Ask Us Anything: More Viewer/Listener Questions and Short Topics

The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.

A Hot Spot for a Cool Day

This week’s assignment is to take advantage of winter weather to get one of your home’s “clutter hot spots” back under control:

• Identify an area or surface in your home that seems to attract clutter as if by magic, such as a kitchen counter, coffee table, bedside table, or the horizontal surface nearest to an entrance.
• Remove everything that’s accumulated in that space.
• Discard or relocate any obvious trash, recycling, or items that are ready to go to donation. Put these in the appropriate locations for disposal.
• If there are items in your hot spot that have a proper home somewhere else, consider why they ended up here instead. Decide whether these items need to be assigned a more appropriate storage location.
• For any item in your clutter trouble spot that doesn’t have a proper storage place, it’s time to assign one. Think about where and how frequently you use the item, then put it away in its new home.
• If other members of your family or household have contributed to the clutter in this hot spot, enlist them in the cleanup. Make sure to clearly communicate your intention to keep this space clear except for specific items that belong here.
• Focus your attention: This week, each time you find yourself ready to place an item in this hot spot, ask yourself, “Where does this really belong?”
• Place a recurring task on your calendar to revisit the area, clear it of any new clutter, and fine-tune your arrangement of the space.

For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.