Where to start (aka: when you feel overwhelmed)
You may think that as a professional, that I don’t get overwhelmed by the sight of clutter. Well, you would be mistaken, my friends! First let me say that when I started this post, I was in the midst of a massive overhaul of my tiny SF apartment. I used my walk in closet as a catch-all for things that I was processing to keep, donate or trash, and it looked like a tornado had hit, this is after the removal of the donations I mentioned in my last post, plus the removal of another garbage bag full of items — where does it all come from?!
Needless to say, I felt stressed every time I walked into the closet (not a great way to start and end my day), tried to access my shoes (located way up on a shelf on the other side of a mound of clutter), or thought about meditating (the walk-in was my previous meditation spot, now I’m temporarily on the living room couch — no bueno.) Additionally, another catch-all had become the home-office desk (in the bedroom — I know, bad Feng Shui, but it’s a teeny-tiny space!) and slowly over the last 5 or 6 months the “relationship area” of the apartment unknowingly became a sort of storage for items that I either hadn’t dealt with, or wasn’t sure what to do with. So walking into the bedroom, the room whose purpose is for restoration and love, had also become a source of unease for me.
Even well before living in San Francisco, I remember my first “professional” organizing gig. I had basically harassed (nicely) my way into convincing a local organizer to take me on as an apprentice (thank you, Linda!). It was my first day of my first assignment, and I was working with four or five other organizers to help a family move from a Chicago mansion to an Evanston mansion. I mentioned previously that I grew-up with borderline hoarders, so take my childhood Chicago-style bungalow and at least triple it, and that was what I was walking into. My heart sank and my stomach flipped when I walked in. I literally had no idea where to begin. I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed. Fortunately, I had a mentor telling me, start here, do this, and everything worked out okay, but on that first day, I could have very easily turned around and went home, having never gotten started on the path that I’m on now. So on that day, the advice that Linda gave me was this — start in one area, and work your way through it, completely and thoroughly. Then, when you’re done with that area, you move on to the next. (Kinda like how you eat an elephant.) The other piece of advice she gave me, which still cracks me up to this day was, “it’s not rocket science, you put like with like.”
So with these ideas in mind, we begin to work on any project — big or small. If you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin, chose the smallest area that you can to organize. The underwear drawer. A shelf in a cupboard. The kitchen sink. A miscellaneous shoe box of “junk”. Go through that area, item by item, putting like with like, until there are no items left to sort. Then designate a space for each group of items to live, and you’re done! And you do this simple process over and over again, until there is nothing left that feels unsettling and overwhelming. It might take you an hour, a month, or like me, a decade, but if you keep coming back to this simple process, you will eventually come out on the other end clutter free!
Again the process is, go through an area, putting like with like, until you have processed each item, then designate a home for each item to live. If it feels overwhelming, do one small area, and stop. Reward yourself for a job well done and go for a walk or dance to your favorite music. Let that one shoebox be your tiny beacon of light in a sea of clutter. Pay attention to how you feel when you look at that space, which you will try your best to maintain. Keep it decluttered for a week. How does it feel? You can do this, you have proof in your kitchen cupboard! That shelf has been clutter free for a month!
If you want to go a step further, you can process each item to help you determine if you really want to designate precious real estate to keeping your items. But because we are discussing becoming overwhelmed, we’re not going to go that far. Processing items on a deep level can make a simple organizing project seem more stressful, so we just want to sort and designate at the beginning. Of course, if you come across any non-functioning items, such as a pen with no ink, or underwear with a hole for the crotch, please feel free to throw them away, unless of course you can not stand to part with them. If this is the case, sort them with the others and designate them a home. Then celebrate cause you did it!