How to Win the Clutter Battle

Save space and sanity by saying ‘no’ to stuff

By Andrea Downing Peck
 

For families in the military, with frequent moves and memories, it’s all too easy to lose the clutter battle. Your garage might be filled with dusty boxes of mementos of past achievements, duty stations or important people — and you might find yourself trying hard to squeeze your life in between all the stuff.

When you walk into your home, do your surroundings create the mood, feeling, attitude, and atmosphere that you want?

“If it does, you are on the right track,” says professional organizer Peter Walsh. “If it doesn’t, you need to start working on de-cluttering your home and organizing your spaces so it delivers what you want from that space.”

Since the publication of his New York Times bestseller, “It’s All Too Much,” in 2007, Walsh has become the voice of a movement that believes living with less is the key to a happier, richer life every day.  He can be seen advocating against excessive stuff on TLC’s “Clean Sweep” and OWN’s “Enough Already! With Peter Walsh.”

Other than keepsakes, Walsh says, clutter comes from a culture that promotes buying useless junk. “We all struggle with clutter,” he says. “We live in a society that says more is better—if one is good, two must be great.”

And, Walsh says, we imbue objects with significance that makes us not want to part with them. “We buy products, but what we really do is invest in is the promise. When you invest in certain cookware, you invest in the promise that somehow it will create the ideal family meal you yearn for. Homes are full of all these unused products, but at a deeper level our lives are littered with all these unfulfilled promises.”

Base housing is often small, but Walsh suggests military families should not use the size of their homes as an excuse for living in a cluttered space.

“When you are telling yourself ,‘I don’t have enough space,’ you are misunderstanding the issue,” he said. “It’s never about the space you have. It’s about the volume of stuff that you have.

“If you don’t honor and respect the limits of the space you have, if you attempt to put way more stuff into the space than it will hold, your relationship with that space will sour,” he says. “The quality of our lives has to be the measure of our success, not the quantity of our stuff.”