"Too Much Clutter at Home? Spring Cleaning Tips"

More clutter liberation advice from the Wall Street Journal's Sue Shellenbarger ("Too Much Clutter at Home? Spring Cleaning Tips"):

People hang onto stuff because it has sentimental meaning, or shields them from anxieties about not having enough, experts say. In my case, I become attached to the hopes and memories I associate with my stuff. Old, unused board games are more than board games in my mind; they represent my love of quiet family evenings together. To me, our art-supply cabinet crammed with old stickers, glitter and paper signifies how much I enjoyed equipping my children, when they were small, to plunge into arts-and-crafts projects on a whim.

Once you realize the stuff is just stuff – not memories and relationships – it becomes easier to discard or donate unneeded items. In “Unclutter Your Life in One Week,” author Erin Rooney Doland recommends taking digital photos of sentimental items, then giving them away. If you inherit Grandmother’s china but don’t want to use it, she suggests keeping a teacup as a memento and donating the rest. And “if your dresser is filled with T-shirts from college, cut them up and make them into a quilt,” she writes. Other people automatically toss stuff if they haven’t used it for six months or a year. Still others imagine that they are moving; the thought of boxing, loading, unloading and unboxing hundreds of pounds of stuff is enough to turn them into avid de-junkers.

Organizing expert Julie Morgenstern suggests writing “treasure guidelines,” or criteria for keeping stuff, and taping them to the wall of your work area. Ask yourself, “If this were gone tomorrow, would I miss it?” she says. For example, you might not miss the books that have been standing on your shelves for years; but even though you only wear a black cocktail dress once every five years – you might still miss it, she says.

Setting aside a whole afternoon or day to clean isn’t realistic for many jugglers. To find time to de-clutter, some experts recommend snatching 5- to 15-minute blocks of spare time to tackle messy spots one-by-one. Others advise seizing on 15- or 20-minute periods and setting a target–such as collecting 27 items they don’t need any more – then strolling through the house with trash bags, collecting stuff to donate or discard. Some families with older children build a 10-minute cleanup time into their after-dinner routine, setting a timer and requiring everyone in the house to take part.