"Ditching 800 Pounds of Clutter"

Because I found it so personally inspiring and useful, as a service to my readers I'm going to flaunt copyright law and reprint Sue Shellenbarger's column in yesterday's Wall Street Journal in its entirety. I hope you find it as useful as I did.

(WSJ, please don't sue me - I'll take it down immediately if you ask.)

"Ditching 800 Pounds of Clutter" by Sue Shellenbarger
Copyright ©2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The notion of a top-to-bottom spring cleaning seems quaint in an era when many families, including mine, can't even tame their dust bunnies—let alone a garage full of clutter.

Many people either hate cleaning or can't find time for it, based on the frequent emails I receive on the topic. Weekly hours spent on housework since 1976 have fallen 20% among married couples, 34% among single women and 16% among single men, according to a long-term study of 9,000 families at the University of Michigan. While no one measures clutter, "the number of possessions owned by the average person has risen dramatically" in the past 50 years, says Gail Steketee, dean of social work at Boston University and co-author of several books on hoarding.

A clutter-filled home can be a source of stress—and can spur squabbles among couples.

But how do you fit a thorough spring cleaning into a time-pressured schedule? To look for answers, I ran a six-week experiment. I surveyed 10 books by cleaning experts and picked the three approaches to managing housecleaning time that seemed most likely to fit into a busy schedule. Then, I divided my four-bedroom house into three zones and tested each approach in a different zone for about two weeks, while keeping up all my usual activities—working, cooking for and spending time with my family, hosting weekend guests, seeing friends and doing volunteer work. My house is a worthy laboratory; a packrat by nature, I have avoided doing a top-to-bottom deep cleaning and de-cluttering for longer than I care to admit. (OK, for two years.) Normally I only spend a couple of hours every week or two, vacuuming, tidying up and scrubbing bathrooms.

I learned a lot from this experiment. It is possible to squeeze spring cleaning into a busy schedule without taking time off. But it is important to approach the job with a little forethought—planning in advance how to organize storage space, doing tasks in the most efficient order, and pacing yourself to avoid burnout. Plunging in without thinking, as many non-cleaners do, I wound up doing a lot of things backward, wasting time.

The rewards were worth the effort. After getting rid of 800 pounds of recycling and trash, hauling two SUV-loads of donations to Goodwill Industries, and dropping off 17 boxes of books at the public library, I am exhilarated by the newfound open space in my house, which seems bigger and more serene. One formerly standoffish neighbor is now more friendly. And I am more thoughtful about how I acquire, use and dispose of stuff.

Based on a diary I kept, here is what I learned:

The Multitasking Method: This method, called "a five-minute room rescue," is recommended by experts including author Marla Cilley, founder of Flylady.net, a Web site on cleaning. It entails seizing upon spare moments and attacking one messy room at a time in five- to 10-minute spurts. Starting in Zone One of my house, the family room, kitchen and office, I did two or three room rescues each weekday after work and several more on weekends, setting a timer to keep me on track.

It takes flexibility to switch back and forth between tasks this way; non-multitaskers would be miserable using this method. But it worked for me. Knowing I only had to clean for five minutes helped me break through my habitual avoidance. I was surprised at how much I could get done in five minutes—vacuuming and dusting my family room, for example.

But the two weeks I had allotted weren't enough time to finish Zone One using this method. The problem: I made the mistake of thinking that cleaning is, well, just cleaning. But in fact, the spring cleaning I undertook entailed three distinct processes—cleaning, organizing and de-cluttering; each requires different skills and time commitments, says Julie Morgenstern, New York, an organizing and time-management consultant. Cleaning is quick physical work, removing dirt and grime. Organizing is a mental process. And de-cluttering, deciding what is obsolete and letting go, is both mental and emotional, and takes longer, she says.

Trying to clean without de-cluttering first, as I did, is inefficient. When I tried to do a five-minute room rescue in my messy office, I couldn't wipe off the file cabinets because they were covered with piles of paper; all I accomplished was to spread them around. Had I de-cluttered first, sprucing up Zone One using this method would have been a slam dunk.

The Scorched-Earth Approach: Variously labeled the "Trash-Bag Tango" by organizing expert and author Peter Walsh, or the "27-Fling Boogie" by Ms. Cilley, the method I used in Zone Two (my bath, laundry and living rooms) has you seize upon a slightly longer block of time, of about 15 minutes, and set a de-cluttering target—such as removing 27 unneeded items. Then, grab two trash bags, for donations and discards, and stride through your house bagging stuff until you reach your objective. Working on "clutter caves," as cleaning expert Don Aslett calls the worst junk stashes, I didn't even have to walk around. My laundry room cabinets and toolbox produced enough stuff to hit my quota, from identical sets of socket wrenches to tattered rolls of gift wrap.

This method cleared a lot of space fast, and its emphasis on quantity draws you to the messiest parts of your house. But don't try this method if you are expecting dinner guests; Zone Two got worse before it got better. Doing the Boogie produced a tidal wave of trash and misplaced items I wanted to re-store elsewhere—such as the printer toner cartridges I had inexplicably stashed in the same drawer as my son's track spikes. These items sat around in bags and boxes for days while I figured out what to do with them.

This brings me to my next big mistake: I failed to begin my de-cluttering "with the vision you have for the life you want ... and for the space you want," including setting specific uses for each room and storage area, as Mr. Walsh of Los Angeles advises. Because I didn't do this advance planning, de-cluttering left me in temporary chaos.

Nevertheless, this method felt like a game, and I could easily see enlisting the rest of my family in the "fun."

The Project Management Method: Inspired by the title of one of Mr. Aslett's books, "Lose 200 Lbs. This Weekend," this approach requires some work in advance, assembling a list of dejunking supplies such as boxes and bags, thinking about which items you don't need and researching places to receive donations and discards. Thus prepared, I plunged into a weekend whirlwind of de-junking my garage and closets, a process the book promised would give me a "taste of freedom, space and dominion."

This method did produce astonishing results—not all of them good. In two days of de-cluttering, I far surpassed Mr. Aslett's target, losing 800 pounds of trash alone, based on weighing my Ford Explorer on the vehicle scale at our recycling center. Hundreds of pounds more of various items went in separate loads to Goodwill Industries and our public library. The process did give me a satisfying sense of control.

But de-cluttering was more tiring and draining than I expected. I agonized over cleaning out our family art-supply cabinet. With my kids now in college, we hardly need stickers, glitter and sidewalk chalk; but I love my memories of their using those supplies when they were small. "It is very hard to make those decisions," Ms. Morgenstern says. "You get attached."

I got over it, but the experience did make another of my spring-cleaning mistakes abundantly clear: Trying to de-clutter for longer than two to four hours at a time. Although working for eight hours on Saturday and five on Sunday seemed reasonable, I was wiped out afterward. In an interview later, Mr. Aslett told me I took his book title too literally. "When I say weekend, I don't mean Sunday too!" he said. "Two days is too much for some people." De-junking for too long can make you "tired and disgusted and mad," says Mr. Aslett, of Pocatello, Idaho. "You get careless and toss stuff out, and you will regret it."

Home from college for the weekend, my son pitched in to help with a final round of basic cleaning, including sweeping and wiping down walls and shelves—a process that takes only a short time in Zone Three, because the de-cluttering is done.

Since crawling across the spring-cleaning finish line earlier this month, I have been reveling in the benefits. My neatest and tidiest neighbor noticed my departures for the landfill with my Explorer packed to the roof, and dropped by for the first time to compliment me on a garage that is now nearly as sparkling and capacious as his. I am saving money, because I found stuff I thought I had lost and was planning to replace, such as snorkeling gear and moss-remover for my lawn. Laboring over my stuff has taught me to handle and recycle possessions with greater care. And I have to admit: Parking my car at night in the space actually designed for it, the garage, is beyond cool.