As a professional organizer, I practice what I preach. I’ve developed a few strategies and routines to declutter and keep my place organized, so I can find what I need when I need it, and to put it back just as effortlessly.
What I notice about myself and a lot of other people is that we’re holding onto things for one of two reasons: either we think we’re going to need it someday, or we’re really attached to how it came into our life in the first place.
There’s an interesting thing at play here. We want to declutter and downsize, make better use of our space, or we’re just tired of looking at things that don’t bring meaning and purpose into our lives. At the same time, we stay tied to the emotional reason for wanting to keep this thing in our lives. Those reasons take precedence, keeping us from taking any real action on the stuff that carries these emotional ties. A study at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families found that women who had a lot of household objects also had more of the stress hormone cortisol.
Most of us live in communities surrounded by a plethora of public storage spaces. There are thousands of these facilities around the country, which I call “the land of emotional mismanagement,” because they’re filled with the things that we think we may need someday or that we can’t emotionally let go of.
Rethink your relationship to your stuff
For a long time, I would think about how hard it was to declutter and let go of a particular item because, as I told myself, I loved it. Living in a small space sort of forced me to rethink my relationship to my stuff in my space.
It took some time to work on it, but I landed on this: I cannot possibly love everything in my home. And so I had to come up with a way to think differently about my stuff. I discovered that more important than how much I loved a “thing” was how well it served my life, giving the “thing” more substance than, “but I love it.”
Because I’m selfish, I want everything in my home to serve me. That means that I’m always looking to get rid of stuff. For example, if I purchase a face-care product and after the first two uses, realize it’s not something I’ll continue using, I let it go into the trash or recycle bin or donation pile. Why give away precious real estate to something I’m not using?
I also devised a game called, “Clear just 10, then do it again.” Whenever I feel overwhelmed by “stuff,” I spend about 30 minutes to declutter by gathering up 10 items that I know I don’t need. Last week I cleared five pens and five scarves. Categories don’t matter, volume does.
I get that this is hard. I am a professional organizer, so I work with a lot of people who have a really hard time letting go of stuff, and a lot of that has to do with our emotional relationship to that stuff. Even the decluttering impresario Marie Kondo admits to failing to be tidy sometimes.
Practice one comes in, one comes out
I live in a one-bedroom, 650-square-foot apartment, and I’ve decided it’s plenty of space for me and the things I need. I have enough space because I practice the principle that whenever something comes in, something has to come out.
This strategy ensures that my possessions remain proportional to my space. Clutter does not start in the home, rather, it starts just before I bring the stuff through my front door. One of my biggest rules to declutter is that whatever I bring into my home has to have a home of its own (where’s it going to live?).
Put everything in your home in a “zone”
Going along with one of my biggest rules that every item in my home should have a designated zone, I organize my stuff into categories of “like with like.” Office supplies are in one bin. Scarves (the ones I kept) another bin. And of course, the zone for donations is the bag by my front door. I maintain each zone by not overfilling the bins. If the contents aren’t clear, I stick a label on it.
Create a calendar of habits
This may sound odd but I make dates with myself to maintain all my organizing habits. Friday afternoon is my business-of-business time. For three to four hours on a Friday afternoon, I’ll file paperwork, pay any bills that came in that week, and make a list to send to my assistant for any website changes. When I “containerize” my day—put that thing on the calendar to help maintain my quality of life—I’m a lot more productive.
Staying organized isn’t about being perfect or following strict rules—it’s about finding systems that work for me. By letting go of things that don’t serve me, being intentional about what I bring into my home, and sticking to a few simple habits, I’ve created a space that feels lighter and more functional.
It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s emotional, but the effort is worth it. My home reflects my priorities and supports my life in a way that feels good. I’ve learned that my space should work for me, not the other way around.
