Just a Little Bit More About Clutter

Sandy Banks is one of my favorite columnists at the Los Angeles Times, so I was particularly interested to read about her struggles with clutter:

"But I finally hit rock bottom last weekend, as I pawed through my collection of boxes in search of a receipt my tax man needs. My problem isn't containers or labels or color coding. It's the fact that the thickest folders in every bin are MISCELLANEOUS and TO BE FILED."

Oh, how I sympathize!

Her solution was to hire a professional organizer, a great idea for someone who feels overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of her. Of course, she was embarrassed, like many of us would be, to let the organizer see things in a state of chaos, so she cleaned up a bit first, in spite of the organizer's request to let everything remain just as it was. This is about as silly as cleaning up before the cleaning lady comes, but it has the added disadvantage of not giving the organizer a true picture of your problems.

I suspect that a professional organizer would have some useful insights about my clutter, whether I cleaned up a bit first or not. But I also suspect that the ultimate solution would require adopting the famous Nike slogan: Just do it. As much as I'd like to believe that there's a short-cut to improving the situation, I doubt that the useless papers will leap into the shredder on their own nor will the clothes choose to fly from the closet and into the nearest charity collection box. However, like Sandy, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed right at the moment, too, thus this short blog post. So, I'm adopting the viewpoint of Scarlett O'Hara instead: Tomorrow is another day.

Read the entire article by Sandy Banks here. Clean up tomorrow!

© 2011 Cynthia Friedlob

Image by datarec at stock.xchng 

Books Can Be Clutter, Too

If you're an avid reader, as I am, you undoubtedly find it easy to accumulate mountains of books. I learned rather quickly that I couldn't possibly keep every book that I read, or even just every book that I read and actually liked (they're not all winners). You've also probably figured out that it doesn't take long to feel totally engulfed by your reading material. And, honestly, after the bookshelves have overflowed, how many stacks of books can be passed off as end-tables before there are more end-tables than ends?

Long ago I entertained a fantasy of having a home large enough to contain a fabulous library, but that fantasy has been replaced by an awareness of its utterly burdensome folly. Now I'm quite content with a reasonable number of bookcases that hold my favorite art books, some useful reference volumes, some sentimental favorites from my not terribly misspent youth, books that I had the privilege of having autographed by their authors, and books that I simply can't let go because they are so entertaining that I've sometimes read them more than once (P.G. Wodehouse, Donald Westlake and a few other writers are priceless gems).

But what does one do with those excess books that invade every nook and cranny? There used to be neighborhood independent bookstores that were perfect havens for old books. You could trade them in for new ones or sometimes sell them outright for a bit of cash. Sadly, those days are almost completely over. Independent bookstores have suffered almost to the point of extinction. Here in Los Angeles, one of the greats, Dutton's Books in Brentwood is closing the end of April. I wrote a blog post in February of last year about the fate of some of the other wonderful independents.

And yet, Powell's goes on. In fact, it seems to be thriving. Thirty-seven years after opening in Portland, Oregon, it remains "a bookstore with a unique recipe that, though viewed as unorthodox, worked: Used and new, hardcover and paperback, all on the same shelf, open 365 days a year and staffed by knowledgeable and dedicated book lovers." Powell's also made the smart move of putting its entire inventory online in 1996, allowing it to reach a vast reading audience far beyond its current six brick-and-mortar locations.

Best of all for those of us who love to read, Powell's will buy books that are in good condition and even pay the postage to have them mailed to Portland. The process is simple and, although they don't accept every title, it's pretty easy to amass a nice little store credit that you can use to buy more books!

Of course, there are many other possibilities for handling your used books, including donating them. Your neighborhood library has fund-raising book sales, your favorite charity may welcome them, or your local senior center may have a collection that is shared and replenished by the community.

Bookcrossing is an unusual alternative that might appeal to you. It allows you to register any book you have on their site, label it with a Bookcrossing sticker, then "set the book free to travel the world and find new readers. Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person." It's also a fun way to make contact on the site with other literature lovers.

In the future, you might want to consider learning to love checking out books from your library. You get the joy of reading them without the job of keeping and disposing of them. If you're still a hardcore, gotta own it book lover, you might want to investigate Amazon.com's Kindle. This wireless reader holds two hundred books in the space of a single paperback. It's expensive (four hundred bucks), and the ten dollar downloads also could quickly add up to a hefty price, but what a great way to keep your favorite books at hand without crowding your living space. No, I don't have one . . . yet. However, I'm surely tempted by its positive reviews.

As for your old books, whatever you decide to do with them is fine as long as you remember that if they sit unread on your shelves or floor, they're not bringing other readers the joy you experienced while reading them. That would be an unfortunate loss. So pass them along and spread the word. Literally.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Taming Another Paper Tiger

With the new year comes the inevitable list of New Year's Resolutions. Perennially, getting better organized is high on my list. That means unloading more unnecessary stuff.

If you've read my book, Sorting It Out: One Disorganized Woman Solves the Problem of Too Much Stuff, you know that I refer to the process of organizing as similar to that of an archaeological dig. We clear away the obvious "top layer" of stuff first (the easy decisions, like trashable items), then we move on to the next layer (items that require at least a tiny bit of thought), and the next. Usually there are many layers that are gradually uncovered in an organizing expedition, each one presenting unique challenges. The more we dig, the slower the process becomes as more difficult decisions need to be made. Unless we have the luxury of hiring a team of organizers to tackle the task all at once or unless we have a time limit that forces us to move in a hurry, it's not uncommon to need a break of weeks or months between some layers, just to re-group mentally.

Assuming there are no debilitating psychological issues that hinder our progress, eventually we can work through our reluctance to let go of many possessions because eventually we're faced with reality: too much stuff, too little room for it.

But sometimes we hit a layer in which there are things that we decide simply must be stored. We've deemed them valuable and justified keeping them. That means we need to find room somewhere. If we're determined to hang on, even though we have no room, we may rent additional storage space -- not the optimal solution, especially if cost is a concern. So, what can we do? Start digging elsewhere.

In this household, tons of paper have been generated, probably quite literally, over the years -- okay, decades -- as a result of writing for a living, so paper storage is a big issue. (Believe it or not, children, there was a time when computers stored everything on big floppy disks and, before that, even typewriters were used to write!)

In my fantasy life, the one with a small staff of computer-savvy assistants who take care of annoying mundane tasks, all the old scripts, storyboards and development projects currently sitting in boxes in the garage would be scanned with a snazzy Fujitsu ScanSnap and reduced to a few much more manageable DVDs. But even at 18 pages per minute (with no paper jams), a whole lot of time would be required to scan those many boxes of documents. This presents a dilemma because the helpful staff is not currently on the payroll and there are more pressing demands occupying my attention.

Oddly, all that important paperwork is the only stuff in the garage that remains in cardboard boxes rather than plastic ones. Fortunately, the boxes are well sealed and miraculously seem to have avoided any moisture damage. So, assuming the contents are worth keeping (the vote is yes, because not only is this a well-organized early career history, the material also has potential for use in future teaching plans), this stuff needs a better home.

As expected, a little digging in the garage and its attached storeroom revealed some "top layer" trashable items as well as other lower layer things that can now be let go, creating a fair amount of extra space. This allows for a comfortable solution to the storage dilemma.

When organizing, sometimes the path of least resistance really is the one to take. Life does have its priorities. So the papers will be transferred into shiny new plastic boxes and stashed under the stairs. This will require only a short time to accomplish and will provide much better protection for the papers.

When that staff of assistants finally shows up for work, the papers will get scanned. Meanwhile, they'll sit comfortably in waterproof plastic, still accessible but out of the way.

And how's the more recent written material stored? All on hard drives. Is it backed up? Well, maybe there's still room for improvement in that area. But, I'll get to it, one layer at a time.

Happy New Year, readers!

© 2007 Cynthia Friedlob

Cyber-Clutter and Digital Disorganization

I am surrounded by little scraps of paper with notes on them. There's also a small pile of business cards scattered across my desk. Atop my handy little rolling cart sit several pages filled with scrawls of important information. The common link between these papers, all begging for my attention: each one contains data that must be entered into my computer. E-mail addresses, obviously, but also phone numbers and snail-mail addresses because, like many people, my primary list of contacts is online. Yes, I have a small Rolodex next to the most often used land-line phone, and it provides easy access to the phone numbers and addresses of people contacted regularly. But if I ever decided to upgrade from just a plain old cell phone to something like a snazzier BlackBerry that could organize absolutely everything, I'd no longer need my retro-Rolodex.

Of course, no matter what kind of electronic brain you're using, at some point the information does need to be put into it, by you, or, if you're lucky, by your hapless personal assistant. I am sans assistant, so I'm the one stuck typing this stuff into my online address book. And, alas, in the long-running battle of Me vs. Paper Scraps, the scraps won a mighty victory, so now the amount of data entry required to catch up looks pretty daunting. But this issue is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to managing one's life online.

How many of you have innocently hopped online for a quick check of your e-mail, only to discover when you looked at the clock that two hours had mysteriously disappeared? For many of us who rely heavily on e-mail, all that time could have been spent reading and responding to it. But most of us get side-tracked by a quick and easy detour, perhaps to check out that eye-catching news headline, and that story usually contains a link to another interesting story, containing a link to yet another interesting story, etc., etc., etc. Or the links could have been provided within the body of our incoming e-mails, for example, friends pointing out sites or articles they've discovered that you absolutely "must" see or read (I confess that I am guilty of this, but only on rare occasions or during contentious political elections); links to special offers from companies with which you do business regularly; or notices of program expirations or financial transactions that you don't want to link to directly, just in case you're getting fooled by some slick cyber-con, but which then require you to open a new window and go to the site in question to see what the real scoop is.

Some time ago, when my incoming e-mail quantity became unwieldy, I began using a system of folders for it. I've heard rumors that truly efficient people peruse their e-mail and pop each one immediately into an appropriate folder to deal with later. I fear this concept of "later" because if that e-mail isn't right out there, staring at me, probably with a big star or check mark by it indicating that it requires follow-up, I may never think of it again. This is the curse of a visual person. If it's filed, it's gone from my mind as well as my inbox, so I'd better make sure I handle it before I stash it away.

Dealing with cyber-stuff requires just as much brain-power as dealing with any other paperwork so it must be approached with the same determined and ruthless frame of mind. Entering data is similar to sorting and putting away important information in a filing cabinet; sorting and acting on e-mail is really no different than handling the same task in paper form. None of this qualifies as fun, in my book, but at least there's some small satisfaction in hitting that "delete" key to obliterate a useless communication. And there's greater satisfaction in having all that "filing" existing only in digital form so that it doesn't take up physical space in the house. But, as with the old standard metal filing cabinet full of bulging hanging files and over-packed folders, keeping things up-to-date and properly organized must be part of the routine.

Just a quick aside: I recently discovered a device that could further cut down the amount of paper in those cramped filing cabinets and I'd like to point it out to you (again, no financial gain for me, just an interesting tip). It's called the Neat Receipts Scanalizer. It allows you to scan "receipts, bills, medical forms, business cards -- everything. It scans, analyzes and organizes your papers and stores everything in a database on your PC." I suspect that it comes with its own set of cyber-quirks, but if any of you have tried it, please let me know.

There are just a few tips I'd like to suggest when facing our current cyber-challenges. While at your computer, try using a little kitchen timer set at half-hour intervals to keep you alert to the passage of time (it's a good idea to stretch and walk around a bit for a minute or two). Just as with incoming paperwork and mail, quickly discarding anything that's not absolutely necessary simplifies your online life immensely; remember, you can find information about almost anything you can imagine using a search engine. Setting up and using a filing system to corral the rest of the stuff is mandatory.

And now I must face my digital dilemma of the day: it's time to go through that e-mail file sadly labeled "Miscellaneous."

(c) 2007 Cynthia Friedlob

Dear Subscribers: My Blogger account is still having some sort of difficulty; I see that it sent out another old post from 2006 earlier today. Again, please accept my apologies. I'll ask the tech support people to help me figure out what is triggering these e-mails. Thank you for your patience.

Tax Procrastination and The Black Box

The PBS television series adapted from Agatha Christie's famous books about Belgian detective Hercule Poirot features a familiar cast of characters one might expect to find in a charming British mystery. We have the clever, eccentric detective; the devoted, helpful sidekick who is consistently amazed by the detective's brilliance; and the fallible Inspector who requires the detective's special insights and unique abilities to solve the crime. But in the Hercule Poirot series, there is another character who is also clever, eccentric, brilliant and downright fascinating: Miss Lemon.

Miss Felicity Lemon may be the most organized secretary in the world of fiction. (Pauline Moran portrayed the nearly flawless Miss Lemon with the requisite poise and dignity, and, when required, with a sensitivity that made the character so likeable.) Miss Lemon's office was always tidy. She remained unruffled in the face of any of Poirot's business concerns. Most significant was her impressively detailed and highly sophisticated filing system in which every item was ultra-efficiently cross-referenced, allowing her instantaneous access to any information her employer might require.

Alas, that is not my system; sadly, I am not remotely like Miss Lemon. And every year at tax time, oh, how I lament my fate and wish I could emulate at least a few of her admirable organizational qualities. Instead, I sit with my piles of unsorted receipts and face the frustration of re-assembling the past year of my life so that I can even begin calculating my taxes. Naturally, I wait as long as possible to commence this sorry ritual. But I've always assumed that I was not alone in procrastinating at tax time, so I decided to make an effort to learn more about why people procrastinate. This interesting task also allowed me to procrastinate further.

According to an article on Bankrate.com, the most obvious motive for procrastinating is that preparing taxes is an unpleasant task and, because people prefer to feel good rather than bad, they tend to postpone anything that they know will make them feel bad. Money coach and author Ruth Hayden offered her assessment: "Usually, any form of procrastination is either fear or rebellion. How much am I going to owe? Are 'they' going to take it away from me? What if I can't do this?"

Whatever the reason, it turns out that tax procrastination is so common that Intuit, manufacturer of the popular computer tax software program Turbo Tax, has created an annual list of the top ten cities with the largest number of last-minute on-line tax filers. This year, the phrase,"Houston, we have a problem," takes on new meaning as that Texas city earned the dubious honor of achieving first place, with the largest number of tax procrastinators. Here in Los Angeles, we've fallen off the list at last, finally coming in with a ranking of number twelve. Obviously, I did nothing to help that ranking, although I use H&R Block's TaxCut, so I wasn't being counted anyway.

Now, I confess that was an unusual, seemingly contradictory decision. I don't know what possessed me, but a few years ago, after receiving another substantial bill from our accountant for preparing my very straightforward tax return, I decided that I would try to do it myself. To my utter amazement, TaxCut was easy to use (no, I'm not getting paid to promote the program; I just think that if a tax-phobic person like me can use it without exploding my head, it's worth giving it a plug). The problem that remained was assembling all the information before I could use it. An organized person would suggest a simple filing system or perhaps a program like Quicken in which I could easily track my expenses. I've tried the filing system, in numerous permutations. I've tried Quicken. Both options are fine solutions in the hands of someone who doesn't detest doing the actual work and avoid it as if it were the plague.

Probably most surprising in my procrastination research, however, was discovering the number of people who simply don't file taxes at all. These are the ultimate tax procrastinators. However, Bankrate.com reports, "According to the IRS, 1.8 million individuals who failed to file a tax return in 2003 left a total of $2.2 billion in unclaimed refunds in the coffers. Half of those non-filers would have received a refund of more than $611." If you're one of these folks, you might want to consider catching up a bit. There's a deadline for claiming that cash, so if you owed no taxes in 2003, you have until April 17th of this year to file and get whatever refund is due. Of course, you have to file for all the intervening years, too, so it looks like you'd better get to work!

Is there a solution for those of us who abhor managing the paperwork required to handle our tax preparations? One suggestion I'd like to offer is that, as usual, most of us keep too many papers in the first place. It's yet another example of excess stuff making life difficult. Of all the papers we get throughout the year, what papers do we need to keep for tax purposes? Receipts for all deductible items (or potentially deductible items such as medical expenses, car expenses, charitable donations and anything else appropriate if you've spent enough that it's wise to itemize). It is not necessary to keep such items as register tapes from the grocery store, multiple credit card cash advance offers, booklets full of coupons you'll never use, neighborhood flyers for swimming pool repairs if you don't own a pool, advertising supplements from the newspaper for stores where you don't shop, or all those enclosures that are tucked into probably every one of the envelopes that held your bills. Keep cancelled checks, if you still get them, or a legible check register showing payment for other deductible items that didn't generate a receipt. It is not necessary to keep cancelled checks for the car wash, the daily newspaper, or a $10 loan to your sister. Keep W-2 forms, when they show up in the mail, and 1099 forms, if you get those, as well as mortgage and investment brokerage information, of course (but not all the enclosures and solicitations that your lender or broker probably send you regularly). Hang on to your annual statement of IRA or other retirement information, even if you're not drawing out funds yet. That's pretty much the lot. You'll be amazed how easily your pile of tax receipts shrinks if you toss out the useless stuff immediately rather than let it accumulate to sort "later." We all know that later means "never," or at least "not until tax time."

My plan to organize my receipts for next year is the boldest one yet: one fairly large black box with attractive metal corner details that sits on top of a filing cabinet (yes, I do manage to force myself to file a few things, but the effort usually requires chocolate, and plenty of it). Every receipt will be placed in that box at the time I receive it. It will be a chronological record of the year. Of course, this type of record will be utterly useless at tax time, but at least I will no longer torture myself with recriminations for not faithfully filing by category throughout the year and having to gather receipts from several locations labeled, "To Be Filed." No, I will embrace my new system, accept myself as a non-filer, and simply confront the tax-paper challenge once a year, confident that all my receipts are in one place.

I feel better already. And I'm proud to report that my 2006 taxes were filed "early" this year, appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th!

(c) 2007 Cynthia Friedlob

What Makes a House a Home?

My "decorating style," using the term as loosely as it can possibly be applied, is a combination of basic and functional furniture tossed in with a few bits of my grandmother's Victorian china; some handmade crafts created by my mother; a lot of books, some that belonged to my father; and a big, old, weighty, very rustic Mexican ranchero dining table. To describe it as "eclectic" might be a polite understatement. Our townhouse living room does double-duty as my workplace, so along with a couch and chair, there's a computer, an easel and (still too many) art supplies in it. Upstairs, my partner, The Writer, splits the large den in half, with one end devoted to his office and the other end providing a comfy spot for us to watch TV. Architectural Digest will not be coming anytime soon to photograph our interiors, but they work well for us. And I've had sit-down dinner parties for as many as eight where everyone hung out in the kitchen and around the dining table anyway, as people often do at social gatherings, so we find our home an enjoyable place to entertain.

If you've read my book, you know that in our on-going downsizing process I've already parted with a house-load of treasured, inherited antique furniture; crystal and dinnerware; and my dearly loved childhood piano. I finally had to realize that even though the pieces were beautiful and I certainly had sentimental attachment to them, they didn't serve us well in our day-to-day living. Also, they didn't feel like "me" anymore. I was moving on to another stage of my life in which function and a feeling of freedom, rather than style or sentiment, became my primary concerns. But there were some items that I kept because they still did feel like "me." When I see them, they make me happy and they make me feel at home. So I was intrigued when I received an e-mail from a reader telling me about her dilemma:

"I would feel uncomfortable in an austere, minimalist setting, and would quickly add some blankets, pillows, candles, books and other things to make it feel more homey. My problem is that when I've culled my stuff down to what I consider 'the essentials,' my husband complains that we can't have people in because the house is too messy. If I put more things away, I feel like I'm 'losing' parts of me - how will anyone know that this is my home if there are no signs of 'me' anywhere?"

What does it take to make your house your home? Unless you're happy living in a place that looks like the average hotel room, you will want things around that have meaning to you, perhaps because they remind you of your family history, a special event, your passion for your hobby, or maybe you just like the way they look. But how many things? Do you really need all of your golfing trophies displayed on the mantel? I don't know; maybe you do. Do you really need to be able to admire your collection of three hundred miniature porcelain poodles every day? That's certainly possible, though I would hope you'd have a lovely display case for them and not have them scattered on every surface. But how do you handle your partner/spouse/roommate's feeling that what you need is more than he or she can tolerate?

It's hard enough making these decisions on your own, but it's a very tricky task when sharing your living space with another person. If it's your space together, it should reflect that, but that doesn't mean that you each must give up your individual identities. I have several small shelves in the dining room displaying personal items I enjoy seeing; The Writer has matching shelves displaying his collection of things he enjoys. In his office area there are all kinds of items and photos that mark that territory as his; on my desk I have similar small objects that are easily identified as mine, and my paintings hang on many of our walls. There are also some items in our home that we think of as "ours." We're still in the process of paring down to the "essentials" and we both work at home, so, yes, things do get messy. But if other people are coming by, it doesn't take too long to whip the place into presentable shape. Whatever flaws remain are not important enough to prevent us from enjoying the company of friends and family and, fortunately, our visitors seem to enjoy being here, too.

So I wonder how a home that has been pared down to the essentials, as this reader states, could possibly be too "messy" to entertain other people. Either my dear reader is underestimating how many things are essential or her husband is only comfortable in the very simplest surroundings. And what about her husband? Does he have possessions that he displays in their home? Has he pared down to what's essential to him? Clearly there are too many unknown factors to be able to understand how this couple relates to each other or to their possessions, but based only on this limited information, either too much stuff, or the husband's perception of too much stuff, is causing a problem that they have not been able to resolve.

Unless your home is quite obviously overtaken by clutter (you know who you are!), if you are unable to navigate through it and are embarrassed to have other people see it in its current catastrophic state, the decision about what's essential is a very personal one. Unfortunately, this husband and wife appear to have dramatically opposing viewpoints on the subject, and it's resulted in them not being able to enjoy visits from family and friends. This is a situation where an objective third party can be very helpful. A trusted spiritual advisor, a counselor or perhaps a qualified professional organizer could facilitate a dialogue and work out a compromise that would allow each of them to feel that their needs are being mutually respected and that their individual identities are reflected in their home. Then they could get on with truly living in it.

If you share your home with someone else, or with your entire family, I sincerely hope that you don't allow stuff to get in the way of your relationships. Stuff is just stuff; these other people are an important part of your life. If you value them, please get help to find a way to handle any significant conflicts you have over the things that you own.

The most important thing that makes a house a home is the contentment of the people who live there.

(c) 2007 Cynthia Friedlob

Attacking the Attack on Clutter - Part Two

Professional organizer Jeri Dansky kindly provided a link on her site (see comments on my previous post) to the December 28th "NPR: Talk of the Nation" program featuring David Freedman, one of the authors of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, in conversation with pro organizer Kathy Waddill. I found it to be an interesting show and it further confirmed my belief that there is absolutely nothing perfect about a mess. It also confirmed my suspicion that it's helpful to explain what we mean by the term "organized."

On the broadcast, Ms. Waddill made an important point by stressing that organization is not about neatness so much as it is about function. Most of us who struggle to get organized are not suffering from some sort of neurotic need for rigid orderliness; we just want to be able to find what we want when we want it, then we want to have sufficient space to use whatever it is that we just found. If I want to bake a cake, I want to be able to get out the cake pan without having to empty my entire kitchen cupboard. Then I want to have enough room on the kitchen countertop to work there without having to relocate a week's worth of mail, a sweater, and an accumulation of expired coupons. Otherwise, I'm annoyed. To avoid being annoyed, that means that I must not allow a bunch of extra plastic containers to accumulate in my cabinet where they will just be in the way; I must have a more appropriate place to stash my mail; I must have a place to hang up my sweater; and, in my particular case, I must forget about saving coupons because I seem to be incapable of remembering to use them -- I applaud those who do remember, but because I don't, it's better for me to skip the mental torture of consistent failure on this one small task.

"Organized" is a word that has unfairly acquired a negative connotation. It often seems to be used to define to some mythical state of perfection that we'll never achieve anyway and it's usually applied snidely to people who seem to be compulsively neat. If we simply substitute the word "functional," or some variation of it, we can better indicate what most of us are trying to achieve. "Organized" sounds final; "functional" sounds fluid, flexible, as if changes still can be made as a process unfolds. Having a functional home and office is a realistic goal, because life is not static. A functional home and office are not always ready for a photo-op, but they can be made ready fairly quickly because they are set up to function efficiently.

"Messy," on the other hand, is a condition that interferes with good functioning. The fact that a few rare souls are able to function amidst a mess ("The mortgage papers? Why they're three inches down in that big pile behind the potted palm, just to the left of the orange crate full of Junior's old toys.") does not mean it's a desirable condition. It's simply a situation that lacks a functional system.

Every household has systems of some kind for just about everything that goes on, but for some, they're disorderly, inefficient systems that result in a dysfunctional household. Here's a small example: if your "system" is to toss the mail wherever there's an empty surface to "deal with it later," chances are you're going to lose track of some of your mail. Probably there will be some bills in there that won't get paid. This could get your phone turned off, affect your credit rating, or just be embarrassing the next time you go to your doctor's office and are told in front of a full waiting room that your payment is overdue. It's a system that doesn't work, so you need a new system. If you decide that you want one and can't come up on your own with something that works, chances are you'll consult a book (or many, many books) about organizing, or perhaps hire a professional organizer for help. Systems must function for individual personalities within the context of their living and working situations, so you'll have to figure out what system will function best for you.

But what's the first thing any useful organizing book or any pro organizer worth her color-coded manila folders would tell you? Get rid of any unnecessary stuff before you set up your system so that all you have left to organize is what you truly need. Unfortunately, this particular crucial issue didn't get discussed on the NPR show, but it is the underlying problem that creates most messes: we simply have too much stuff.

So, once again, I suggest that you not get caught up worrying about "organizing" and, instead, focus on eliminating everything that you don't need to function. In your home, that doesn't mean that you must throw out every single one of your decorative items or your favorite collections; in your office, it doesn't mean randomly bagging every pile of papers and trashing them (no matter how tempting that may seem!). It means that to begin your process of setting up functional living and working systems, you must determine, honestly, what you need. You'll find that you need less than you have!

(c) 2007 Cynthia Friedlob

Attacking the Attack on Clutter

A frustrating article by Penelope Green in the New York Times, reprinted in the Los Angeles Daily News with the slightly altered title, "Embrace the Clutter," has caused me distress. It's not because she informed me that January is "Get Organized Month," the result of a successful public relations effort on the part of the National Association of Professional Organizers. They have my wholehearted support; I'm impressed that they're organized enough to get a month of acclaim devoted to their profession.

No, it's because she is reporting on an "anti-anti-clutter movement" which says that messy is fine, messy is creative, messy is life lived with gusto. In fact, David H. Freedman and Eric Abrahamson have written a book about that very point of view called A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. Rabbi Irwin Kula is the author of another tome entitled, Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life, that Ms. Green includes in her article, for reasons that elude me, as I will explain later.

I have not read the Freedman/Abrahamson argument in favor of clutter nor the rabbi's learned musings on the general messiness of life and I am loathe to criticize anything I have not read. One risks jumping to incorrect conclusions based on the interpretation of others. However, risky though it may be, I will share some thoughts I derived from reading Ms. Green's article. Needless to say, I'm a bit vexed.

Frustration Number One: I am unclear why Rabbi Kula's book has been tossed into the same category as the Freedman/Abrahamson book. Not having read it, and having perused only the editorial and reader reviews on Amazon.com, I'm working admittedly from second-hand information. However, I have the very strong impression that the rabbi has written a spiritually uplifting book to help us through the messiness of everyday living, not the messiness in our homes. It appears that he is encouraging us to accept change as inevitable, to get comfortable with the reality that we and our lives can never be perfect. This is a very tenable position. In fact, I've often discussed that fact that the quest for perfection undermines many of us who face difficulties handling clutter.

Unfortunately, Ms. Green quotes Rabbi Kula from her interview as follows: "Order can be profane and life diminishing . . . if you've never had a messy kitchen, you've probably never had a home-cooked meal." From a Stuff Sufferer's point of view, however, we know that if you start out with a truly messy kitchen, you can't make a decent home-cooked meal! And chaos in the form of clutter can be pretty darn profane and life diminishing, too, if it prevents you from functioning and mentally paralyzes you the minute you open your front door. For most of us who suffer from this standard "profane" messiness resulting from too many unnecessary possessions scattered around in disarray, well, we'd be thrilled to have a little control over our surroundings so that we could get on with more important things in our lives.

But, the rabbi's quote aside, it seems clear that his book is not about advocating leaving the Hanukkah menorah on display until July or expecting the members of his congregation to step casually over random piles of miscellaneous stuff should they come to call at his home. Perhaps his book was included in Ms. Green's article solely because of its title. If anyone who has read it can enlighten me further, I welcome your comments.

Frustration Number Two: On the other hand, we have the alleged . . . Hidden Benefits of Disorder. Again, based on information provided by Ms. Green's article; the editorial reviews on Amazon.com; and the book's helpfully specific subtitle: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place, this book makes an effort to deliver the "clutter is good" message. It is listed as a business book that wants businesses and organizations to be more open, less rigid, and less organized, and it has some documentation to back up this position.

Of course, there is a big difference between being rigid and being organized, and an equally large difference between being open to possibilities and being so unstructured that opportunities escape amidst chaos. Also, although this is a book dedicated to advising businesses and organizations, those entities are composed of individuals. I expect the book's approach will hold great appeal for some people who have become so unorganized that they've lost control of their lives and encourage them to decide that, hey, this mess is okay after all because I'm just a creative, spontaneous kind of person. Again, I welcome comments from readers who can shed further light.

But back to Ms. Green's article. I was particularly bemused by the concept that messiness is desirable because it allows for adaptability to whatever situation presents itself. Authors Freedman and Abrahamson use as an example Arnold Schwarzenegger's refusal to have a daily schedule; I hope they also mention Arnold's huge staff of subordinates and advisers who try to cope with that situation and steer him in ways that will make him effective in spite of his constantly open calendar. I wonder if they mention if this causes those people any stress.

I'd also enjoy hearing the authors explain their odd thinking on another point, as reported by Ms. Green: "The most valuable dividend of living with mess may be time." Have they never had to search for their car keys buried somewhere on a clutter-laden countertop? Have they never panicked over "misplacing" that crucial stack of paperwork that means the difference between keeping and losing a client? Have they never forgotten to turn on the dishwasher, with another full load of dishes already waiting in the sink? Have they never pulled a wrinkled suit out of their crammed closets and wished it had been ironed?

Oh, wait a minute. These authors are men! Alas, no matter how far "gender awareness" and the sharing of family responsibilities may have progressed over the last several decades, it is still the woman's job to take care of running the household in the vast majority of homes across the land. So, let's consider this quote from Ms. Green's article: "(author David) Freedman, who has three children and a hard-working spouse, Laurie Tobey-Freedman, a pre-school special-needs coordinator, is studying Mandarin in his precious spare time." Hmmm. Mr. Freedman, I have to wonder how that hard-working spouse of yours feels about your conclusion that messiness leads to more free time. Of course, it's possible she's of the same mind as you; perhaps two clutter-tolerant people found love based, at least in some small part, on their shared belief in the value of being untidy. But, just out of curiosity, who does the laundry at your house? Who gets the lunches together for the kids to take to school? Who does the chauffeuring of those kids? If I asked you to lay your hands on last month's bank statement, could you do it? And, by the way, I'd also like to know if Ms. Tobey-Freedman is studying Cantonese in her precious spare hours?

Ms. Green also quotes from a rather astonishing interview conducted with Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at a mental health center in New Hampshire, "whose work involves helping people tolerate the inherent disorder in their lives." He states that he lives in "a world of total clutter . . . My wife has threatened divorce over all the piles . . . If we had kids, the health department would have to be alerted. But what can I do?" Oh, the irony! Get some therapy, Dr. Pollack. Fast. There's a dramatic difference between teaching people useful coping skills to handle the inevitable twists of fate they must endure in their lives and ending up with a ruined marriage because you can't get it together to buy a filing cabinet.

Let's be clear: clutter is not simply the remnants of daily life. Of course our rooms will rarely look ready for a magazine photograph; we live in our homes. But a joyful mess is one that is created in the process of living, not the process of accumulating, or stacking, or storing, or stumbling over. There's no reason to defend messiness when it's just clutter that's out of control. It gets in our way, literally and psychologically, creating a huge obstacle that prevents us from living fully. It's very simply the result of too much stuff. No one should have any illusions that perfection is achievable, or even desirable. But no one should have to settle for an environment that is overcrowded, unsatisfying and dysfunctional when getting rid of clutter would solve the problem.

So, please, if there are any sadly misguided advocates of messiness who might be reading this, don't try to convince those of us who suffer from a cluttered environment that it's okay to live that way. We're just struggling to get or keep a little order in our lives and are not "humorless and inflexible prigs (with) way too much time on (our) hands" (thank you for the pithy description, Ms. Green). We're people who are trying very hard to reclaim our time, our flexibility, and our sanity. And, believe me, we absolutely must have a sense of humor to get through this process.

But, right now, having learned that there is any effort at all to advocate messiness, I must confess that I am not laughing.

(c) 2007 Cynthia Friedlob

Fantasy Life

In "real life," I am both a writer and an artist. I have been known to paint, draw, hand-color photographs, dabble in mixed media, create installations, and try to figure out Photoshop. With the exception of trying to figure out Photoshop, the fruits of my labor take up space, sometimes quite a bit of space. And, like most artists I know, I produce more work than my market demands. It's an occupational hazard. You make art because you love it, because you need to make it, not because you expect to sell it.

In "real life," I live in a townhouse. The space I have available for the storage of my artwork is limited, especially since it's not a great idea to leave art in the garage or in its attached storeroom where walls have been known to leak a bit during heavy rain and where the temperature is completely uncontrolled. Art likes to live where people live: inside where it's comfortable and dry. As a result, the walls (inside) of the townhouse are laden with art. I have made exceptions to this rule by putting some small pieces in plastic bins, wrapping some larger pieces in heavyweight plastic, and optimistically placing them in the garage. I hope this will not prove problematic when the retrospective of my work occurs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (date has not yet been scheduled, but I consider this merely a temporary oversight on their part).

However, in my "art fantasy life" (the reference to the MOMA retrospective probably already has indicated that I do, indeed, have a lively one), I have massive amounts of storage space and a barely contained urge to make work that is monumental in size. Thus, also in the garage, in their original plastic wrap, are fourteen canvasses, unused. Their size was limited only by what I could fit in the back of my Honda Civic hatchback; I did have to acknowledge that reality. Their presence has long tortured me because I want to keep them and use them, but I know that I have nowhere to put the finished work. Worst of all, I like to work with oil paints and they take, literally, months to dry. A dilemma, don't you think?

Well, I think we all have similar fantasy lives, probably multiple ones, and the dilemmas that go with them. Do you have a bunch of gardening tools and supplies, yet you have no garden? Do you have a sewing machine and a big box of beautiful material that would make fabulous draperies, but you don't sew? Do you have exercise equipment stashed in your closet that's never seen the light of day and probably never will?

We hang on to these things because they're symbolic of something significant to us, even though, for whatever reason, it's unrealistic. Maybe you live in a tiny apartment and gardening just isn't possible. Maybe you tried sewing and found you didn't have the knack for it, even though you thought you "should." Maybe you hate to exercise but you've found a dance class that's a fun way to stay fit. Whatever the reason we're not using these remnants of our fantasy lives, we're reluctant to let go, as if we've failed somehow.

But letting go doesn't represent failure; it represents acknowledging reality. It represents moving on. Perhaps someday you'll have your garden, but meanwhile you'll grow a few lovely plants in your apartment. Let the tools go. You finally admit to yourself that you tried sewing because your big sister was good at it and you wanted to be like her. You're like you instead, and that's just fine. Let the sewing stuff go. You're already dancing and loving it. Let the exercise equipment go.

So, I'm finally taking my own advice. I will live in my "real life" when it comes to my art. I'm selling the unused canvasses to another artist who has a very large studio. I'll create my art within the boundaries of my reality, which still gives me quite a bit of latitude, especially if you include cyberspace...

© 2006 Cynthia Friedlob

Paper Crisis

Those of you who have read my book know that my greatest nemesis is paperwork. I hate organizing papers, probably because I am so incredibly inept at it. I've come up with the best possible filing system (at least it's my version of the best possible filing system), but often I still get completely overrun by paperwork. Yesterday I was convinced that I needed another filing cabinet (don't even ask how many I already have). I've eliminated every bit of incoming paper I can by removing our names from the direct mail lists and by handling the household bills through a computer bill-paying service, but there was still a gargantuan stack of papers sitting around, waiting for me to do something with it.

Then it occurred to me that it was the doing part that had me bogged down, not the lack of storage space. In fact, I had half of one filing cabinet drawer that was empty and half of another drawer that had art supplies in it that could be moved elsewhere. So what is the problem? What keeps me from handling paper efficiently?

I (and perhaps you?) simply hang on to information far longer than is necessary. It is important to act on it in a timely matter or let it go. But it's the letting go that is sometimes very hard to do if you're trying to be "nice," or find things "interesting," or just want to "follow up" on something. This can be a deadly trap for those of us who are Organizationally Challenged and are usually already suffering from Stuff Overload. It can give us the illusion of control over our lives when in fact it creates a situation that quickly becomes out of control, i.e., piles of paper all over the place. Witness these few examples from my own stack of papers that I finally decided to tackle:

1. I found a notice I had kept about an acquaintance's retirement. I hadn't seen this woman for over ten years, but I enjoyed her company when our paths had crossed back then and I thought it would be nice to send her a card. She retired in August of 2004. I never sent the card. Let it go!

2. I found a catalog of the "rewards" offered by a credit card company for a card that we rarely use. It was dated Winter, 2005. The catalog is readily available on-line. We don't have enough points for a single reward. Let it go!

3. I found a menu for a lovely little cafe adjacent to a great antiques consignment shop where I had sold many of my smaller antiques during my major un-stuffing effort. I had intended to have a small tea party with friends at the cafe. The shop and cafe closed. Last year. Let it go!

I am embarrassed to say that I found many more outdated items as well as things that now need to be acted upon immediately because I let them languish in that stack of papers for so long. When I finally got to work on them, I ended up with a full bag of shredded paper and another bag of useless paper trash -- and plenty of room in my filing cabinets for what was left.

Conclusion? Don't assume that you just need to buy more organizing stuff to store the stuff you need to organize. If you dig into the stuff itself, you'll often find that you simply need to let it go.

© 2006 Cynthia Friedlob