It's All Too Much Read online

  In donating, call the charity in advance to find out drop-off times and locations or whether and when the charity will send a van to pick up larger items. If you know in advance that someone else’s stuff is going to be part of your purge, then give that person advance warning. Say, “I’m going to be cleaning out my garage on Saturday and I’m going to need you to pick up all your things by 5 P.M. that day. Anything that’s still here is going to [insert your favorite charity here].” No more Mr. or Ms. Nice Guy.

  Plan where you’re going to sort your belongings. If you have the space, put three tarps on the lawn labeled “keep,” “trash,” or “out the door.” If you don’t have outdoor space or it’s too cold, create defined spaces for each pile by spreading out sheets indoors. Don’t have room to spread out the sheets? Create “keep” and “out the door” areas in the middle of the room you’re working on and box it up as you go. As soon as you have a full trash bag, it goes immediately outside.

  You Have the Plan, Now Do it!

  Game rules

  Start on time. You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. Your commitment to this project is your first step toward creating the life you want to have. Don’t put off the inevitable for another second!

  Don’t argue. Have the whole family work together on one area so you can give one another guidance. Listen with respect when you talk about whether to keep something or let it go. Remember, we’re saving the hard decisions for later. Now isn’t the time to argue about whose what is taking up all the space. You’re a team. You all want to end the day with as much trash as possible and eliminate the superficial clutter. Do what you can to get there.

  Don’t waste time. Now is not the time to take a trip down memory lane. Don’t stop to look through your high school year-book. Don’t read letters or examine photos. Touch each item once; make a decision and move on. Only look at something long enough to decide which pile it belongs in. This is why I often call this the “rapid-fire sort.” Don’t stop for breaks or phone calls. This is a workday. Be your own tough, focused boss.

  Make your piles. Move stuff out of the room and into one of the three piles. As you do, assess your progress. Look at the relative size of the piles. Is anything going in the “trash” pile? Wouldn’t it be disappointing if you spent a whole day cleaning out the room only to end up with the exact same mess you had in the beginning? The “trash” pile is hungry, very hungry. Feed it. Help it grow. The bigger it is, the less work you’ll have to do later.

  Don’t stop until you’re done. The last thing you want is to end the day with a bigger mess than you started, so finish the job. Bag up all the trash and put it in bins. Return all the “keep” items to their previous places. Do your best to replace them neatly, but don’t worry about finding new, better, organized places for them yet. We’ll get there. Move your “out the door” items to a specific area or drop off donations at your charity of choice, prepare them for pickup, or load them into your car so you can take them first thing in the morning. It is imperative to get these items out of the house as quickly as possible!

  Evaluate and congratulate. As you finish the quick purge, you will make discoveries. You may find yourself feeling attached to things you know you shouldn’t keep. There may be debates in the household as one family member clings to belongings that another wants to purge. When you have finished your cleanup, take some time to discuss your discoveries. Don’t fight about them. Talk them over. Does one of you do more of the purchasing? Is someone else more inclined to hoard and save? What kind, gentle, truthful arguments can you make about why something is taking up more space in your home than it deserves? Is it getting in the way of the life you wish you had? Then you have to find a way to let it go.

  YARD SALE PLANNING

  Set a date. Do this well in advance. Don’t choose a holiday weekend. Pray for good weather.

  Decide what to sell. In addition to the things you’ve collected in your initial purge, right before the yard sale, supply everyone in your family with a box or two that they can fill with additional items that they are ready to sell.

  Collect sale items. Sort and box similar items, this will save time later when you are setting up. Store everything neatly in the garage.

  Tell your neighbors. Let your neighbors know about the sale—encourage them to have a sale on the same day. The more sellers, the more people you’ll attract to the sale.

  Tell the world. Yard sales are all about advertising. Put large colorful signs on all major roads. Keep all signs the same color with clear directions, the address, and the time. Use humor to draw the crowds. Take out ads in local papers and put notices in local supermarkets or other places there are community notice boards. Try listing the yard sale online or in free community newspapers also. E-mail friends and family and ask them to do the same.

  Attach price tags. Clearly price everything with masking tape and bright markers. Put like things together. Use tables to make the viewing of merchandise easier. Borrow clothing racks. Have a great layout of goods so that people can easily see everything.

  Enlist helpers. Assign your helpers specific tasks like managing the crowd, answering questions, making sales, taking payments, and providing laughter and fun.

  Be prepared. Have an extension cord handy so people can check electric items. Have shopping bags or boxes handy to help people collect and carry goods away.

  Get some sleep. On the night before the sale, put a sign in front of your house that reads ABSOLUTELY NO EARLY BIRDS or else you’ll have people knocking at your door before the sun is up.

  Manage the money. Have a lot of small change handy—use a fanny pack to keep the money safe and in one place.

  Bargain. The idea of the yard sale is to get rid of everything. Bargain like crazy—offer to add items for an extra fifty cents. Five books for the price of three, four shirts for the price of two—you get the idea. An hour before you are due to finish, slash prices to clear the merchandise!

  Get rid of everything. Arrange for a charity to pick up whatever is not sold. Don’t take anything back into the house!

  Above all: Keep your sense of humor and make the day enjoyable for all. Encourage people to haggle and make a game of it. You’ll sell more stuff and have more fun.

  Okay, now do it all over again. Have you ever noticed that shampoo bottles always say “wet hair, lather, rinse, repeat”? If you follow those circular instructions, you’ll be shampooing your hair until the end of time. Not so with the Kick Start, but you will need to move through your house methodically, getting rid of unnecessary clutter until you’ve done every room. Only then will you be ready for the hard part—letting go of stuff that feels valuable or important.

  This quick purge is just a primer, but it will fill you with excitement and a real sense of what you can achieve. Your house may be tidier, but is it shipshape? I’m pretty confident that the answer is no. You’ve done a good job clearing away the first level of clutter, but now you’re ready to tackle the real issues. Now you’re ready to open up your space and unclutter your mind. Welcome aboard!

  DEAR PETER:

  I have purged about three quarters of my old craft supplies. I have gotten rid of clothes that are out of style or don’t fit me or my family. I have corralled all our camping supplies into two containers, not counting the tent. I have gotten rid of all the toys my two sons have grown out of. I have gotten rid of things that I collected just for the sake of collecting but have never actually used. I have gotten rid of over three hundred magazines, with another one hundred fifty or so to still go. I have recycled years of receipts. Gone are the games that are missing pieces, and the school papers telling of some upcoming event long since gone by. Boxed up are all the records from being a PartyLite consultant, and sold are most of the extra PartyLite pieces that I no longer need. Every-time I picked up something intending to keep it, I thought of you advising and guiding people on their path from chaos to peace. I asked myself: When was the last time I used it? Do I need it right now? Can I
buy another one cheaply? Is it useable? Does it need repair?

  Peter, I have donated about eighty boxes of perfectly sellable items to a local charity, and I have another load of about thirty boxes ready to go.

  Step 2

  Hash It Out!

  YOU’VE FINISHED THE KICK START. It was hard work, but it was just the beginning. If all I had to say was, “Get out there and throw away your trash,” I wouldn’t have bothered to write this book. Doing a little cleanup isn’t going to change your life. It isn’t going to radically alter your relationships. It isn’t going to make your home the ideal haven you deserve. But admit it—it felt good. Having even a little more room to move and to think goes a long way. Less truly is more. Now we’re going to make it even less. It’s time to reimagine your home.

  Think about it. We wake up in the same bedroom every morning (most of us, anyway). We bathe and get dressed in the same bathroom. We eat breakfast in the same place. But how and when did you decide how all the components of your life would be organized? When did you decide which drawer would hold your socks, or whether the glasses or plates should go in the cupboard next to the oven, or where to store the holiday decorations? Let me guess. You decided the day you moved in. In the foggy exhaustion that always accompanies a move, you had to put the sports equipment somewhere, so you put it on the top shelf of the downstairs closet. There wasn’t room for all the pots and pans in the kitchen, so you put some in the laundry room, where they’ve acquired such a seemingly permanent layer of dust that you never bother to use them. Sure, not every decision was made on moving day. Maybe you came home from the store with a ton of lightbulbs you bought on sale, and ever since then the linen closet has doubled as bulb central. It was a spontaneous decision, but it works okay.

  Yeah, well, working “okay” is not enough anymore. It’s time to make your possessions serve your life, instead of vice versa. You want to go to sleep in a bedroom that makes you feel relaxed and comfortable? You want to have dinner in a dining room that can be romantic or alive with family dynamics? You want to work in a home office that makes you feel efficient and on top of things? We’re going to take your vision for your life and make it a reality.

  Communication

  The best way to manage the conflicts that arise when you’re trying to put together a household plan is to be careful how you communicate with each other. Obviously, being able to talk honestly, openly, and respectively with your mate or family is a critical life skill that you should have, regardless of how you choose to live. But it’s worth mentioning here to be mindful of each other during this process because having to toss a lifetime of treasured possessions can be a highly emotional exercise for most people. This is a tough job and you are going to engage in tough conversations, so I want you to get off on the right foot with each other.

  Establish a basic premise

  The best way to enter a tough discussion is to establish where you stand at the start. For example, a husband and wife might tell each other, “I love you. I want to be with you. That’s what’s most important to me.” If you take the time to remind each other of this basic premise of your relationship, then the conversation has a starting point of love and understanding. This is not just about the words, it is fundamental to communicating positively with each other during the seismic change you are about to undergo. If each partner knows that the reason for the discussion is to arrive at a place that is best for both of you, then even the toughest decisions can be faced and made together. When the communication is not clear, or one person feels that the conversation is a personal attack, that’s when things quickly go off the rails. Before you talk about the clutter, talk about what is important to you both. Discuss what you want the final outcome of this cleanup to be. Agree on ground rules and constantly return to this initial conversation when things get difficult or uncomfortable.

  Don’t make it personal

  As you discuss your hopes and goals for the rooms in your house, make sure you don’t start blaming your spouse, partner, roommate, or children for the mess. Remember that almost every household is a merged household of one kind or another. People with different backgrounds and different interests fall in love, or answer roommate ads, or are related to each other. Different people have different interests at different times in their lives. What is important to you may seem trivial to your teenager. You have to find a way to talk about your shared space without fighting or you won’t get anywhere. Don’t let your stuff be a battlefield for your relationships. Instead of focusing on whose mess it is, think of it as a group problem that you’re going to solve together. Don’t use words like “yours” and “mine.” Talk about the clutter and challenges surrounding it as “ours.” Remind the household of the premise you’ve established. Everyone’s opinion is important. Taking the emotion and conflict out of the discussion is fundamental to achieving your shared goals. Yes—they are shared goals, even if one person wants to keep everything and another wants to throw it all out the window. You must start from the larger goals that you share as a household. Everyone has a life to lead in this home. You care about each other and you want everyone to find peace and satisfaction between these walls.

  COMMUNICATION QUESTIONS

  Here are some questions to help you make decisions about what to keep without starting arguments or passing judgment. The goal is to reframe the discussion away from the item itself to its significance in your lives.

  Examples:

  Instead of “Why don’t you put your tools away?” ask “What is it that you want from this space?”

  Instead of “Why do we have to keep your grandmother’s sewing kit?” ask “Why is that important to you? Does it have meaning?”

  Instead of “There’s no room for all of your stuff in there,” say “Let’s see how we can share this space so that it works for both of us.”

  Instead of “Why do you have to hold on to these ugly sweaters your dad gave you?” ask “What do these sweaters make you think of or remind you of?”

  Instead of “I don’t understand how you can live with all of this junk,” ask “How do you feel when you have to spend time in this room?”

  Room Function Chart

  Now that you’ve tackled the superficial clutter and cleared a little space in your home, you should be able to see what is really possible. Taking the emotion out of the clutter is important. Without doing this, discussions can quickly slide into chaos—trust me, I’ve separated enough screaming couples to know! You have the basic ground rules of communication in place, so now is the time to tackle the different rooms in your home.

  DEAR PETER:

  I really hope you can help me. For the last five months I have been working hard to get the clutter out of my house. I was really surprised that there was so much stuff in every room. I just couldn’t bring myself to let most of it go so I piled everything into the garage and basement. Now guess what? My house looks great, but I can’t get into the garage or the basement. But it’s all things that I am sure we will use some day. It’s all great stuff—it just won’t fit in the house. What should I do? Help!!

  Room by room

  We start by getting agreement on the function of each room. You may think this is obvious—some of them surely are—but you may be surprised to find that everyone in your household doesn’t share your vision for how each room functions. We’re going to start by looking at how you see the rooms in your home. Create a Room Function Chart and give a copy to each member of your family. Fill them out individually, then meet to compare your results.

  At this stage, it is best to simply hear what everyone has to say without dismissing any idea. The more comments, feedback, insight, and discussion, the better! Welcome surprises and be prepared for some interesting points of view.

  SAMPLE ROOM FUNCTION CHART

  LIVING ROOM

  Current function

  Ideal function

  Who uses it?

  Who should use it?

  What should it
contain?

  What has to go?

  DINING ROOM

  Current function

  Ideal function

  Who uses it?

  Who should use it?

  What should it contain?

  What has to go?

  KITCHEN

  Current function

  Ideal function

  Who uses it?

  Who should use it?

  What should it contain?

  What has to go?

  MASTER BEDROOM

  Current function

  Ideal function

  Who uses it?

  Who should use it?

  What should it contain?

  What has to go?

  ROOM NAME:

  Current function

  Ideal function

  Who uses it?

  Who should use it?

  What should it contain?

  What has to go?

  Complete these questions for each room in the house you are decluttering.

  The questions in this chart are simple and straightforward. Use these questions as you go through each room of your home, and have a much broader and more complex discussion with your family. You’ll never create space in your home if you don’t allow space for everyone in the household to participate in open, productive discussions. The following questions can inspire conversation that helps you find common ground when you fill out the Room Function Chart.

  QUESTIONS FOR GENERAL DISCUSSION