The Clutter Fairy Weekly #71

Clutter and Quicksand: When Stuckness Stalls Your Organizing Progress

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Dealing with our clutter can feel like stepping into quicksand—we’re stuck, helpless, can’t move forward, and struggling only makes matters worse. In episode #71 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines the many flavors of decluttering stuckness and suggests strategies for extracting yourself from the mire.

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Weekly Tittle

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.

Avoid the Quicksand

Experts say that your best bet for staying safe from quicksand is to learn how to recognize and avoid it. For this week’s assignment, we’ll apply this strategy to our own personal vulnerabilities to decluttering stuckness. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Where do I tend to find myself getting stuck? What’s the room, the material, or the collection that causes me the most trouble?
  • What feelings do I experience as I confront my decluttering “quicksand”?
  • What small change could I make to bring a fresh perspective to this particular area or stuff?
  • Which technique could I try that might allow me to make a little forward motion even when I feel stuck?

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

Chat Transcript

Download a transcript of the chat that took place during the live event.

Note: For best results, we suggest you right-click (Windows) or control-click (Mac OS) the link above to download the chat transcript text file, then read it in your text-reader or word-processing app of choice. If you click the link directly, you may get quirky results viewing the text file in your browser.