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."
The Family Room Provide adequate storage space for all the entertainment-related clutter. If you and your children are movie buffs, you'll need a bookcase or storage chest to hold all of your movies. If you're music lovers, you'll need a place to store all your CDs. Come up with creative spots to store your child's toys. A toy box isn't a good idea for toys that have dozens of pieces since they will simply get mixed in with other toys. Toy boxes can also pose a safety hazard. A better idea is to provide your child with a series of see-through containers with snap-on lids so that he or she can use to store each multi-piece toy. Establish house rules about eating and drinking in the family room. A lot of family room clutter consists of dirty-dishes, half-eaten bowls of popcorn that inevitably get spilled, and other food-and-beverage-related messes. Find creative ways to handle the piles of magazines and newspapers. "One idea I got from my Mom was to put current catalogues and magazines in one of those fancy wicker or twig baskets and toss the old catalogue or magazine out when a new one arrives," says Mary, a 36 year old research biologist. "The baskets don't look as messy as a pile does."
The Bedrooms Don't keep a lot of unnecessary clutter in the bedroom. After all, this is supposed to be your retreat at the end of a long day. Rather than keeping piles of books and magazines on your night table, just keep the novel or magazine that you happen to be reading at the time. Store the rest of these reading materials on a bookshelf elsewhere in the house where they can be retrieved easily when you need them. Help your children to keep clutter under control in their own rooms by providing them with plenty of storage space. (Inadequate storage = more clutter.) A bookcase can be used to store books, trophies, and large toys; a desk with drawers can be used to store writing supplies and school papers; and a well-designed closet organizer can take care of a lot of the other kid-related clutter. Run a thin strip of cork board around the perimeter of your child's bedroom at a height of about three feet off the ground. Your child can then use push-pins to display his or her most recent works of art on this mile-long bulletin board. Another option is to purchase a magnetic strip and to provide your child with mini-magnets. Note: Make sure your child won't swallow push-pins or magnets before using either of these storage solutions in your child's room.
TIP: ART SMART "I have two large bulletin boards in our family room. The boys put what they consider to be their best works of art on the bulletin board. The rest goes into a box under each of their beds. Periodically, we go through the box and decide what goes into a scrapbook and what gets thrown away. (I used to save absolutely every paper they even scribbled on, but there's just too much now.) Also, the box is great to have when an aunt or family friend sends a gift to one of the boys and they want to send some of their artwork in their thank-you note." - Karen, 34, technical writer-editor and mother of two
If one of your children has a stuffed animal collection that is taking over her room, you might suggest that many of these animals find a new home in a hammock suspended from the ceiling. (Just make sure your child realizes that the hammock is for the animals' use only, not for that of a budding trapeze artist. And remember that stuffed animals should never bunk in with babies, for safety reasons.) Encourage your kids to sort through their toys regularly so they can get rid of the ones that they no longer use or that are missing important pieces. If your children can't bear to part with the toys right away, suggest that you put them in a box in the basement for now. If they haven't asked to play with anything in the box six months from now, it's probably safe to donate it to a local women's shelter or thrift store. Clean out each family member's bedroom closet before the start of a new season. That way, you'll have a good idea of what clothing each family member actually needs before you hit the clothing stores. Anything outgrown or obsolete can be passed along to friends or family members, donated to charity, or passed along to your local thrift store. Store out-of-season clothing in sealed plastic containers or empty suitcases and then stash everything under the bed. The clothing is still within reach if you have an unseasonably warm or cold day, but it's not taking up space the rest of the time.
The Bathroom Store your children's bath toys in a mesh laundry bag and hang it from the taps or the spout. Rather than having three brands of shampoo on the go all at once, see if you can find a brand of shampoo that is right for each member of the family. Unless your tub is clean and clutter-free enough to make any TV design show host proud, pass on the see-through shower curtain and the plain-glass shower doors. Otherwise, your fun new hobby will be cleaning your shower. Stash as much clutter as possible in the medicine chest and in the cupboard under the sink. Just one quick word of caution: store all of the hazardous materials in your bathroom in a locked box.
TIP: DO IT DAILY: Clutter-busting is an ongoing task. The secret to taming the clutter monster is to eliminate clutter on a daily or weekly basis. Set the timer for 15 minutes after dinner each evening. You'll be amazed how much clutter you'll be able to eliminate if the whole family pitches in for a few minutes once a day.
TIP: CLUTTER GURU: "June Cleaver made having a spotless house look so effortless....I resolved early on to become a slob when I grew up, since housework seemed to produce nothing but misery. (I succeeded spectacularly, by the way.)" - Susan J. Douglas, Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female With The Mass Media