Establishing Clutter Preserves

As you take whole-house aim on clutter, keep one thing in mind: there’s no such thing as clutter-free living. Sweeping up scattered remote controls, game disks, and toys from the family coffee table one day won’t prevent the household from reestablishing a nearly identical clutter constellation a day or so later.

As we live, we kick up a certain amount of clutter in our wake. It’s an inevitable by-product of daily life. Accept this reality by setting up clutter preserves—specific areas where clutter is permitted, contained, and controlled. By creating designated places for clutter to settle on the fly, you keep it from floating freely and depositing itself at random around the house.

Clutter preserves express the principle of contained clutter. In the family room, a few low, flat baskets go a long way toward containing clutter in the form of remotes, video game controllers, reading materials, and children’s playthings. At the end of each video game session of saving the world, the gamers can just toss controllers into the basket, where they’re accessible yet contained.

Also, don’t turn your nose up at the idea of a junk drawer. True, you’ll want to have only one, but it’s the place to sweep things like rubber bands, shopping receipts, clipped coupons, and unidentified keys. Clearing it out regularly with a scheduled STOP clutter session keeps the junk drawer functioning as a versatile and useful clutter preserve.

Here are some suggestions for setting up clutter preserves:

•  A basket by the back door can hold mittens and scarves in winter, flip-flops and sun hats in summer.

•  Tossed clothing is okay in bedrooms, as long as it confines itself to the bedroom chair.

•  A shoebox-size plastic storage container can be home to hardware bits and pieces in the garage.

•  Children’s toys find a good home in living areas when they’re confined to color-coded plastic baskets, one per child.

•  A small box on a closet shelf keeps safety pins, spare buttons, and collar tabs close at hand.

Just as with wildlife, clutter is welcome to roam freely inside the preserve’s boundaries, but if it sets one toe outside, it’s fair game for disposal. Keep that division operational, and the clutter confined, for the principle to work.