When the clutter belongs to someone else
You are so excited. You have cleaned out your closet, given away the things that were sitting in the basement, and you are ready for a fresh start. There is just one problem. Your partner, who is home all day now, thinks the good chair in the bedroom makes a wonderful clothes rack. And the grown children's boxes are still stacked where they left them, waiting for a someday that never comes.
In feng shui, the new things trying to reach you have to get past the mountain of shoes at the front door like everybody else. So it matters. But you cannot clear someone else's things for them.
Start with why
Ask yourself why you want them to be tidier. If the honest answer is that you believe they would be better off, that is not a good enough reason. For someone to buy in, it has to help them in a way that they want.
Remember that your mother's standard of tidy was probably not yours. Everyone in your house has their own standard too.
Three things to keep in mind
- Think like them. Work with their habits instead of against them.
- Share a goal. Show them how the change makes life better for everyone in the house.
- Lead by example. Do it yourself first and let them copy you.
Most of us are creatures of habit, so the trick is to make a new habit easier than the old one.
Say your partner comes in, drops the coat on the banister and kicks the shoes off wherever they land. Work with it. Put a coat rack by the door and a hall bench with storage in the seat. The things still land at the front door, they just land somewhere. If that does not stick, explain that you tripped over the shoes last week and you do not want them to trip too. And for a few weeks, hang your own coat on the rack even if you prefer the closet.
The laundry baskets
This one is from my old articles and it works for two people as well as for five. Buy two laundry baskets for each person and label them. Put a row of hooks on the laundry room wall, one labelled for each person. When the laundry is done, everyone's clean clothes go in their own basket and anything ironed goes on their own hook, already on a hanger.
Each person carries their own clean basket up, empties it and leaves it in their room for dirty clothes. The full basket that was already there comes back down. You never carry it for them. If they want clean clothes, they move their own. The laundry gets done in half the time and nobody's things get mixed up. Eventually they run out of socks and get the idea.
The chair
As for the chair, every Sunday gather the pile and put it on the bed, on their side, with a few hangers beside it. The new rule is that it all goes away before bed that night.
Do it their way
Most of us do something when we can do it our own way, when we get something out of it, and when it is easy to keep doing. The mistake is trying to organise everyone the way you would organise yourself. Labelled boxes and colour coding will not work for some people. Open boxes and open shelves might. So might a coat rack instead of a closet, a duvet that goes on with one tug, or attractive bins in every room instead of one bin out of the way.
The grown children's boxes follow the same rules. Ask what they want kept and how they would like to keep it, agree on a date, and clear one of your own boxes first.
Be creative and get them involved. It is their home too.
From the archive. First written for my journal years ago, and rewritten for life after 50.
