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What do you like most about this room?

  What stresses you out most about this room?

  How would you like to feel when you walk into this space?

  What do you need from this space?

  What do you wish for your friends coming into this room?

  What do you wish someone else in the family would fix in this room?

  What do you admit that you should be fixing?

  What do you have most trouble achieving or need the most help with?

  How can you help people most?

  When you’re all coming to agreement on common goals, start filling out a Room Function Chart that best combines everyone’s ideas and comments. The completed chart should look something like this.

  SAMPLE COMPLETED ROOM FUNCTION CHART

  LIVING ROOM

  Current function Bill paying and storage for Dad’s sports memorabilia

  Ideal function Formal entertaining

  Who uses it? Dad

  Who should use it? Mom and Dad, kids on special occasions

  What should it contain? Couch, chairs, and tables free of piles Clear floor space

  What has to go? Sports memorabilia. And we need room in the office so Dad can pay the bills in there.

  DINING ROOM

  Current function Mostly a place where the kids play and keep their toys

  Ideal function A place where the family gathers to eat together. It’d also be nice to have dinner parties now and then!

  Who uses it? The kids

  Who should use it? Everyone

  What should it contain? The dining table and chairs, clutter-free, and room to walk around the table

  What has to go? The toys! But where?

  KITCHEN

  Current function Where we cook and eat

  Ideal function The same as above

  Who uses it? Everyone

  Who should use it? Everyone

  What should it contain? Food, dishes, cooking supplies

  What has to go? Too many cooking supplies that we don’t use It’s too hard to cook and keep things clean.

  MASTER BEDROOM

  Current function Mom and Dad’s bedroom, laundry transition site, and DVD-watching central

  Ideal function Peace and quiet! Sleep!

  Who uses it? Everyone watches movies together.

  Who should use it? It’d be nice to watch the movies in the den and to have a little privacy.

  What should it contain? Our bed, our clothes

  What has to go? The TV and the DVD collection…crazy, but worth a try

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

  If you all agree, great! But don’t be surprised if your husband is perfectly content using the dining room as bill payment central, or the kids think the basement should be converted to a digital media control room while you’re determined to make it into an office or craft room.

  Anticipate Conflict

  Chances are that everyone has an opinion—even some very strong ones. Here are some of the most common conflicts that will probably crop up during this activity:

  Conflicting visions

  So you’ve all written down different ideas for how that overstuffed, useless guest room could best serve your needs. Now what? Let each family member make a case for his or her vision. Talk about what the family needs most. Is the home office critical to supporting the family? Is the dining room the best place for social gathering? Is there a mother-in-law who makes frequent visits and needs a place to stay? Does a hobby deserve the space it consumes or is it a fantasy that will never come true?

  Multipurposes

  Often the problem isn’t that a family disagrees—it’s that the room needs to serve more than one function. The recreation room in the basement is the “only” place to store family heirlooms. The office “has” to double as a guest room. First, consider whether these multiple uses of a space are reasonable or just an excuse. If most of your living areas are being used as storage, then you are not using your space for maximum personal benefit. This kind of excessive storage does not serve a legitimate purpose in your life. On the other hand, having an office that doubles as a guest room is not uncommon or unreasonable. Look for ways to make the room’s purposes overlap. Replace a bed with a sleep sofa; use a file cabinet that doubles as a nightstand. Simple solutions can help end confusion or chaos in the room.

  As you work through the process of decluttering your home, you must remember that compromise is important. Decisions about shared space need to be made on the basis of what is best for the whole family. This can be difficult, but if the whole family is involved, there is a greater chance of everyone accepting the outcome. And remember—just because you’re the parent doesn’t mean what you say automatically goes!

  Identify Specific Zones within Rooms

  Rooms are used for different purposes—often at the same time. In order to decide what should stay and where, you need to identify the different activities that take place within each room. For example, in your family room you might watch TV and listen to music (CDs, DVDs, and video games), enjoy reading (books and magazines), and regularly wrap gifts (paper, ribbons, scissors, and possibly a regifting cupboard). In your guest room, along with a bed for visitors, there may also be a desk for paying bills and handling family business, as well as space for some hobby or craft. It’s okay to have a room that fulfills multiple functions so long as what’s needed for these different activities isn’t mixed together.

  After you identify what you want do in the room, you must specify zones or areas for each activity. This is a key part of getting a space organized and keeping it that way. Once you begin organizing, these zones become the center for specific items related to the designated activity. In this way it becomes immediately clear where things belong, where to find things, and where to return them. Thinking about rooms in terms of zones or activities both helps you keep clutter at bay and helps you understand how you use your spaces.

  SAMPLE ZONES

  MASTER BEDROOM

  Sleeping

  Relaxation

  Clothes

  Shoes

  Off-season clothes and shoes

  Reading

  KID’S BEDROOM

  Sleeping

  Clothes

  Shoes

  Homework

  Toys

  Reading

  Crafts

  Music

  FAMILY ROOM

  Media—music and TV/video/DVD

  Reading

  Games

  Collectibles

  Photos

  HOME OFFICE

  Bill paying

  Reading

  Studying

  Computer work

  Mail

  Files

  Scrapbooking

  Crafting

  KITCHEN

  Preparation

  Cooking

  Cleanup

  Eating

  Storage

  GARAGE, BASEMENT, AND OTHER STORE ROOMS

  Garden supplies

  Laundry

  Tools

  Paint and chemicals

  Sporting gear

  Seasonal decorations

  Workbench

  BATHROOM

  Cleaning supplies

  Personal products

  Extra products

  Shared products

  Medicine

  LIVING ROOM

  Relaxation

  Reading

  Storage

  DINING ROOM

  Eating

  Storage

  Collectibles

  Formal china

  Entertaining supplies

  Do the Math

  People often seem oddly disappointed when they’re working with me and suddenly realize that much of what I do isn’t magic, just plain old common sense mixed with a good eye for space. It really makes me smile.

  Everything that I do is based on solid principles and a lot of experience. When I walk into
a room, I can pretty quickly sum up what will fit where and how best to organize things. This “sense” is the result of experience, but a lot of it is also simple mathematics that you can do without having me in your home. It’s simple—you just need to calculate how many items will fit into a given space.

  INTRODUCTION TO THE MATH OF “THE STUFF”

  You have three eight-foot shelves to hold your VHS tapes, CDs, and DVDs. That’s twenty-four linear feet of space.

  Approximately eleven VHS tapes or twenty DVD holders take one foot of space.

  Approximately twenty-nine CD cases take one foot of space. So, do the math.

  If you want one shelf for each, then you can have a total of 88 VHS tapes, 160 DVDs, and 232 CDs.

  Here’s how you do the math for any space. First, measure your shelving space or hanging space and use the table below to work out how many of any item will fit into that space. Then sort your belongings until you get to a number you know will comfortably fit into the space you have. If you’re feeling ambitious, get rid of even more so you’ll have room to grow.

  STUFF MATH CHEAT SHEET

  ITEM NUMBER THAT WILL FIT INTO ONE FOOT OF SPACE

  VHS tapes 11

  DVD cases 20

  CDs in jewel cases 29

  Magazines box with ten magazines 3 (thirty magazines total)

  Books 12

  Jeans/pants 12

  Shirts/blouses 15

  Heavy jackets/suits 6

  Shoes Estimate about eight inches per pair.

  As you draw up your plan for the rooms, let math be your guide. What’s physically possible for the space? Measure the total length of your bookshelves. How much linear footage for books do you actually have? How many books will fit there? What is the hanging space you have available? Assess how many items will hang in that space so you know what to discard. You need to assess your space limitations and design accordingly. This will also help take some of the emotion out of the discussion. You only have the space you have!

  DEAR PETER:

  Yesterday I left Maui, my home for the past thirteen years. I thinned my possessions to less than one hundred cubic feet. Time after time, as I contemplated whether to keep an item or to dispose of it, your words echoed in my brain:

  Mementos are not memories. Just because it was a gift does not mean you must keep it forever.

  If it is important, then keep it in a condition that shows that it is important.

  You have had a profound effect on my life. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Mahalo nui loa.

  Homeless Stuff

  Once you decide the purpose that a room serves, you’ll immediately see that some stuff doesn’t belong. If you’re making the basement into a family room, then what are you going to do with the boxes of sports gear? There’s nowhere else for them to go. That’s why they’re here in the first place! Aha! This is where you’re going to push yourself and start making hard decisions. If it doesn’t fit into the everyday purpose of the room and there is nowhere else to suitably store it, is it really worth keeping? Easier said than done, I know. So for now, we’ll put that troubling notion aside. What you need to do right now is agree as a household on the Room Function Chart. We’ll get to the hard parts later.

  The Plan

  Now take what you’ve discussed about each room’s use and purpose and put together a unified room plan for the entire house. Stay focused. Remember that rooms serve functions. Life is lived in the present, not in the future or past. Keep asking yourself: What is most important to me? How do I want to spend my time? How will I live in this house? For this to work, everyone must participate in this process and sign off on the plan.

  Step 3

  Conquer Your Home

  YOU’VE TAKEN THE FIRST BIG STEPS in conquering your clutter and getting organized. When you did the Kick Start you tackled the superficial stuff—you got rid of everything you knew was trash and everything that you weren’t very committed to keeping. Although you only skimmed the surface, you should have noticed a subtle but obvious change to your living space. A little less clutter. A little more open space. Not quite so suffocating. A great start. When you made your Room Function Chart, you agreed as a household how your home can best fulfill your various needs and desires. Now we’re going to make that Room Function Chart a reality. How do we do this? Room by room.

  Where to Begin

  Many of the people I work with think that if they just “clean it up,” or hide it away in a storage facility, that will solve their clutter problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Clutter takes years to accumulate so it’s impossible to get rid of overnight. And even if you could, that wouldn’t solve the problem for long. What we are doing here is not so much a single big event but part of a system or process that will become a part of the daily routine of your life. If you make the organizational principles that you learn here part of your daily life, you will conquer clutter once and for all. It really is a life-changing process!

  The Trash Bag Tango

  I constantly hear: “I don’t know where to start. It all seems so overwhelming.” The best way to make the job less overwhelming is to break it down into smaller, manageable parts—to tackle it room by room. Every room has its own challenges. If you look at the room guides that follow and still feel daunted, try easing yourself into it with a version of the Kick Start that I call the Trash Bag Tango. Grab two trash bags. Every day for a week take ten minutes to go around your home and fill one bag with trash—old papers, torn and unusable clothing, out-of-date magazines, anything at all that you’d classify as garbage. Fill the other with items that you want out of your house (remember? The “out the door” items). Maybe you want to give them to a friend or family member or even to a charity. If you want to sell items in a yard sale, or online, grab a third bag and fill it with those items. Just a consistent ten minutes a day is all this technique asks of you. Commit to this and you will see some significant changes.

  Do this every day for a week and you’ll notice a huge difference.

  Do it every day for a month and everyone else will notice a huge difference.

  Do it every day for three months and you’ll conquer the clutter in your home.

  Now take the plunge

  The Trash Bag Tango may dance you to the finish line, but most people need a little more guidance. Remember all those excuses we use for keeping stuff? Now we’re going to go through your house, room by room, and help you overcome your attachment to items that don’t help you live the life you want. You can do these rooms in any order. I suggest you do them from most cluttered to least. And if you start feeling like doing the whole house is all too much, just commit to doing one room at a time. See how it goes. See if it changes. See if you change. We’ll take it from there.

  The Ground Rules

  For every room you approach, there are three critical steps.

  Think It Through

  For each room I’ll ask you to think about what’s particular to that room in terms of the stuff that needs to be in it, the stuff that tends to accumulate in it, and how you’re going to approach the task.

  Set It Up

  The setup is the same for every room. I’ll ask you to:

  Refer to your Room Function Chart and have everyone sign on.

  Establish zones for the different activities that take place in the room.

  Figure out what doesn’t belong in the room.

  Make It Happen

  This is the action plan that will help you make your vision for the space a reality.

  Room 1

  Master Bedroom

  NO ROOM IN A HOME should be more important to a couple than their bedroom. Disarray in the master bedroom has more impact on family life, on peace and harmony, on love and respect, and on a relationship than it does in any other room.

  Look back at your Room Function Chart. What is your vision for this room? A romantic haven? A peaceful retreat? And what is the reality? Stand in the middle of your master b
edroom with your partner and survey the landscape. What do you see? How does it make you feel? Clutter can definitely push the love out of a relationship. If there is clutter and disorganization in this most intimate of spaces, is it any wonder that the passion has diminished in your relationship? As harsh as it sounds, it’s tough to make love in a pigsty.

  Think of the most romantic place you’ve ever been. Was it a hotel? A weekend spa? A romp in a grassy field? Okay—no one needs so much information. But I’ll bet you anything it was a place free of any clutter and distractions that might have detracted from your loving moments. Follow that same basic concept if you’re looking to create peace and calm. What do you want from the space where you sleep, and where you and your partner have your most intimate moments? What is your vision for your relationship? Your bedroom should be a space that reflects this and fosters calm, warmth, and love. Reclaim your space. Only you can make it happen.

  Think it Through

  The master bedroom is your space. Get rid of the kids’ video games, toys, or clothing. The kids have the rest of the house; the master bedroom should be off-limits to them. Tough? Maybe so, but if you are not going to create a space for you and your partner to enjoy, who is? Focus on what you want from this space and keep that vision clearly in mind as we clear the clutter, organize what should belong in that space, and set the tone for your romantic getaway from the cares and hassles of daily life! This is the fundamental reason for getting organized—to live a richer, fuller, and more rewarding life. Get to it!