Clutter Control Secrets

If your house is looking more like the movie set of "The Clutter That Ate Pittsburgh" and less like a home, then perhaps it's time to put clutter in its place and regain control over your house.

What's a person to do? Clutter, it seems, is a necessary evil of our consumer society. Even as we return from a shopping trip, we flip the television on only to see commercials telling us we absolutely cannot live without one more appliance, gadget or invention.

As we put our new purchases away, many of us discover we don't even have room to store these due to the backlog of previous purchases.

We watch the news shows as they interview the new authors and their books. We decide, once we see them on Good Morning America, CNN, and even The Daily Show, that we absolutely must read that book. So we buy it (and thanks to the web, we don't even need to leave the house to do that any more!). And there the book sits, unread on the floor in the living room or on the bed stand.

But even worse, in the eyes of some people, is the amount of time we can waste searching for a specific object because of the clutter we've accumulated in our homes and now is increasingly spilling uncontrollably into our home offices.

Some experts claim that the average American spends one entire year of his life just searching for misplaced objects (I've met some individuals who obviously spend much more of their time in this quest!).

Short of marching through your house and determining what needs to be tossed and what you should keep, I can help you with some all-purpose advice. (You'll have to be the person who "marches and tosses"!) Here are several "uncluttering rules" that I try to live by. No, I don't always keep these myself, but they are goals to be attained.

I can help you with some all-purpose advice. Here are several "uncluttering rules" that I try to live by.

- When it doubt, throw it out
- Store objects in the most efficient spaces.
- Recycle! Recycle! Recycle!
- Does the word filing cabinet ring a bell?
- Get Zen with the Space.