How to Manage Clutter in our Houses and Offices?

When we go to a new vacant house for living or when we open a new office in a vacant premises, we will find the space of the rooms to be big and more than sufficient for our use. We will place our things and arrange the furniture items and other things in the hall, rooms, kitchen and toilets. We will put some items in boxes or in some other packing in the lofts. We will neatly arrange things in the shelves, show cases, bureaus and cup-boards. Initially, everything will appear to be neat and good.

However, in course of time, without our notice things will increase in number and get dumped. Because, we will be getting new things and we will keep everything whether they are important and valuable or not. We will find it difficult to handle things, and we will be wasting our time in searching for something we need because many things will be accumulated in limited space of our table drawers, shelves, cup-boards, wardrobes and bureaus. Some people will be often searching for their mobile phones, remote control of their television/ DVD player, vehicle key punches, spectacles, some important letters or papers. It is because of their habit of placing things at any place and also forgetting where they have placed them. And another important reason will be “Clutter” in their houses and offices.

What is “Clutter”? Too many things accumulated in small or limited space of our houses and offices are called “Clutter”. So, Clutter is anything:-

• Which makes chaos in our houses/offices
• We do not like or do not use
• Large quantity occupying less space
• Use of which is not clear
• Which will distract us from important

However, one person’s clutter will be other person’s important thing. We will have to discard clutter to avoid difficulty in handling important things. For getting clutter discarded, we have to either accept the fact that clutter is present in our houses and offices and allow the same condition to continue, or stop complaining or worrying about it. We have to decide to do something immediately to get rid of clutter.

Getting rid of Clutter will be helpful in:-

• Cleaning the house/office easily
• Making our desk, table, room and house appear neat and clean
• Getting more time to attend to important things
• Buying things really needed for our house/office because of available space due to the clearance of clutter

When we look at clutter in our houses and offices, we will feel paralyzed and overwhelmed with a fear or hesitation as to how we can clear the same

The following are the steps in clearing the clutter from our houses and offices
We have to:-

• Eliminate the things we do not need, want or like; we have to throw those things without keeping them in an idea that we may need them in future or with some sentimental value attached to things.
• Categorize the things accumulated into different groups consisting of similar items in a group; for example papers, clips, staplers, files and binders can be categorized in a group
• Organize the different categories by allotting places for each categories; for example the things related to papers can be allotted a drawer in a table: the system of organizing must be:-

1. beautiful
2. functional and
3. easy to maintain

We must try to identify the problem in our eradicating the clutter and we can make a list of things forming cluster in our houses and offices. Clutter Management is an art which we must learn and practise.