At the end of each week, go through the boxes left behind. Be honest with yourself: there's plenty there that you never use and should get rid of. Nothing can come back at that time: it can only leave the house altogether.
6. After a month, go through the boxes and sort out the stuff that gets used only seasonally: turkey pans, christmas cookie cutters, that sort of thing. This does not belong in the room you use everyday. Put it away in a box marked with what it's used for and get it out of a main traffic path.
7. Everything else gets thrown away or donated.

Like all decluttering efforts, this one requires two things of you, and they are not easy. The first is that you have the will and energy to keep at it, to not give up and drag those boxes into the kitchen and make a bigger mess than you had to begin with. The other is that you be honest. If you can't do the whole room honestly, do one drawer, or do one cabinet. Don't try to do the whole kitchen and then keep cheating by sneaking stuff back in. The person you are cheating is yourself; I don't have any reason to care whether your room is clutter-free and easy to work in, but you do.

Most decluttering advice urges slow and sane work, eating away at clutter the way you built it up. There's a lot to be said for that, and in the long run it works really well. But if you want to make a huge difference in one room in a relatively short amount of time, the Move or a Fire method works well.