The Main Clutter Problem Areas

If you can deal with the main clutter problem areas, you will be able to handle the rest of your life.

You need to control clutter in order to make serious steps to improve your life. Without doing this you are only fooling yourself if you think you can get organized.

Clutter will overwhelm your life. Excessive stuff in all it's forms can quickly creep in and mount up. Stuff is so easy to obtain. You do not even have to try to acquire it. Mail is delivered to you. Every group, school, store, association of any kind will mail you information. There are bills and ads pouring into your home on a continuous basis.

Whenever you go shopping there will be all the packaging, bags and receipts to deal with in addition to the goods you purchased.

You wear multiple sets of clothes everyday so there is the constant battle of dealing with mountains of dirty clothes.

Every meal you make there will be a mess of packaging and leftovers along with the time spent cooking, eating and cleaning up afterwards.

The weather is constantly changing so you need an unending sea of different clothes, coats, boots and shoes and you just do not seem to have the space to store all these things.

The holiday season is coming and there will be the gifts you buy for others and the gifts you receive. Plus the various decorations for each holiday and season.

Concentrate on the Clutter Problem Areas

What do you do about all this? What is the best way to deal with this unending amount of stuff?

You have to realize that clutter and stuff will always be there working it's way into your life. It comes and will keep coming. It will never stop. It is always there.

With this thought in mind you can control clutter by tossing out huge amounts of it now. That is the only way to control it. You could throw out everything you own today and within a month have a house full of stuff that you hardly paid anything at all for. It may not be as nice as what you got rid of, but it is possible to obtain lots and lots of stuff for nothing or for so cheap as to be almost nothing.

From Penelope Trunk

Tidying Up

If you can get in the habit of just tidying up as you go, your life will become incredibly easy and stress-free.

I advise people that the best way to deal with clutter is to start where clutter creates the most problems. It really doesn't matter if you have a drawer full of junk if you have a hard time getting through your halls.

So start with these 3 main areas:

  1. The Stairway
  2. The Entry Area to your home
  3. Your Car

Clutter Problem Areas - The Stairway

Dangerous Stairs

There is nothing as treacherous in a home as having stuff stacked on your steps. This is just asking for trouble.

Even if no one has tripped on the stuff on your stairs yet, they will, and it may be catastrophic,

People die from these falls or suffer crippling injuries.  Stairs have to remain uncluttered at all times.

This means not even any decorative items. This means no stuff you mean to take upstairs or downstairs.

Just deliver it upstairs or downstairs right away. Take care of it.

Even the nice, beautifully wide stairways of larger homes.

I think you should even avoid pictures on the stairway walls. Stairs are so much safer without anything but a railing.

Keep the stairs clear.

Clutter Problem Areas - The Entry/Door

Irritating Entry Areas

The main problem is the door that is used most of the time.  It could be the back or front.  Whatever door you use the most.

There is nothing quite so maddening as opening up the door and seeing coats and shoes laying on the floor as you walk into your home after a long day.

Placing all kinds of extra stuff by the doorway is a huge problem.

The way to counteract all this is to leave the closet by the back door only for coats and shoes. This closet tends to get filled with all kinds of things besides coats and shoes. You can squeeze all kinds of things in there.

My point is that you do not want to squeeze things in. You want to leave it open and easy to hang up coats and put shoes in. This closet should be really open.

All those things that accumulate around the back door need to be removed from this area and put back in the proper place. Sometimes the proper place is just in the basement until you decide what to do with it.

Clutter Problem Areas - The Car

Messy Cars

Cars tend to be dumping grounds of excess clutter too. You are taking stuff in and out of the car all the time, and it is so easy to just leave some.  Especially when you get tired of going back and forth with the same thing.

It is so much effort to deal with this everyday.

  • Your coffee cup
  • Your water bottle
  • Your phone
  • Your laptop
  • A bag with whatever you need for work
  • Mail
  • Papers
  • Your gym bag
  • Groceries
  • Home needs
  • Lunch
  • The kids stuff
  • Kleenex, napkins and food wrappers

Excess stuff in your car is not only irritating it can be a dangerous distraction.

It is certainly embarrassing if you have a passenger.

Concentrate on keeping your car clear of clutter so it is always clutter free and safe.

Just make keeping your car clear a priority over other less serious areas.

Conclusion

Concentrate on the clutter problem areas (stairs, entry and car) first.

These areas get cluttered up because you are using them all the time. You tend to be blind to the trouble they are causing you. Once you control clutter in these areas, and keep them free of clutter, moving on to other areas is easier.

› › Clutter Problem Areas

The only way I could become the happier man I am today was by leaving my wife.  You might be in the same situation I was in.  I suggest you take a look at my book - Leave Your Wife & Become a Happier Man with the 3 Step System.

Click to go to learn more about the book

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