Clutter Gone Wild

Marcia, a 34 year old psychologist and mother of four, is a firm believer in getting rid of as much stuff as possible, either by recycling it, passing it on to a friend, or—if all else fails—banishing it to the trash. "Toss, toss, toss," she advises. "When games are missing some of their pieces, get rid of them. After you read a magazine, pass it along. Yeah, you might someday want to remember Heloise's Hint number 345, but it's not worth having your July 1975 Good Housekeeping magazine sitting around your house for 20 years!"

Convinced of the merits of reducing clutter, but don't know how to get started? Here are some parent-proven strategies for dealing with family-related clutter.

TIP: CLUTTER TO GO: "I never leave a room without carrying something out that belongs elsewhere. And I'm trying to teach the children the same thing." - Marilyn, 43, technical writer

The Front Hall Hang a row of hooks across the back of your closet so that your toddler or preschooler can start hanging up her own coat. (If you don't teach your child to master this skill by age five, your front hall will look like a war zone for the next ten years.) Make sure that there's a convenient place for your children to store their mittens and hats. Otherwise, they'll simply end up in the middle of the floor. Something as simple as a laundry basket tucked inside the front hall closet is all that's needed to eliminate this perennial source of clutter. Store out-of-season coats and jackets in another part of the house. The average front hall closet is too small to tackle four seasons worth of garments. The same goes for shoes and boots: you don't need your summer sandals and your winter boots cluttering up the closet at the same time! Provide a convenient spot for your school-aged children to deposit backpacks and other paraphernalia. "Buy Rubbermaid storage bins with tops–one for each child," suggests Lisa, a thirty-five year old fitness consultant. "Put each child's name on the top of his or her bin using permanent marker and keep them near the back door. That way, when your children come home from school, they can store all of their school stuff in their bin."

The Kitchen Organize your cupboards by theme: baking supplies should be clustered together, as should cookbooks, pots and pans, dinner plates, and so on. If your child enjoys doing art projects at the kitchen table, use a fishing tackle box to store all her art-related bits and pieces. The top tray is ideal for crayons, pencils, markers, scissors, and rulers; while the storage area underneath is great for holding foam pieces, pom-poms, fabric scraps, and other bits and pieces. Clean out the refrigerator each time you bring in a new load of groceries. If you don't, you'll end up with a smorgasbord of prehistoric leftovers that aren't fit for man or beast. Keep the kitchen counter free of paper-related clutter. Not only does it look awful to have that much paper laying around: you risk throwing out your credit card statement along with last week's newspapers. A quick solution? Store essential papers in an extra set of stacking files or a breadbox that's meant for paper's only. Set up a mini-office in one of your kitchen cupboards. "A friend of mine just passed on a great tip," says Lisa. "She suggested that I buy fold folders in different colours for different areas of my life (green for financial information, red for unpaid bills, orange for household information, yellow for medical information, blue for the kids' stuff) and that I install a plastic file holder on the inside of one of my kitchen cabinets. Now, each night I sort through all the day's mail and school work and file each piece in the appropriate folder. Then, on the weekend, I take the folders up to my home office and file the papers in the big filling cabinet."