apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I don't currently have a system, but I need to come up with one. My apartment is a wreck most of the time and it stresses me out.

I hear you on the less than beautiful baby items!! After 3 children, we have a whole fleet of ride-on toys that take up a lot of room without much style. I may have to make an attractive shelter for them. :)

You hit on my number one clutter trick - move.

covered storage, and purging all closets/clutter 2X a year. It doesn't elminate the problem, but it keeps it under control. (It's super difficult looking uncluttered in a small 1 BR apt with lots of baby items about.... but we're trying!)

I hate clutter in my home, and I'm not crazy about it in someone else's home, either. It makes me claustrophobic and depressed. That said, I lived with it for over a year, not by choice, and I've promised myself it won't happen again. However, it's a temptation all the time. I've found that if I have a place for it (and maybe a container of some kind), clutter is less likely to happen. I couple of years ago, I cleaned out my kitchen cupboards, because I inherited dishes, etc. When I invested in the shelf dividers and organizers I never knew existed, my kitchen has stayed organized.

Also, continually eliminate mail, catalogs, old bills and checks, etc. Paper mess will kill you. I also love the adage of getting rid of one thing, if you bring one in. And if I want to buy something, I always ask myself do I need it or do I absolutely love it. If the answer is "no," then it doesn't come with me.

Set a date.
I always try to set a date as a deadline to have a room cleaned up and de-cluttered. My boyfriend and I have been living in our house for almost 2 years and we still have one room that just won't declutter. We've tried rearranging the furniture, purging books, reorganizing the office supplies (it's our spare room) and it still fills with everything that we don't want/need in the other rooms of the house.
I've set a deadline of July 31 to finish this room as I have friends coming to visit and they need a room to stay in!

Let's hope it works!

Certain types of decor are more forgiving of toys and stray objects. Cozy English cottage decor, for instance, accommodates a lot more stuff than spare, clean-lined modernism.

Personally, I think MCM doesn't work well with kids. One thing out of place makes the whole room look messy. There's a reason children in the 50s and 60s were never allowed in the living room.

i think this post is cluttered with photos

@revolution9 And right there, you've named the reason I don't want a spare room. It would be great with guests but the last time I had such a thing it filled up with junk in a matter of days and stayed that way until the day I moved out.

If you have not worn it - touched it - used it - eaten it - dusted it - or talked to it in over a year...........get rid of it !!!
Bek

I try to invite friends over for dinner at least once a month. Since I live in a studio, this forces me to give it solid cleaning (dust bunnies? Mon Dieu!) and get rid of some things. I used to just dump my stuff in my entry when I got home from work but by the end of the week it really piled up. Now I keep thinking about how much I enjoy looking at nice clean surfaces when I walk through the door.

Being a somewhat impoverished student works pretty well. So does moving every few years. One loses attachment to 'things' once one has to heft them up and down multiple flights of steps every other year.

Determine what the source of the clutter is, then create a place for it to hide where it usually piles up.

My husband does a lot of work from the living room couch, so pencils, books and papers were always piling up there. We bought an end table that has a drawer for pens and pencils, a shelf for his laptop, and plenty of room for stacking books - and it is tucked on the side of the couch not visible to the rest of the room. Stuffing everything there was a lot easier than putting it away in some other room, and it remains out of the way.

And when it comes to mail and papers, I put them right in the middle of the kitchen counter, so they can't be ignored. If they are stacked somewhere out of the way, they never get dealt with.

My strategy is to have my in-laws come visit twice a year. My MIL is a judgmental neat freak who will visibly cringe at any sign of mess in someone's home. The pressure of knowing she's coming to the house sends me into a cleaning/ decluttering frenzy for weeks. It drives me crazy but it is always exactly the kick in the butt I need to keep it in check.

@ Lisa-that is true. My fathers parents had an MCM decorated home and they actually kept a velvet rope across the entrance to the living room when extended family came for visits. Of course this is the epitome of ridiculous, but MCM is very sensitive. If one thing is out of place, the look is ruined.

I am not tidy by nature, but I hate clutter. The only way I've found to keep myself ahead of it is to have a home for absolutely everything, and to make sure that home is easy to get to and easy to use. My clean laundry is much more likely to make it out of the laundry basket and into drawers if there's enough space in the drawers.

My bedroom is always a mess, but I keep the living area pretty neat. I manage that by having very little Stuff in the main room, and by having friends over often so there's always an incentive to clean.

I think the cluttery pictures look rather lovely.

Obviously, I deal with my clutter unsuccessfully.

The "just say no" motto works wonders. I turn down offers for things I don't plan to use with tactful honesty (unless of course its a gift... and then I LIE LIE LIE and take it to Goodwill).

Also- when shopping, I try not to impulse buy. Unless I find something specific that I've been searching for, I usually wait a few days and think about each purchase. As a result, there is a lot less stuff coming into my apartment!

Now if only I could get papers under control!

I systematically tackle a little bit of clutter everyday - fifteen minutes tops... while my kids clean their teeth in the morning I do a drawer or a surface or whatever everyday... It seems to work better than one huge annual purge that is almost impossible to achieve with a couple of kids around.

Otherwise I have a "donation bag" behind our front door and as something becomes donate-able in it goes. When the bag is full I pass it on and start a new one.

I posted a post this week on "Teaching your kids to declutter in Se7en Steps." Here's the link if you are interested in popping over: http://www.se7en.org.za/2009/07/17/teaching-kids-to-declutter-in-se7en-steps

My tactics:

-Spend just a few minutes "picking up" each evening.

-Invite guests over at least once a month to inspire cleaning. (Added bonus: the cleaning gets done in record time)

-Seasonal purging / reorganizing.

-When not in the mood to put things away properly, at least pile them up in the correct room where they belong, for minimal mess and easier picking up for later.

-Enjoy the hunt for perfect items. If I still want something 6 months later, and I've looked around for the best price/value/design/color/etc. then it passes the test to come into the house.

I actually kind of like clutter. I have some friends with a wonky Victorian house full of books and art, and there's always a stack of newspapers next to the couch, a kid's science or art project on the dining room table, and something simmering on the stove, and it's delightful.

i appreciate your use of the word wonky. :) i like that homey feel of a family's house as well, lisa. it's very comforting when it's someone else's house, it makes it easy to feel welcome and reminisce about one's own childhood. (when we were naive, and the pile of bills on the kitchen counter wasn't stressful to us!) i'm trying to cure my cluttery ways, but as long as there are a couple of cats sleeping and pile of magazines on the floor, i'm okay with that. i have however, finally tamed my art supplies into neatly labeled opaque plastic shoeboxes on a shelf, so i feel pretty proud of that!

Guess it depends on the type clutter. If its collections of things I love on display, I wouldn't consider it clutter at all.

Not just the type but also, as with most things, the amount. A few magazines or newspapers lying around or even 2-3 unopend letters in a home can make it seem more lived in and real then a place where nothing lies around. But once clutter startes to take over every nook and cranny then it's too much.
The problem is in my experiance that clutter seems to breed more clutter so it's best not to allow it to fester for too long, or else it will have clutter babies..

So I guess my tip would be to tackle clutter before it gets too big, because once clutter has reached a certain level that is often a reason why people don't deal with it: they just don't know where to start.

how do i avoid clutter? throw away my husbands "treasures" aka cr@p! LOL

@Auburn - i believe we have the same mother in law.

get two rambunctious dogs. if it's not put away it's bound to 1) get knocked over by the "wagging tails of death" 2) get nibbled on during their unending search for food or 3) get inavertantly ripped in half during the non-stop game of tug o' war.

i grew up in a household with 6 kids, my mother's motto was "if it wasn't put away, you had one chance and then it was thrown away". wow....she threw away a lot of great stuff, but not my point..... as a result this has carried through into my adult life, so now i'm particularly sensitive to things just lying around.

I live in a condo so continually editing yourself is something that must be done so you learn and don't buy extra unless it was at yard sale and it replaces something else that would go to a yard sale as well ;-s

I am constantly taking useful things to the Goodwill but I still have a lot of well-loved stuff left in my rather cluttery but hopefully charming and comfy house. My true downfall is books, just piles and piles of them. The one thing I can hardly bear to part with. I've mostly put a moratorium on buying them now, trying to use the library more.

One thing that's really helped me is going through the mail everyday and dealing with it as soon as I get it. I learned this trick from that anti-clutter guru on Oprah. All of the ads, junk and unwanted catalogues are immediately torn in half and put in the recycling bin. I check all of the bills to make sure there is nothing *weird* about them (false charges, etc. - there never has been) and put a check mark on the outside of the envelop and stick it in a hidden box where I keep receipts for tax purposes. If there are any important documents that I need to keep, those documents go into a particular, attractive box. And that's it. Done. I don't have to write any checks because they are automatically paid electronically. I don't deal with complicated filing systems. Any cards are added to our "string of cards" that is actually incorporated into our decor. I HATE piles of clutter and paper. With this easy system that takes no more than five minutes per day, I don't have any piles. Good luck to all! I am anti-clutter and anti-ugly things as well. It makes me feel depressed.

I found taking all the small framed pictures in my room and arranging them all in one block on the wall helped to reduce visual clutter on the walls.

Most of my clutter tends to be "mementos" of places I've been that I hold on to because I'm prone to sentimentality. I corral this is all in one box, and edit/archive when it gets full.

I also found that finding furniture I love, even just from craigslist makes me want to keep it looking its best. I don't want to ruin these pieces by leaving clutter laying about.

Paper is a big problem in my house. I use expandable file folders with flaps for receipts and paid bills. For all the documents related to big things, such as our house or our health, we designate an entire drawer in our built-in and throw things in. It isn't well organized, but we can find what we need with a little digging. When was the last time you needed the escrow paperwork for your house?