She often recommends me to people who need help getting organized, and she shared with me how she describes the process. “I tell people that you’re very respectful of their stuff. You always ask if you may throw things away, or whether they’re okay with where you want to move something.”

What Jan said made me think about how people seem to be afraid that I’m going to show up and throw all their stuff away. They act as if giving me permission to work on their projects signs over an irrevocable, non-negotiable right to pitch anything I want, no matter what they might wish.

I guess that idea comes from watching too much Style network. When you sign up for a “reality” television show like Clean House or Clean Sweep, you get a lot, but you also give up a lot. The producers bring loads of free furniture and free decorating, but you don’t have much input, and you can be sure they’re coming for your collections to put in the yard sale. But the process that makes for a successful and entertaining show is not much like the organizing process in real life.

I tell my clients all the time: I don’t care what you keep, it really doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to point out what you already know—you own more than can fit in your space. I’ll help you make tough decisions about what to keep and what to divest, but I’ll do it based on what’s important to you, not what’s important to me. First I have to figure out your goals for the space, and then we can begin the work of deciding what you’ll keep and what you no longer want or need.

In other words, you invite me in, and I behave like a house guest. Throughout the process, everything I do is with your permission. I may push you or challenge you, but I’m doing it to find out what you value. I encourage you to justify keeping something by making your case to me first. I’ll call you on your lame excuses for keeping things that are no longer useful. But don’t misunderstand my goal. It’s not to steal away as much of your stuff as I can, it’s to make sure you’re keeping only what you really want. It’s helping you fit in your house again.

So when I show up, you’re not on HGTV. I won’t redecorate your whole house over the weekend. I’ll help you get clear about what you want in your life, and we’ll use that as a guide for choosing the stuff that deserves to share your space. With your permission. 

Gayle Goddard facilitates the September monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group: Oh Joy, It’s Holiday Decorating Time Again.

Henshaw House (Nature Discovery Center)
Russ Pitman Park
7112 Newcastle St.
Bellaire, TX 77401
713-667-6550

The holiday decoration season is upon us.

At the September meetup, we’ll check in on the project we introduced in August: “Deep Storage—Forgotten Is Not the Same as Gone.” Come tell the group about your progress and we’ll share hints about how to keep moving forward.

We’ll also introduce our focus for October: “Oh Joy, It’s Holiday Decorating Time Again.” Halloween is around the corner, the kickoff to two months of festivities, fun, and household chaos. Every holiday comes with its own set of decorations to put up and take down. Since you’re getting them out anyway, why not sort, purge, and store them together? Getting organized can put the joy back in your seasonal preparations.

We’ll provide refreshments, and don’t forget the drawing for a door prize or two! (You must be present to win.)

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

Gayle Goddard facilitates the August monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group: Deep Storage—Forgotten Is Not the Same as Gone.

Henshaw House (Nature Discovery Center)
Russ Pitman Park
7112 Newcastle St.
Bellaire, TX 77401
713-667-6550

Deep storage isn’t a real solution to your clutter problem, and it comes at a cost.

At the August meetup, we’ll check in on the project we introduced in July: “Blenders and Peelers and Whisks, Oh My! Decluttering the Kitchen.” Come tell the group about your progress and we’ll share hints about how to keep moving forward.

We’ll also introduce our focus for September: “Deep Storage—Forgotten Is Not the Same as Gone.” We’ll talk about the resourceful places that people hide their excess stuff—storage units, parents’ houses, second homes, backyard sheds, attics, basements, and so on. These stashes aren’t a real solution to your clutter problem, and they come at a cost: the time, money, and effort of warehousing a big heap of deferred decisions. We’ll unpack ways to get the deep-storage monkey off your back.

We’ll provide refreshments, and don’t forget the drawing for a door prize or two! (You must be present to win.)

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

PROGRAM NOTES

Your bathroom is a very private place. Besides using it for the obvious reasons, you start every day there, getting showered, shaved, and coifed for the day. Later, you go back to get ready for bed. You spend a lot of time there, but most visitors to your home don’t. They use the other bathroom—the public one, or the one the kids use. That means your bathroom is your very own place to treat as you wish.

Here’s the problem: if a space in your house isn’t seen by the public, then it tends to get neglected. I’m always surprised that we’re motivated to clean a room when others will see it, but we have no energy for the spaces we use the most often. And we’re the ones who have to live with the mess every day, not our guests!

Bathrooms collect a certain kind of junk. More than any other room in the house, there’s a class of products that belong uniquely to this space. Body washes and hair gels, medications and first‑aid products—they collect under the sink and in the cabinets, and before you know it you’re drowning in bottles and jars. We buy way more products than we need because they smell good, and what’s one more bottle under the sink? But we can only use those products so fast, and if you’re buying faster than you’re using, you end up with exploding cabinets in the bathroom.

Bath products lure you to buy with the promise of peace and tranquility in a relaxing bath. But all those bottles and jars falling out of the cabinet certainly don’t deliver that experience. Instead, let’s thin out the contents and clean up the bathroom. Then you can really have a peaceful sanctuary each day.

Here are some ideas for reclaiming your bathroom:

Organize the bathroom as quickly as you can say, “Calgon, take me away!”

1. Acknowledge your product habit! Bath products are a cheap and easy indulgence. But it would take years to use the products you have right now! So stop buying bath products just because they’re a good deal. See how long it takes you to use up what you have. I bought eight Bath & Body Works products on sale 2½ years ago. I’m down to three now. That’s a bottle every six months. How many years’ worth of products are in your cabinet right now?
2. Time to thin the herd. You’ve tried tons of products that you didn’t like, but they’re still in the cabinet. Time to pass those on to someone else or throw them out. If the product is very old, it may no longer be safe to use.
3. All medicine cabinets need help. First, you’ve kept those meds way too long. Anything expired needs to go. Second, those little shelves can barely hold anything. Trying to stand everything up on those shelves guarantees it will all fall on your head. Find some narrow open containers to sit on the shelf to hold all the little doodads and tiny bottles that belong there.
4. Linen cabinets hold more than linens. Use the same container strategies in the linen cabinet that you use elsewhere in the house. Stacking boxes and slide-out drawers and trays will help control the contents you decide to keep. This is a great place for a lazy susan product, too. A two-tier lazy susan holds a lot of aspirin and cold medicine bottles.

Use a kitchen timer to limit the scope of an intimidating organizing task.

Break down your organizing project into finite, measurable chunks. Let’s say you have a room that’s spilling over with junk. Instead of setting a goal of clearing out the whole space, break off a manageable piece. For example, take a garbage bag and wander through your space picking up 10 things that you’re willing to throw away. Put the bag in the garbage can. Pat yourself on the back for making a start!

Or grab an empty cardboard box, and gather 10 items that you’re ready to donate to a thrift store or put in a garage sale. If you’re making a donation, take the box straight to the car so you can drop it off the next time you run errands. If you’re planning a garage sale, place the box in the space you’ve set aside for storing items until the day of the sale arrives. You’ve made progress! And maybe you can fill another box tomorrow, or the day after that.

Here’s another trick for those of you who find organizing work intimidating: use a kitchen timer to limit the scope of your organizing task. This tip comes from a friend whose motto is, “I can stand to do anything for 25 minutes!” Set the timer—preferably one that makes an audible tick to remind you that you’re working against a deadline—and then get to work on the task. You can gather the mail into one place for sorting, pick up all the toys off the floor of the kids’ room, or work on whatever job is demanding your attention. You’ll be surprised how quickly the time goes by. When you hear the chime that sets you free, stop and be proud of what you’ve accomplished!

If 25 minutes is more than you can handle, pick a threshold that works for you. Try 10 minutes, or five, or two. If you get through that time okay today, try adding a few more minutes tomorrow. You’ll be astonished by how much you can get done in those few minutes each day. You’ll be even more surprised to find yourself cultivating an organizing habit along the way. And your reward for sticking to it? Your space will be a lot less cluttered than it was when you started out. 

PROGRAM NOTES

Our bedroom is our sanctuary. It’s where we go to sleep and get restorative rest. It’s where we go for naps—when we can spare the time for one! It’s where we share intimate moments with our partners.

Clutter can put a damper on everything that takes place in your house, especially in your inner sanctum. It creates a bunch of negative noise in your mind, and all that racket prevents restful sleep.

I once worked for a tall young man who piled all his clothes—clean and dirty—on the bed. When he was ready for bed, he slept crosswise on the bed with his legs hanging off the end and his feet on the floor. And he wondered why he was getting such terrible sleep! I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t move stuff even to sleep! But it was a perfect example of what people are willing to accept when they are overwhelmed.

What to do in the bedroom to create your perfect sanctuary? Here are some ideas:

1. Clear the floor so there’s a clean path to the bed. And not just by piling the stuff from the floor on the bed or other furniture!
2. More than any other room in the house, this is the room where you must minimize distractions.
   1. Keep only the furniture that you really need in there—don’t add spare items to this room. The less there is, the less junky it will feel, and the less furniture there is to pile up with stuff.
   2. If you can manage it, leave the TV outside the bedroom. It may help you fall asleep, but it’s also going to wake you up again later.
   3. Spend the three minutes it’ll take to hang up or put away the clothes you wore today. We all want to come home and quickly change to at-home attire, and the nice day clothes tend to end up in a pile somewhere. If you spend a moment hanging up just those clothes, at least there will be less to trip over on the floor.

Your bedroom should be a sanctuary.
3. Don’t use your bedroom as a storage or junk room. Your sanctuary is not the place for hiding stuff from public view.
   1. If you’ve run out of space elsewhere, it’s time to start sorting and purging those spaces. It’s not time to expand storage into the bedroom.
   2. Don’t let yourself hide stuff in the bedroom “just for the party.” It’ll never come out again!
4. Spend a weekend cleaning up the master bedroom closet. Most of the clutter I find in a bedroom is the direct result of the closet being unusable. The minute it gets hard putting things away, that process stops, and the piles on the floor start to grow. Sure enough, soon after the closet get out of control, you can’t get near it to use it at all.
   1. That means sorting and purging the clothes! If you have more clothes than will fit in the closet, you will never have a functional closet. You need to be able to hang up your clothes with some wiggle room to spare, or the closet doesn’t work.
   2. If you have the cash to spend, this is a good home upgrade that directly improves your life. From custom-built closets to Elfa shelves from the Container Store, it’s money well spent if you can improve the functioning of the closet every day.

Gayle Goddard facilitates the July monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group: Blenders and Peelers and Whisks, Oh My! Decluttering the Kitchen.

Henshaw House (Nature Discovery Center)
Russ Pitman Park
7112 Newcastle St.
Bellaire, TX 77401
713-667-6550

Is your kitchen so full of gadgets that there’s no space left for cooking?

At the July meetup, we’ll check in on the project we introduced in June: “Squeaky Clean Organizing Strategies for Your Bathroom.” Come tell the group about your progress and we’ll share hints about how to keep rolling.

We’ll also introduce our focus for August: “Blenders and Peelers and Whisks, Oh My! Decluttering the Kitchen.” It’s the heart of the house, the traditional family meeting space, and the most popular room at every party: the kitchen. But too often, it’s so packed full of “must-have“ gadgets, stained Tupperware, and antique ingredients that there’s no space left for cooking. We’ll delve into the notion of “usefulness” and define a more honest standard for deciding what belongs in your perfect kitchen.

[See the Program Notes for this meetup.]As usual, we’ll also open the floor to your questions, success stories, and tales of trouble spots.

We’ll provide refreshments, and don’t forget the drawing for a door prize or two! (You must be present to win.)

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

Gayle Goddard facilitates the monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group.

Henshaw House (Nature Discovery Center)
Russ Pitman Park
7112 Newcastle St.
Bellaire, TX 77401
713-667-6550

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group has found a new home at Henshaw House, the Nature Discovery Center in Bellaire’s Russ Pitman Park. It’s easily accessible from the Bellaire Blvd. exits of West Loop 610, with off-street parking, kitchen facilities, and plenty of room for our group to grow.

Get the bathroom organized as quickly as you can say, “Calgon, take me away!”

At the June meetup, we’ll follow up on the project we introduced in May: Refuge or Rat’s Nest?: The Master Bedroom. Come tell the group about your progress and we’ll share hints about how to keep rolling.

We’ll also introduce our focus for July: Squeaky Clean Organizing Strategies for Your Bathroom. Bathroom products seduce us with their lovely colors, soothing fragrances, and promises of supple skin, shiny hair, and restful soaks. Before you know it, the countertop, the drawers, the edge of the tub, and the back of the toilet overflow with jars, bottles, tubes, and accessories. Relax! We’ve got tips to get the bathroom or powder room organized almost as quickly as you can say, “Calgon, take me away!”

[See the Program Notes for this meetup.]

As usual, we’ll also open the floor to your questions, success stories, and tales of trouble spots.

We’ll offer refreshments again this month, now that we’re settling into our new space. And don’t forget the drawing for a door prize or two! (You must be present to win.)

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

PROGRAM NOTES

If you’ve made progress clearing paper piles in March, then cleaning up your home office is a great next step, because it’s not just the papers in the office that are out of control—the supplies and the equipment are, too! Removing the paper from the desktop and other surfaces uncovers what’s buried beneath. Now it’s time to deal with the rest of the office.

Here’s a strategy for putting your office area in order.

1. Collect the materials you’ll need to get started: a few sorting boxes, plus a trash can—and a recycling bin if you want. Mark the sorting boxes as follows: Relocate, Trash, File, Office Supplies & Equipment.
2. Sort everything in the room into one of those bins. Clear off the desk, the floor, clear out the bookcases and any chairs. You want to uncover every surface and empty every cabinet or shelf in the office.
   1. Relocate—This is where you put things that ended up in the office but are not really office items, like dishes, newspapers, or things from the bathroom. When sorting is done, carry these things out of the office to the appropriate room.
   2. Trash—This box is for the obvious things. When sorting is done, it goes out to the trash!
   3. File—Use this box for all the paper you need to keep. Hopefully, you’ve already filed everything from the previous project, but you may find some hidden items as you go through the office. If you do, file them away in your newly organized files.
   4. Office Supplies & Equipment—For your stapler, ruler, Post-Its, and paper clips. Don’t keep multiples! The goal is to pare down the supplies to a usable amount and stop trying to make space for supplies you’ll never use up. Plenty of teachers in the world need supplies, so donate them instead!

The home office: productive workspace or no man’s land?
3. Move the furniture around now. Once you’ve cleared off the surfaces, you can rearrange the furniture again so it’s more functional. Things were probably slowly added to the room over time, and the arrangement maybe be a hodge-podge. Now’s the time to work out the room layout that best supports your work:
   1. The phone should be within reach when you sit at the desk.
   2. Make sure you can reach your active files from the chair as well. That means using one or two desk file drawers. Other files can be behind you or to the side in a filing cabinet or armoire.
   3. Reference materials can be in bookcases across the room.
   4. Excess office supplies can be in a closet or armoire, in bins on bookcases, or in cabinets.
4. Re-dress the desk with only the things that you use almost every day. The rest can go in drawers or on shelves, etc.
   1. Only a few supplies need to be on the desktop. The rest can be in the desk drawers or in bins on shelves or cabinets. Use this guide—do you need it every day? If yes, better put it on top. If it’s not used every day, then put it away.
   2. Same rule with equipment—plug in the electric pencil sharpener, adding machine, and CD player somewhere away from the desk. For as little as they get used, they don’t need a space on the desk, and that gets some of the cords out from under your feet.
   3. Feel free to put out some décor items, but don’t crowd the desktop with them. You need that space to work, and a clear space is the answer. Place decorations on other surfaces within sight instead of on the desk.

Gayle Goddard facilitates the monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group.

At the May meetup, we’ll follow up on the project we introduced in April: The Garage Is Also a Place to Park Your Car. Come tell the group about your progress and we’ll share hints about how to keep rolling.

Your bedroom can be a sanctuary.

We’ll also introduce our focus for June: Refuge or Rat’s Nest?: The Master Bedroom. You spend a third of your life there, so wouldn’t it be great if your bedroom were a place of sanctuary? We’ll talk about what needs to be in your inner sanctum and what doesn’t, and we’ll discuss how to craft a floor plan that fits your lifestyle.

[See the Program Notes for this meetup.]

As usual, we’ll also open the floor to your questions, success stories, and tales of trouble spots. And don’t forget the drawing for a door prize or two! (You must be present to win.)

Please note our new location this month:

Henshaw House (Nature Discovery Center)
Russ Pitman Park
7112 Newcastle St.
Bellaire, TX 77401
713-667-6550

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

Americans love to shop—it’s practically the national pastime! We’re bargain-hunting, credit-card-maxing, no‑holds-barred shoppers. The thrill of the hunt and the joy of instant gratification make our economy run. But one of the threats of our consumer culture is that it’s created a huge problem of clutter in our homes. The more we buy, the more we have to maintain, clean, store, and retrieve. If you’re a typical American, you shop faster than you can manage what you already own, and that’s a formula for a cluttered home.

Clutter issues cover a broad spectrum, from a few stacks here and there to conditions so bad that you can’t walk through the house. As a professional organizer, the first part of my job is to figure out where you are on the spectrum. Can you handle the piles yourself, or do you need my help? Here are some of the clues I look for when I’m trying to help a client answer that question:

• Clutter has taken over your space. Do you have a few piles of paper, or is the top of your desk buried? Are there two or three extra appliances on the kitchen counter, or are the counter tops unusable? Can you fit a car in your garage, or have the cars been parked in the driveway for the last 10 years? Do you need a park ranger to map the footpaths that wind through the rooms of your home?
• You’re overwhelmed. The clutter bothers you, and you often think to yourself, “I’ve got to get this under control, so I’m going to start today.” But then you face the area to be organized and freeze like a deer in the headlights. You have no clue how to start, so you decide it’s time for lunch. Or maybe you start again and again, but find that you’re moving the same stuff around over and over. Does it feel like you’ve done this work many times before, but you’re getting nowhere?
• You’re ready to make a commitment. You want different results, and you want them so bad that you’re ready to spend time and money to get them. One of my clever clients put it this way: “I had to do a cost–benefit analysis on my clutter and realize that the cost of standing still was greater than what I’d have to invest to move forward.” He’s right: it takes an investment of time, effort, and money to get organized. You’re ready for a professional organizer when you’ve come to understand the higher cost of standing still.

But the reward for your investment will be huge. The time and money you commit will give you back peace of mind, lift the emotional weight of clutter off your shoulders, and make you master of your domain again, instead of a slave to the contents thereof. When you’re ready to do whatever it takes to make your space a livable, beautiful, restful environment again, when you’re ready to invest in your quality of life, you’re ready for a professional organizer.

Are you there yet? 

The Clutter Fairy gets lots of questions about shredding. Where can I get it done? How much does it cost? Do I know of a free shred day? It used to be that the only people who cared about shredding documents were large law firms. Now everyone wants to destroy sensitive paperwork as protection against identity theft—a new security threat that comes with living in the Information Age. A shredding industry has grown up to handle the needs of big businesses, but how are ordinary consumers and small businesses supposed to tackle a big paper pile problem?

NAPO Houston (of which The Clutter Fairy is a member) has a corporate partner in the shredding business: Southern Shred. Like other shredding companies, Southern Shred offers pickup or on‑site destruction of secure documents either on a regular schedule or as a one-time service. But Southern Shred also looks out for customers who don’t need that level of service by offering convenient satellite drop‑off sites.

These are secure drop boxes at locations all around the Greater Houston area where you can take your documents and deposit them in a locked container for a fee. The going rate was $1 per pound at all the locations we surveyed. When the drop box is full, Southern Shred sends one of its state-of-the-art mobile shredding trucks to the location to shred the contents.

The satellite locations provide a perfect solution when you’re purging the filing cabinet, emptying a lifetime of records from a parent’s home, or getting ready for a move. Instead of feeding those stacks of paper into your home shredder five or six at a time until the motor burns out, take them to a Southern Shred drop‑off location, pay a modest fee, and voilà!—your problem is solved quickly and securely. I plan to recommend this convenient, valuable service to all my home-office organizing clients.

Southern Shred operates 20 satellite locations around town. The Google map of Southern Shred drop‑off sites is complete with business names, addresses, and phone numbers. Take advantage of this great service, and make your nagging pile of sensitive documents go away today!

Gayle Goddard, professional organizer, will be the guest speaker at the May monthly meeting of the Bellaire Area Mothers of Multiples. The topic of the presentation will be “Creatively Coping with Kid‑clutter Chaos.” Gayle will offer ideas for stemming the rising tide of children’s stuff and organizing your home with kid-friendly solutions. There will also be a Q&A session.

Crosspoint Church in the Loft
4601 Bellaire Blvd.
Bellaire, Texas 77401

The Bellaire Area Mothers of Multiples (BAMOM) club was founded in December 1992. The club is a member of the National Organization of Mothers of Twins Clubs, Inc. Its mission is to provide a support and social network for mothers and parents with twins and higher order multiples. The group has had more than 120 members in the last few years.

This meeting is free and open to prospective members.

BAMOM meets on the second Wednesday of every month. Check the calendar at the BAMOM web site for details.

Gayle Goddard facilitates the monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group.

At the April meetup, we’ll follow up on the project we introduced in March: “The Home Office: Productive Workspace or No Man’s Land?” Come tell the group about your progress and we’ll share hints about how to keep rolling.

The garage is also a place to park your car.

We’ll also introduce our focus for May: “The Garage Is Also a Place to Park Your Car.” We’re heading into prime garage sale season, so now is the time to move the junk out and the car in and give yourself a bonus of some vacation cash. We’ll talk about how garages become the storage space of last refuge and graveyard of deferred decisions—and what you can do to change that.

As usual, we’ll also open the floor to your questions, success stories, and tales of trouble spots. And don’t forget the drawing for a door prize or two! (You must be present to win.)

SPECIAL NOTE: Our April meeting will be on the FIFTH Thursday of April instead of our regularly scheduled fourth Thursday.

Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research
(Carriage House)
5300 Caroline
Houston, TX 77030
832-393-2600

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

This program is not sponsored or endorsed by Houston Public Library.

If you have a special physical or communications need that may impact your participation in this activity, please contact Gayle Goddard at 713‑816‑9505 at least 72 hours prior to the event to discuss accommodations. We cannot ensure the availability of appropriate accommodations without prior notification of need.

Your rental payments, like the storage units that clutter our landscape, go on and on forever.

One retired man had been collecting items from garage and estate sales, and he believed that his children’s inheritance was somewhere in his “collection.” Some day they would open his unit, pull out the junk, and find the treasures they’d inherited. Burglars had broken into the unit once, only to walk away empty-handed because the unit was too stuffed full of junk to bother robbing.

Another interview subject, a divorced mother, was storing a huge collection of stuffed animals. She said that she couldn’t throw away “anything with eyes.”

The movie was a fascinating commentary on how tightly we cling to our stuff. Once we’ve claimed something as ours, we have a hard time surrendering it, even if it’s no longer useful. Our desire to maintain ownership is so strong that we’re even willing to pay for it—we’ll rent a truck, spend a Saturday afternoon loading and unloading, and sign a rental contract with a hefty monthly fee that goes on to infinity. Isn’t that an awful lot to invest just to keep “anything with eyes”—or whatever it is that you can’t let go?

Storage may seem like a convenient way to defer the decision to let go, but do you want to keep things so much that you’re willing to pay for them again? Would you go back to Macy’s and make monthly payments to keep a dress that you already bought? Of course not! So why pay for a storage unit? Why not spend your time, energy, and money on the finite task of letting go of some things?

You can watch a trailer for Store on the movie’s web site. We’ll keep you posted when the documentary shows up in general release or becomes available for download.