Tidying Series - My Teachers
My dumb butt realized that if I’m so ambivalent about starting a tidying business but still want to nerd out about tidying...I should do a series of blog posts on it instead. Hold on to your feather boas, my fiends! It’s going to be a wildly nerdy ride.
3 Biggest Influences
No tidying series would be complete without acknowledging the giants on whose shoulders I stand. These are the women who have taught me the most about organizing, decluttering, and tidying up:
1. Marie Kondo
It all started with a little book sitting on Beach Mermaid’s bookshelf: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Intrigued, I pulled it out and started to read. Fiends, it really did change how I looked at my possessions. As a child I went through phases of organizing (and occasionally even decluttering) as my life and possessions changed. As an INFP I craved not only intense possession of my space but change as well. So 2-3 times a year I’d mix things up. Move my cozy corner to the opposite corner. Reorganize the books. Swap knickknacks and box up ones that I no longer enjoyed. I remember each Christmas I would have to reorganize everything to make space for my new possessions.
Looking back, mini me knew objects needed a specific place to belong. But it was only until I read Marie’s book that I understood why. If possessions don’t have a place, I can just set them any old location. If I set them anywhere, I have no idea where they are. And if I can’t find my things, I am stressssssssssed to the ninth degree and waste my time running around searching for them.
I have lost the picture showing my first tidying spree, but it showed a good 15-20 garbage bags full of donations and plenty of large items as well (such as floor lamps). It covered a whole hallway wall with things I no longer really enjoyed, used, or needed. Marie Kondo has a very precise system of how to declutter and organize one’s possessions. I did not follow that precise system. Instead, I hopped from category to category depending on what I felt like tackling at the moment. A very INFP way of doing business.
I have also decluttered multiple times through the years since then. Marie believes that you only need to do so once. I agree with this insofar as you only need the first time to help you see the usefulness of this skill and decide to implement it as a lifelong habit. However, I believe it is a skill that lasts a lifetime. I can’t declutter my home to the way 50-year-old CJ will live her life because I have very little idea what she will need and be involved with. Maybe she’ll still have this blog. Maybe she won’t and instead will be devoted full-time to writing novels and tidying other people’s homes. The point is I can only declutter for my current life. Saying goodbye to clothes are too worn or pieces of furniture that I no longer need. (Goodbye grey velvet mini couch. I will always think of you fondly).
Another reason I enjoy Marie’s book is the way she organizes via boxes, small categories, and folding. Few things bring me as much joy as taking a small cardboard shipping box and filling it with neatly aligned objects. My Twin can attest to this as her kitchen drawers have become victims of such organization during my stay.
2. Dana K. White
This lovely woman helped me realize that there are people who hate tidying and decluttering. Until I encountered her podcast, I had thought that all other people were like Marie Kondo and I. Just waiting to be awoken to the joys of putting things in boxes and decluttering.
That is, apparently, not the case. Some people simply hate tidying.
For those that do Dana is a rallying cry. Someone who has empathy with people who naturally tend toward larger messes and stockpiling items. Someone who doesn’t like to tidy, but sees what a difference the skill has made to her sanity and her home. In other words, she’s relatable to the large swathe of the population that aren’t tidying nerds.
Dana also helped me see that tidying and decluttering are two separate skills. Tidying being the act of keeping a house put together. Whether that involve washing the dishes or taking the scissors off the kitchen counter and returning them to the desk drawer they belong to. Decluttering, meanwhile, focuses on removing items from one’s home.
She also taught me two key ideas: the container concept and the clutter threshold.
The first is a mindset shift regarding how to store your possessions. A shelf is a ‘container’. A desk drawer is a container. So is a room. A box. Or your house. If you go about decluttering your favorite recipes and decide to use an old shoebox to hold them – that is your container. Once the box is full, the other recipes need to go. Not because you don’t like those recipes, but because that is the reality of your container. In particular, this approach helps those who are very emotionally attached to their items.
Clutter threshold, on the other hand, has to do with how many possessions you can keep track of without losing your mind. Remember my description of my two dresser tops from the previous blog? One dresser has three objects. The second holds a varying amount. I could fit quite a lot of things on top of the project dresser. Socks I need to mend. Books I want to read. The ever-dreaded bills to manage. That dresser top is my container. However, even though everything can fit inside my decided container, I still keep a mostly empty dresser top. Why? Because I can only manage a few possessions at a time.
There are many people out there who manage lots of possessions well. That is not me. I only have so many energy spoons to give out to household management. When there’s more than six or seven things on my project dresser, I start to stress out and avoid it. I don’t want to avoid my projects. I want to complete them! So, I must keep a weather eye on the amount of possessions I allow into my life and onto my dresser. That is a clutter threshold.
3. Cas Aarssen
Cas helped me realize that just as part of the population doesn’t like to tidy, another part doesn’t like to hide things away in boxes and organize them in minute categories. Who knew?
She describes how she first started her tidying business and the frustration both she and her clients underwent when she came in and organized their things only for it to become the same mess a few weeks later. It was through that frustration that her creative brainchild came to be: Different people require different organizing techniques.
She sets out four main categories that one may fall into which she calls her clutter bug system. The first two have to do with the visibility of possessions. Some people prefer to have their items hidden away. They get distracted if there is visual abundance in the form of incomplete projects, knickknacks, and items. I would call these people minimalists. They want clean lines and open spaces. This is what I most veg with. I have items on display, but they are carefully curated with empty space between each one. It doesn’t matter what your favorite things are (handcrafted plushie of a favorite character to a neat set of marbles I’ve found) simply that they tend to be fewer and there’s space between everything.
Others prefer their items visible at all times. This type of person actually loses track of items if everything isn’t out for them to see. This is often common with (but not limited to) people with ADHD. It has something to do with object permanence. Whereas I can tell you what is in the drawers of the office, the linen closet, and the kitchen, my Twin prefers being able to visually track projects. For example, she has papers she needs to keep track of for work. I can pinpoint exactly where she sat on the floor because there is a half-circle of papers, notebooks, and pens around the spot. She can keep track of projects and items better if they are visible to her.
The next two main types of clutterbug organization revolves around how the objects are organized regardless of whether they’re hidden or in plain view. Some people like to make small categories for each item. For example my plastic set of drawers is organized by type of clothing such as underwear, socks, shirts, pants, and shorts. I also organize within each of those categories. T-shirts have their own section and tank tops another. Long jeans take up one side of the drawer while leggings are beside them. They are all also organized by color within each category. This is an example of small category organization.
Some people prefer large categories. An example would be keeping all excess bathroom supplies in one basket. There’s toothpaste, mouth wash, shampoo and conditioner bottles, extra loofahs, and even a hair dryer. This works because people who prefer large categories are willing to put a little extra time searching for the specific item they seek (floss) in an area they know they’ll find it as long as they can quickly return it when they are finished (to the excess bathroom supply basket).
People who prefer large categories tend to struggle putting things away after they’re done because they’ve already mentally moved on to the next item on the agenda. They need to be able to swiftly toss a pair of shoes in the ‘shoe box’. Otherwise, they’ll sit in the living room for two weeks until they’re needed again and probably involve a whole house search to find them.
People who prefer small categories need to be able to find their items right away but don’t mind taking extra time to file them away when they’re finished. I have two separate tool boxes. One for my large set of tools. The other for spare tools, nuts and bolts, and weird odds and ends from past projects. The large set of tools has an individual plastic groove for each tool. My other has screws categorized by size and head types. Any time my Twin needs me to hang (yet another) picture, I know exactly which tool set to open and which particular divider will hold the correct screw type.
It's a simple system. Hidden or visible storage. Large or small categories. But simple can change lives. People who thought they were doomed to live unorganized lives have realized they don’t give a flying fuck about folding their t-shirts and organizing by color. All they need is to hang them up in the closet. People who went through life constantly overwhelmed by their things realized they just needed to put everything behind a cabinet door and their anxiety has dropped by 60%. It all depends on how your little mind is wired. Give it a whirl and see which type of system you prefer for yourself!
A Word of Caution
Getting rid of your things doesn’t automatically mean you know what you actually need to buy next. Wait a minute CJ, you just spent all these words talking about getting rid of things. Now you’re talking about buying more??? Yep, let me tell you why.
When I first started decluttering, I had a subjectively large walk-in closet. Probably 6x4ft. (Beach Mermaid deserves the credit for both having the finances and the acuity of finding such a nice apartment.) It was full to the brim with clothing and personal objects. By the end of my first decluttering, it was nearly half empty. I could fit all my clothes on the overhead rack; my suitcase, shoe racks, and laundry basket went below as well as other things I can only vaguely remember at this point.
That was around the summer of 2018. By the spring of 2022 my wardrobe fit in a 2.5x2ft closet. (With the exception of my winter coat/jackets and the over the door shoe holder since the closet had a foldable door instead of a regular one.) Yet, I still didn’t know how to dress my body. That required me to first research and then find companies and brands which suited my body type and style.
What’s my point? Decluttering my closet did not get me clothes that fit. It simply illuminated the fact that I had very few clothes I liked and highlighted my lack of skill in finding more of them.
Decluttering does not make your life more fulfilling. Decluttering gives you the level ground to focus on a) what you do love and b) discover what no longer serves you. It’s up to you to pursue the revelations decluttering has unearthed.