apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The floor next to the door - bags, shoes, jackets, cups, bottles, all kinds of miscellany from the car... Even though all these things have their place, they frequently come to rest here, in a depressing pile.

My main trick - nagging my son - is extremely ineffective, so I am open to suggestions.

Our worst spot for clutter is the desk in our home office. My husband isn't as "particular" as I am about putting his papers away. My only trick is to put everything into a big pile and then draw his attention to it....but I would love to learn a better technique than this!

Other than the credenza in the hall?

The space formerly known as the Guest Room - soon to become the Den...

The record player is the first flat thing in my path when I come home and so it often sports a stack of bags, shoes, tupperware, cat toys, "important" mail and other sundries.

My clutter hotspot is on or near the vintage telephone table I have right near the front door of the apartment. Generally I have a combination of the following: piles of paper/mail to be shred, clothing and other miscellany to give away to the salvation army, and kitchen recyclables to be taken down. Also right on the floor next to it are at least 5 pairs of shoes (I have a no-shoes policy). Not sure what I can do to keep this to a minimmum but I would appreciate any suggestions on how to contain it. Drat these tiny NYC apartments!

A few ideas...

(1) Have designated areas for the things that usually cause the clutter. It's easier to stop mail from going on a random table if there's a spot for the mail in the kitchen or office. It's easier to to stop jackets from being thrown on the floor or sofa if there is a small coat-rack by the front door. (Of course, most folks already do this and stuff still migrates from its proper home.)

(2) Put something beautiful in an area that gets a lot of clutter. A vase of flowers on the kitchen table will make you think twice about throwing stuff on it. A nice throw or pillow might prevent you from toss stuff on the couch.

(3) Spend 3-5 minutes a day clearing off that cluttered spot and putting everything in its proper place. Set a timer. Or do it doing television commercials. Make a game of it with yourself or your kids--see how much you can get done in just a little bit of time.

My worst spot right now is the chair right next to my bed. Clothes literally 'mushroom' on that chair. BUT... like 'burpchick' said I patiently spend 3-5 minutes daily now making sure it is dealt with. I'm proud of myself for 'controlling' all the other spots that were a problem before.

The third bedroom. The first is spotless. The second spotless and rarely touched. The third the space for all the stuff we can't fit in cupboards... we're working on it.

My desk area!

Just check it out



... I'm too embarrased to call in the cleaning ladies because I don't want them to have to clean in this condition!

http://picasaweb.google.com/callbob/ATBiggestClutter

CallBob--

Oh My...

my desk and every square foot around it.

callbob-- you can totally do better than that. Don't you have a year's worth or Crate and Barrel catalogs to sprinkle into the pile?

To answer the question, my pile(s) of shame tend to accumulate on any flat surface, down to and including the floor. (My favorite clutter artifact is the stripper walk of shame -- various items of clothing left in the exact spot they came off -- clearly, I live alone.) My apartment usually cycles in and out of various states of chaos. My "trick" is moving every 14-24 months or so -- it's easy to cut down when the alternative is taking it with you! (Somehow I doubt this tip will make it into the next AT book.)

My worst areas are 1) next to my bed with the piles of "clean shirts, worn once", "husband can't wash this", "fresh out of the dryer" and others... and my other bad spot is my studio. Things just kind of end up in there.

My bedroom. I want to be courteous to my room mate and not leave stuff I have yet to file/find a home for in communal areas so it ends up piled on my dresser top or chair in my bedroom.

by the front door (it is almost out of the house, so close), and next to my side of the bed for the same reasons Erin cites).

Just looking at that picture makes me anxious.

Our troublesome spot is the husband's man room. I do not go in there.

Is that a Lidl-bag in the picture? I didn't know you had it over here in the US? HOW STRANGE :D
I wonder if they have German pickles and dark rye bread...

I salute Callbob for the super messy desk. I had the nerve to poke around your other public pictures so have to note how quickly this desk went from pristine, polished and "latest love" to "biggest clutter shame" - February to May. tehe.

My major messes can be found in a kitchen drawer, the drawer under the tv, on my desk, and large dust bunnies on the lower shelf of my night table.

The built-in shelves in the closet. Ideally, I'd love to tear them down. I can't trust myself with too much shelf space, particularly that which has dark corners into which things may disappear, hide, and gather dust for years.

The chair next to my bedroom closet. It ends up with piles of clothes I change my mind about wearing each day that I don't have time to hang back up in place before running out the door. First thing Saturday mornings I make myself hang everything back up. I've thought about moving that chair to discourage such piling, but then everything would just land on my bed or my elliptical machine.

At the moment, my entire home. It all started a few seasons ago when I tried The Cure, disrupted everything down to the deepest roots, then fell into a stupefying depression! However, I am making terrific inroads, designing ingenious storage options (my meditation seat is a tastefully "upholstered" collection of several hundred vintage Gourmet Magazines; I got a museum DVD on how to make cardboard furniture and have a cupboard for my scanner, printer, and wire spaghetti almost finished), and so on. Hey, the worse the catastrophe, the more heroic the solutions!

I had the same problem as Danza...a pile on the chair in my bedroom that was never used as a chair. So, finally it hit me - since I was obviously never sit on it anyways, I moved it out of the room. Now I don't have a surface on which to toss the clothes so I'm forced to deal with them. I also put a basket under the bed to hold clothes worn once and pajamas.

My paper clutter piles up on the bookshelf though...

To PEACELILY, BEPSF, and BRARIAN:

:-)

I'm not proud of myself. I'm glad those of you can see the "original" desk...it is really amazing, almost 100 years old...just beautiful. But look what I have become.

Gosh I wish i can just get cleaning so i can start to dwell on this desk...it is just lovely....you just have to picture it without all of the awfulness atop.

Mine's the dining table, and it's mostly the cat's fault. A lot of stuff that could go on the floor has to go on the table because otherwise they think it's theirs. lol

i'm a big packrat so naturally i have lots o' clutter spots. seeing that pic, though, makes me feel better about my place. and callbob ... thanks for sharing that.

It's a toss-up between my dining room table and my office desk. Both tend to accumulate the flotsam and jetsam from my latest projects.

Oh -- and how do I cope? Well, I'm a sorter-and-piler. So I try to at least corral things by grouping them. Otherwise I'm cultivating a slow habit of just tidying the spaces up last thing before bed.

I'm a fanatic de-clutterer and a lot of my clutter is actually decluttering-in-progress. For example right now the things on my dining room table are sorted into two groupings: "Things I need to clean before disposing" and "Things I've decided to keep but need to clean before I put away". My office desk is a horrendous mess, but that's because there are a few stacks of books on it in various stages of being evaluated/listed for sale on amazon.com. Once listed they go onto my "amazon.com" shelf.

I have a few minor spots and for some, it's the short term spot until I can get to the dumpsters out behind my building.

One is the maple chest next to the front door of my apt. It's usually not too bad, but stuff does end up there from time to time. Coats do not always make it to the closet, often seen on the back of a vintage 60's era Danish Modern recliner from time to time. DVD's sometimes pile up on the floor by the TV, albums leaning against the table the turntable sits. Stacks of CD's on the bookcase where they reside. Albums leaning against the units they are stored in, although I have put them away about a week ago.

The desk and the space on either side of it on the floor is where the worst of it is and the chair I have in there that needs fixing before anyone can really sit in it and the laundry basket full of clean clothes that I've not gotten around to putting away yet. One pile on the floor are those things that need filing in the less important file cabinet, or needs to be shredded, the other is simply to file in household related files.

The balcony is where recyclables and garbage go when it's too dark or wet to get down to the dumpsters but I do eventually remove those however.

I do have a few boxes that are ready for recycling and a couple of things to donate but that picture at the top, I can proudly say that I have never quite let things get that out of hand.



For the most part, things are put away so the apt never gets too bad.

Er, the part about the desk, the laundry basket and such, that is they are all in the bedroom.