So Maybe Clutter isn't the Problem

I have a phrase I use all the time in my work:

Clutter is simply delayed decisions.

I've said it for years.

But after spending several days at the Institute for Challenging Disorganization conference in Toronto, I realized I've been paying a lot of attention to the delayed part.

I'm becoming much more interested in the decision part.

One of the presentations that stayed with me was about decision-making. At one point, a pile of papers was described essentially as a pile of decisions.

Well, yes.

Of course it is.

But that raises a much more interesting question:

What makes a decision hard?

When I'm working with someone, it can sometimes look incredibly simple from the outside.

Keep or donate?

File or recycle?

Use it or let it go?

But those aren't necessarily simple decisions to the person making them.

A single object can carry a surprising number of questions.

Will I need this?

Could I replace it?

Did I waste money if I get rid of it?

Will someone be upset?

What if I regret this?

Does this still matter to me?

Does keeping this say something about who I am?

Does letting it go?

And sometimes the question underneath all of those questions is even simpler:

Do I trust myself to make this decision?

That's something I want to pay much more attention to in my work.

Because if I walk into someone's house and make all of those decisions easier by essentially making them for the client, I can probably clear a room pretty quickly.

But I'm not sure I've solved the problem.

Getting curious before getting organized

Another idea I brought home from the conference came from an anthropology presentation.

Disciplined curiosity.

I've been thinking a lot about curiosity already, but adding the word disciplined gave me something new to chew on.

When I see six bottles of the same shampoo, I can think:

Why do you have so much shampoo?

Or I can get curious.

Are you forgetting what you already have?

Can you not see the extras?

Do you buy another one every time you're unsure?

Was it on sale?

Do you hate running out?

Is there actually a completely reasonable explanation I haven't considered yet?

Those questions lead to very different solutions.

Maybe we need to declutter.

Maybe we need better visibility.

Maybe we need one place for backstock.

Maybe we need to make it easier to know what you already own.

Maybe nothing needs to change about the shampoo at all.

The discipline is remembering that I don't need to uncover someone's entire psychological history to organize their bathroom.

I just need to understand enough about what's happening to stop solving the wrong problem.

Sometimes the answer is just organizing

I also want to be careful here.

Not every pile of clutter has a deeper meaning.

Not everyone who hires an organizer is chronically disorganized.

Sometimes you moved into a house and nothing has a home yet.

Sometimes you're busy.

Sometimes your closet is badly designed.

Sometimes you have too much stuff and need another person there while you make decisions.

Sometimes you need someone who can look at a room and say, "Okay, here's how we're going to do this."

Then we organize it.

Done.

But there is another group of people I work with who have organized the same spaces over and over again.

They've bought the bins.

They've read the books.

They know what they're "supposed" to do.

Sometimes they've spent years believing the fact that they can't maintain it says something about them.

That's where I'm becoming much more interested in a different question:

Why does this keep happening?

Not:

What's wrong with you?

Not:

Why can't you just put this away?

But:

What is making this harder than it looks like it should be?

That's a very different place to begin.

Fair.

There's a word I use with clients constantly.

Fair.

Someone will explain why something keeps happening and I'll say, "Fair."

The laundry never makes it upstairs because by the time it's clean and dry, you've already completed several steps and putting it away requires another entire round of decisions?

Fair.

You keep rebuying something because you genuinely can't find the ones you already own?

Fair.

You haven't touched that hobby in eight years but still aren't sure you're ready to say you're no longer that person?

Fair.

Fair doesn't mean the situation is working.

It doesn't mean we leave everything exactly as it is.

It means:

I can understand how we got here.

And I think that's an important distinction.

Because once we understand how we got here, we have much better information for

deciding what needs to happen next.

The clutter is where we can see it

I'm not trying to make people's homes look unoccupied.

I'm trying to reduce the places where a household gets stuck, loses things or quietly waits for someone else to deal with the mess.

After this conference, I think I'm seeing another layer of that.

Sometimes the place we're stuck isn't actually the pantry, the closet or the pile of papers.

It's a decision.

It's an expectation.

It's a process with too many steps.

It's a system that requires more capacity than we actually have.

It's something that worked for a previous version of our life but doesn't work anymore.

The clutter is where we can see it.

That doesn't mean every pile needs a deeper explanation.

But when we keep solving the visible problem and the visible problem keeps coming back, I think it's fair to ask whether we've actually found the problem yet.

So I'm going to be asking a few more questions before I reach for the label maker.

Not because I want to make organizing more complicated.

Because I want the solutions we create to make more sense.