Space: the final frontier. Your organizing mission: to clear your tabletops and countertops and keep them that way! Unfortunately, you can’t just beam your kitchen table clutter away so watch this video and clear the way to living long and prospering. That’s nothing to tribble with.
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Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we’re going to talk about how to clear off your dining table and your kitchen counters and all those other flat surfaces you have trouble with. We hear about this a lot, I’ve seen a lot of clients with this problem, and that is, all of the clutter piling up on these flat surfaces. Now, in my world we call this “undesignated space.” It’s the idea that these flat surfaces don’t have a defined purpose, so it becomes an easy place to put things here “for now,” and create clutter.
And as you might notice from some of my other videos, the definition of clutter is “delayed decisions and delayed actions.” So, I’ve got five ways today for you to clear off these surfaces. And the first one is to catch yourself. So, you have been unconscious about this for a long time. So, the first step is being conscious. As you’re coming in the door with an armload of stuff, as you walk over and say, “I’m going to put it here for now,” catch yourself saying that little danger phrase, realizing that means you’ve delayed a decision, and instead deal with it right then or make sure that right after you hang up your coat or put your keys down, you turn right back around and deal with those items.
The second thing you can do is think of these things differently. Think of them as decisions and actions and ask yourself, “What is the next action that needs to be taken with this item?” “What is the decision that I haven’t made yet?” You may be looking at decisions like, “Do I want to donate this, or keep it?” “Where do I want to store this?” “Do I need to bring this back to my sister’s house?” “Do I need to return this to the store?” Those are the kinds of things you need to ask yourself and get to the answer. Write it on a “to do” list, get accountability from someone to get that task done, or make that decision.
The third thing you can do is look for themes or trends. So let’s say your dining table is piled up high with stuff and you decide that as a project you’re going to take this on, let’s say next Saturday, and as you’re going through all the stuff and making those decisions and taking those actions, look for those themes and trends and categories of things that are on the table. So, for example, you may find there’s a lot of unsorted mail on this table. You may find there’s a lot of stuff there that belongs to your daughter. You may find that there’s a lot of stuff there that needs to be returned to the stores, or errands that need to be run. So, when you identify what those categories are, you may be able to cut that clutter off at the source and figure out another solution for those categories of items. You might need to have a basket somewhere else where all the unsorted mail goes when it comes in from the mailbox. There are things like that, that you can solve and eliminate some of the stuff that’s ending up on the flat surfaces.
All right. So, the next thing you can do is discuss this problem with everyone who is involved. So obviously, you’re living with other people in your home. You’ve got your family members that are contributing this problem. Once you kind of figure out what’s going on with it, and maybe you have identified some of these themes and trends, you can discuss them with the other members of the family. Not in an accusatory way, not in a way that puts them on the defensive, but just bringing them in on the problem and problem-solving together so that people are bought-in to the process and they are bought-in also to the solution. So, this might give you more fresh ideas, and it certainly will help with the maintenance of the space when it comes to other people’s contributions to it.
And then the last thing you can do is make a rule for yourself and for the family about this surface. So you may decide that this surface needs to be cleared off daily. So for me, kitchen counters, they’re cleared off daily. Dining tables, other spaces that are not as crucial or often used or looked at, they could be cleared off weekly. You can decide what makes sense for your family and your home, but make those rules and start sticking to them. At least if you pile things there “for now,” you’ll have the knowledge that later on it’s going to get cleared off on Saturday, so it’s probably going to be okay.
If you’ve enjoyed this, I would love to ask you to share our videos with a friend. You know, we have a lot of viewers, we get a lot of comments, but we know that we are not a dramatic chipmunk here, I’m not going to be a sneezing panda, or I’m not going to bite anybody’s finger, so we’re not as likely to go viral or anything like that, but I feel like we have a lot of good material here that people would enjoy. So, if you are so inclined, we would be honored if you would share our channel with your friends. It’s really easy to tell them to go to clutterdiet.tv, and that brings them right here to our You Tube channel. We’d really appreciate it.
Thanks so much, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been searching for how to stop clutter from accumulating or maintaining clean surfaces.
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