SPRING ORGANIZING PRIMER: TIPS FOR CULLING YOUR STUFF

Before you can organize anything—temporary or permanent—you’ll need to lighten up a bit on your belongings. The prime cause for disorganization is that you’ve got too much stuff.

You know what’s coming: You need to go through your stuff and toss what you don’t use, need, or want. And so will your kids, though that may seem hard at the onset.

Many of us have stuff we never use and don’t need. We even have stuff we don’t like. And so do our kids. Don’t be a pack rat. And don’t teach your kids to be rodent-like, either. If you don’t use it, get rid of it. And help your kids to do the same.

This is not a Saturday-morning project. Don’t plan on purging the entire house of a year or a decade’s worth of clutter in a single morning. Allot at least a half-day for each room.

Here’s what you do. Pick a day. Pick a room. Pile everything from the room in the middle of the floor. Look at each item individually and critically, just like you would in a store. Is this something you would buy? Is this something you would be happy for if someone gave it to you? If either answer is no, well, it needs to go.

You’re probably feeling a little overwhelmed right now. (And perhaps a bit trapped by all the stuff in the middle of the room.) When you’ve got so much stuff, it’s hard to even know where to begin!

Slowly but surely, go through everything in your home, piece by broken or frayed piece. If you decide to keep an item, great! Now put it away in its logical, convenient, accessible, and labeled place. If you decide you don’t need it, you have a few options: throw it away, sell it or give it away, hold on to it, or store it. Gather four boxes or trash bags, one for each option, and start sorting stuff into them.

1 Throw It Away Yuck. You hate it. It’s no good to anyone. How did it get here?

Here are some good rules to live by. If you haven’t used it, played with it, or worn it in six months; if it’s missing many of the essential pieces; or if it’s broken, it goes.

Once you have a pile of throw-aways, grab the kids, and go through the to-be-trashed stash, separating plastic, paper, glass, cardboard—whatever is recycled in your community. Then take each pile to its final resting place (at least as far as your family is concerned).

2 Sell It or Give It Away Yuck. You hate it. She hates it. But somebody might like it.

Decide whether you’re the garage sale type. If so, carefully pack up all the items you’d like to include in a future sale in plastic bins (transparent ones are better for remembering what’s there), boxes, or bags that you will, of course, label “Garage Sale.” If you prefer to donate the items, neatly fold or place them in bags or boxes, label them, and call the recipient to arrange pickup or drop-off. Stash them in your garage or basement in the mean time.

3 Hold On to It Hmmm. Forgot you had it. Everyone else did, too. You want it, but you haven’t used it in 10 years.

4 Store It Oh well, put it away for another year and think about it again. Find a more convenient place for it this time to increase the chances you might actually use it.

Take the time to figure out where each item should go—and put them there. You may move things a couple of times until you find a space that’s the right size for these items. In a bedroom, for example, you might try assign one drawer to stationery items; or one part of the closet shelf to games. Then you might move the games to under the bed where kids can reach them easier. It’s trial and error.

But take your time. The better you organize things, the easier it will be to stay organized. It took you a long time to get this messy, don’t expect to clean up your family’s act in one weekend.

For these items (and for those you want to place in long-term storage), the next step is a touch more complicated and a bit more work. If you want to do it right—not necessarily fast—that is. And having tried both ways, I’m here to tell you it’s just a lot easier for everyone in the house if you do it right the first time. Otherwise, you end up stuffing stuff in places you can’t remember and in ways you shouldn’t, such as putting heavy items on top of a box of extra glasses from the kitchen.