Clutter and Recidivism: How to Avoid Re-stuffing Unstuffed Areas

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.

Reset Your Re-cluttered Space

This week’s assignment is to address one area of your home with a tendency to get re-cluttered:

• Identify a space that you’ve previously decluttered—entirely, or at least substantially—toward which clutter seems to keep gravitating.
• Notice what’s accumulated in the space since the last time you gave it any attention. Pick one item to focus on.
• Ask yourself:
  • Why has the item landed in this spot?
  • Who put it there, when, why, or under what circumstances?
  • Does it have a rightful storage place elsewhere in your home?
  • Does it need to be kept at all?
• Now think about a habit you might cultivate or a system you could design and implement to keep this and similar items from ending up as “re-clutter.”
• Repeat this process as many times as needed for the space you selected, and return to the exercise each time you start to see a clear space filling up again.

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