Trap Doors and Rabbit Holes: Special Issues of Clutter-Prone Spaces

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.

Tackle a Trouble Spot

This week’s assignment is to take a fresh look at the habits and routines that create clutter in your home in order to reduce the strain on one of your clutter hot spots:

• Identify an area or surface in your home that seems to magically attract clutter.
• Take a careful look at everything that’s accumulated in that space right now.
• Remove 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 storage place elsewhere, give some thought to how or why they ended up here instead. Consider whether these items need to be assigned a better home.
• 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.
• 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?”

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