Even if your house doesn't look like this, you may still have too much stuff. Every object you own comes with overhead costs. Too much stuff = steep overhead costs that lower your quality of life over time. Your stuff may be costing you more than you realize, and far more than you wish to spend!

How to identify it

Do any of these statements describe you in your home?

1. You can’t find things you need easily.
2. You routinely have to move something in order to access the item/s behind it.
3. You frequently make duplicate purchases because you don’t realize you already have something.
4. You often have to reorganize just to make room for a new acquisition.
5. Putting things away in their proper place is annoying or impossible because the drawer/cabinet/closet/bin they belong in is too full.
6. You have drawers, doors, cabinets or shelves that are obstructed.
7. Your co-inhabitants complain that you are encroaching on their space.
8. You have purchases/gifts that are still in the package or in the bag you brought them home in weeks or months (or years) after acquiring them.
9. You hesitate to bring items in from your car because you don’t know where to put them.
10. Your countertops, vanities, tables or other horizontal surfaces lack adequate space to work in comfortably.
11. You are renting additional storage space because you have outgrown the space available in your home.*
12. You feel overwhelmed by the “visual noise” surrounding you.
13. You feel claustrophobic or stressed in your home environment and/or avoid spending time at home because it’s physically uncomfortable.
14. You have to move piles in order to make room for guests to sit down.
15. You feel like you now need more space to accommodate the same number of inhabitants as before.​

*Renting storage space is okay as a short-term, temporary solution (such as in the case of a move) with an established end date.

If any of these describe your living situation, you have too much stuff! Ideally, you should be able to easily find and access objects you use regularly and be able to verbalize why you are keeping any object in your home without hesitation or sputtering. There should always be a little bit of additional “room to grow” in your cabinets, closets, shelves and drawers so that new purchases or gifts can be put away as soon as you get them home. Most importantly, your home should feel like the calm, comfortable sanctuary you deserve.

How to fix it

Just like diet and exercise, decluttering and purging is an ongoing, lifelong necessity. I know, I know...that’s not a declaration most people want to hear. However, creating and maintaining adequate space in your home doesn’t have to involve endless hours of drudgery. The key is getting into the habit of streamlining as you go. As soon as you begin to see any of the signs that you have too much stuff, it’s time to take action. That action can be as simple as pulling out just a few unwanted items from your closet or cabinet and dropping a bagful of them off for donation or scheduling a pickup. You’d be surprised at what a noticeable difference eliminating just a handful of items can make. Think of it as a maintenance diet for your home.

Perhaps you have many “pounds” to lose first, though? Rest assured that even if your entire house is stuffed to the gills, you can still start small. The important thing is just to start! Pick a cabinet, closet, shelf or drawer that is really bothering you and spend 15-30 minutes identifying stuff you no longer need. Chances are good that there are a lot of deferred decisions and objects you’ve kept by default in there.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the prospect, keep the process as simple as possible by breaking down the job into three easy steps I like to call The Three D's (Decide, Divide, Dispose):
Step 1: Decide - Pull everything out of the space (drawer, shelf, bin). Then pick up each object and choose between two options: 1) Yes, I need it and will use it; or 2) No, I can live without this. Don’t bend yourself into a pretzel trying to justify keeping it. Don’t think right now about whether or not this is the proper place in your home to store it. Don’t worry that you could maybe someday find an alternative use for it. Don’t puzzle over who else might want it during this step or agonize over how much money you spent on it or whether so-and-so would be hurt that you got rid of his gift. Just answer Yes or No to needing/wanting it. Put the Yes-es back in the cabinet or drawer. You can better organize them later or designate a new home for them another time. Step 1 is just about deciding between keeping and not keeping.

Step 2: Divide -  Place your Nos into three categories: 1) trash/recycling; 2) donate; 3) sell. First, a word of caution: Do not even think about selling unless you are 100% sure you are going to invest the time and effort that involves and are willing to set a deadline for seeing through that goal. Selling requires you to have a game plan for when, where, who and how much. Sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort. Too often, you end up procrastinating and holding onto items with the best of intentions for far too long. My advice is to limit your sell category to only those items likely to yield enough money to make it worth your time. Place the sell items into a box or bag and write your deadline on it. If you don’t meet the deadline, these items should be donated as soon as possible after the deadline has passed.

Step 3: Dispose - Place trash and recycling in their proper receptacles. Drop off donations at a local charity as soon as possible or schedule a pick-up. Find an out-of-the-way place in your home to temporarily stash your “for sale” items after entering the appropriate action reminders on your calendar so you don’t forget about your deadline.

How to prevent it

Over-accumulation usually results from a combination of two things: Impulsiveness and Deferment. We buy things (or say yes to others giving us things) without first asking ourselves the right questions. Do I really need that? How/when (specifically) will I use it? Where will I store it so that it won’t be in my way? Do I really have room for it? What is my Plan B for it if Plan A doesn’t work out? Our default setting when it comes to acquisition is Yes when it should be No. That's the Impulsiveness.

Then when we are faced with tough decisions on what to do with something when its usefulness comes into question, we attempt to delay making any decision at all by keeping the status quo. That's the Deferment. What we fail to recognize is that merely keeping the status quo is a decision...it is a Yes when it often should have been a No. All these Yes-es eventually add up to clutter, disorganization, frustration, claustrophobia, discomfort, embarrassment, and stress and end up costing us time, money, and opportunity.

Make more purposeful decisions about what to keep and what to acquire, and you will soon find yourself with more space for living! With a little forethought and discernment on how to best “spend” your space, even clutter-free living can be easy peasy!


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After nine months of procrastination, excuses and cancellations, I finally had my "annual" physical yesterday. I had been dreading this since January, knowing that my likable yet firm and forthright nurse practitioner was going to lecture me about my hoard. Yes that's right...I'm a hoarder...a hoarder of calories. And just like all the hoarders on my favorite "Buried Alive" TV episodes, my years of hoarding have finally started taking their toll and are doing some real physical damage to the hoarder home...in this case, my body.

It's not exactly a secret to anyone who sees me that I like to eat and hate to exercise. I've struggled with maintaining my weight for most of my life but really began losing the battle after I had kids, not unlike so many people who lose their tenuous grip on organization and time management when the demands of life begin to outgrow the number of hours in a day. In fact, there are so many similarities between getting fit and getting organized:

1. Both require long-term patience and determination
2. Both involve a lifestyle change that must be maintained in order to be successful
3. Both are freeing and empowering and remove obstacles to fulfilling your potential
4. Both are immensely rewarding and lead to a better quality of life
5. Both are more likely to be successful when accompanied by the support and encouragement of others

I have a triathlete friend who wishes her house looked like mine. I wish my body looked like hers. Put us together and we'd be one smokin' hot room mother!  I went over to her house a few months ago to give her some organizing advice. It was the first time I'd seen her house, and she nervously met me at the door, admitting that it was hard for her to let me in (it truly wasn't that bad). As I was leaving, she asked if she'd be seeing me up at the pool this summer, and I replied, "The way you felt about letting me into your house is the way I feel about putting on a bathing suit in public." I didn't make it up to the pool this year...clearly my friend is more courageous than I am!

My nurse practitioner has given me three months to start clearing out my hoard "or else" (meaning that another lecture from her will be the easiest part of my next appointment, I'm sure). So I find myself in the role of encouragee after months of playing the encourager.  I hope it will make me better able to relate to my clients' struggles and find compassionate ways to encourage them. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

In the meantime, if you see me stuffing my gob with cupcakes, remind me that "it's all about making choices".

Have you ever noticed that things always tend to break when you are broke...and when you really, really, really, really need them the most?

That's what happened this morning. My husband returned home from his first night shift back at work after a much-needed two weeks off and reported that the brakes in his car were making that dreaded grinding sound. You know the one. It means "Cough up at least $250 immediately" in car language. And of course it didn't happen while he was off and we didn't need both cars so that each of us could get to work. It happened right in the middle of a particularly tight budget week.

But it is what it is, and there was no getting around it. We needed that car and couldn't avoid the necessary repairs, so we put our heads together and came up with a solution within five minutes. I was so proud of my husband (aka "Mañana Man") for facing the issue head on instead of avoiding it the way he has often done in the past. I used to tease him about how whenever he noticed the car making a funny noise, he'd just turn up the radio so that he didn't have to hear it anymore. Job done...right?!!

We all have stuff we avoid. I avoided our finished basement for years because the carpet and sofa were stained, the kids' toys had taken over, and it was dark and dingy and ugly, and I didn't have the money to get new carpeting or a new sofa. I found myself trying to fit all my stuff into the main level of our house, making that more cluttered than I wanted, just so that I didn't have to go down there as often to get  the things I needed. I dreaded doing the laundry, because it meant I had to spend time in that depressing environment. I refused to hang out with my husband or children down there. It felt like a dungeon.

Eventually, I got so annoyed at having to relinquish the use of one-third of my house just because it was ugly that I finally decided to do something about it. I painted it, bought slip covers and new drapes, purged  all the toys the kids had outgrown and re-organized the rest, and cleaned the carpet. When I was done, I not only liked it again, I spent most of my days working down there. I even made sure we had a Christmas tree down there so that we could open up our gifts in front of the fireplace. It was awesome, and I was left wondering why I hadn't done it sooner...why I had wasted all that precious time avoiding the thing that would lead to such a positive outcome. The work and inconvenience of it was far worse in my head than it was in reality and was well-worth it. It took about three days but I have now been able to enjoy that part of my house for over a year. Winning!

One of my favorite shows on TV is "Buried Alive" on Discovery Health Channel. If you haven't heard of it, it's a show about extreme hoarders who decide it's time to get the psychiatric and organizational help they need to clear up their clutter. Avoidance is the main M.O. for practically all of them. They have developed hoarding behaviors as a means of covering up, or avoiding, their emotional pain. They avoid cleaning up and putting things away. They literally build up barriers of stuff to avoid dealing with their nagging spouse or kids. They avoid the reality of their financial issues by continuing to shop for more stuff they don't need with money they don't  have. They avoid making repairs in their home and thus often go without power or water for years. Then they begin avoiding relationships because they have to hide their hoarding problem. Life eventually becomes so miserable, the smallest tasks so cumbersome, the mess so paralyzing and their self-esteem so low that they are forced to confront the issue and fix it. And most of them do and then can't believe how wonderful it is not to have maggots all over their kitchen and to be able to take a shower in their own bathroom or sleep in a bed again. They spent so many years bathing in the sink or eating takeout and robbing their kids of their childhoods that they couldn't remember how incredibly easy normal life could be in comparison.

One of my clients this week told me that she found herself avoiding looking at  the new "Action" folder we set up for her incoming mail and other papers. After asking her several probing questions to get to the bottom of the issue, it came to light that she was afraid she'd make a mistake in filling out a form or would not be able to find some important document she needed in order to submit her health insurance claims. I pointed out to her that there are very few mistakes in life that cannot be corrected, and there is almost always someone somewhere who has a copy of any missing document or who can help you figure out how to achieve your goal without it. Perhaps it will require some inconvenience or may cost time or money you think you don't have, but there is always a solution as long as you look for it instead of avoiding it. But more importantly, finding the solution is how we grow and learn, and isn't that the whole point of living in the first place? To avoid the problem only avoids finding the solution, which in turn avoids learning and growing and living.

The old adage, "Never put off until tomorrow that which can be done today" really means, "Never put off the relief and joy and sense of accomplishment you feel when overcoming an obstacle if you can experience it today". So next time you find yourself avoiding an unpleasant task, realize that you are also avoiding the sense of freedom that only comes from having completed it.