Cure for Piles
By Pam Young
I have a cure for piles. Not the piles you automatically think of. I am talking about a different kind of pile: the piles of stuff you have around your house and in your car. I put these piles into two categories—good piles and bad piles.
A bad pile is made up of miscellaneous stuff that includes coupons, deposit slips, immediate attention mail, credit card receipts, junk mail, old magazines, notes from a recent seminar, greeting cards, maps, old grocery lists, forgotten bills, devotional cards, memos, and more junk mail.”
My definition of a good pile is any pile already sorted so the whole pile consists of similar items (i.e. a pile of old magazines, a stack of bank deposits, etc.). It takes about 30 minutes per six inches to take care of a bad pile, but it only takes a minute or two to deal with a pile of similar items.
Much of our clutter is made up of bad piles, which are really piles of indecision. Why do we so easily get into the habit of putting off decisions about what to do with something in our hand right now? When we are busy, we tend to postpone those imminent decisions for another day that we somehow believe will be less busy. But another day—despite our best intentions—just adds another couple of inches to our piles.
Chances are that if you have bad piles, you’ve got closets, cupboards, and drawers packed with miscellaneous stuff, too. Bad piles are usually symptoms of deeper problems.
Hot Spots
“Hot spots” refer to areas in our homes where we chronically dump our indecision. In the worst-case scenario, it is the garage! “Oh, I don’t know, Hon. Just put it in the garage.” Unfortunately, that one sentence has created an epidemic of garages full of postponed decisions, and cars eternally parked in driveways or on the street.
Other typical hot spots are the dining room table, the kitchen counter (by the phone), the chair in the master suite, the coffee table in the living room, and the passenger seat or back seat of the car. If hot spots are left unattended, they can turn into bad piles. When the hot spot is needed (so you can eat, when unexpected company is at the door, or if someone needs to ride with you), these hot spots are temporarily cleared, and the indecisions are bagged or stashed out of sight. That’s how our closets, cupboards, and drawers get constipated.
These stashed bags of uncertainty turn into archives, and in time, those archives can grow to haunt us and cost us money! Fibber McGee’s garage can easily turn into Fibber McGee’s storage unit at around $100 a month.
Simple Solutions
So what can we do? Never fear—I have a cure! Take the 15 minute challenge! Set a timer for 15 minutes and focus on one bad pile. Remember: 15 minutes will reduce a bad pile by three inches! In a year’s time, just 15 minutes a day will eliminate over 91 feet of junk from your home.
When working on a bad pile, we should give ourselves only two options: either put away (file) or throw away.
When we spend 15 minutes cleaning out a closet, we can give ourselves four options: give away/sell, throw away, store in a proper storage area, or put back in the closet.
Finally, we can make a commitment that discourages us from creating new piles: When we buy something new, we can choose to get rid of something old.
One of the best tools I know of for un-cluttering your home is a 45-minute self-help DVD, the Slob Sisters’ De-junking Video. The step-by-step tutorial shows exactly how to get rid of the clutter in your home and how to set up a storage area. The DVD is not available in stores, but it is available on the Slob Sisters’ website: www.shesintouch.com. (The DVD is $19.95 plus postage and handling.)
Why Bother?
Maybe your piles don’t bother you that much. Why bother dealing with them now? Think about your kids. If you don’t deal with your clutter, you will leave them with a house full of indecisions and make them decide. Not a very pleasant legacy—not to mention that their final throw-out decisions may be very different than you would make! Treasures you would like left to your grandchildren may end up at the Salvation Army or D.I. Pictures and important documentation of your life may end up in the garbage. Other people simply won’t know what is important to you unless you tell them by organizing it yourself.
The best day to start curing piles is today. Believe me, the relief and comfort I’ve found in these simple solutions beats all the alternatives!