by Daryl Hoole
We have found enemy #1 to succesful home management: it's too much stuff!
Many of us are victims of an epidemic of over-consumption and are buying too much and throwing away too little. Mom has five pairs of black pants, ten white blouses, and twenty pairs of shoes. The house is overrun by stray socks, lost Legos, and loose DVDs. Dresser drawers are coughing up T-shirts by the dozen. The teenager's room looks like a laundry bin. The children's toys are too many, too broken, or too mixed up in the bottom of a box for the children to play constructively and really have fun. The garage hasn't housed a car for at least five years, and who knows what's in the garage anyway!
All this stuff makes clutter, and clutter detracts from the appearance of the home and interferes with its function. We owe ourselves and our families something better.
Besides, life is too precious to spend it struggling with stuff. Money and time are wasted. In fact, it's stated that the average American burns fifty-five minutes a day - roughly twelve weeks a year - looking for things they know they own but can't find. (Newsweek, 7 June, 2004)
Furthermore, our chaotic world seems even more out of control when our house is in disarray. The stress of our hectic lifestyles is only exacerbated when we can't find what we're looking for, the laundry is behind, dinner is late, and no one wants to help because the situation looks hopeless. Most of us feel overwhelmed and immobilized by messes. And saddest of all, this physical disarray leads to spiritual disorder because the Spirit will not dwell in a state of confusion.
Well, enough of the bad news. The good news is that there is no better time of year to make a change, to put your house in order than spring time. (If your home already is orderly, then rejoice and be glad and read on to see how you might encourage and help others.) Winter has melted into spring in the northern hemisphere, and this change of seasons is a reminder of the prevailing law of order in the universe. This eternal, heaven-made law blesses this earth; it can also bless our homes.
Our new book, The Ultimate Career, devotes twenty-four pages to helping one establish order at home. We suggest "de-junking" as the first step, so we've chosen it as the subject of this writing.
As a premise for "de-junking" we recommend the maxim by William Morris that states: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
A smart method is to sort items into three piles: one to discard, a second to give away; and a third to put away - and then go to work.
If you're reluctant to part with items you no longer need, consider that you're not giving them up, but rather you're giving them away to grateful benefactors. In other words, you're streamlining your house and being charitable at the same time. It's a win-win deal.
To overcome the seeming endlessness and even hopelessness of de-junking an area, it can be helpful to place a time or number limit on your efforts. For instance, each time you work allow yourself forty-five minutes (or some such block of time) to "hit it hard" and make a real difference in one area of your home. Or challenge yourself to put twenty-five items (or whatever number appeals to you) in each sorting pile and then go to work.
Now, one word of caution: empty only one closet, one area, or one room at a time. If you dump everything at once, you may never recover.
The other day my friend, Marie, pointed out that the kitchen junk drawer (or catch-all drawer) is somewhat a microcosm of the entire house, and all the principles of de-junking and organizing are represented there. Besides, it can be a quick fix. Therefore it's a good place to launch your de-junking attack. Begin by emptying the entire drawer on the counter and then sorting the contents: throw away, put away, and return to drawer.
The throw-away pile consists of such items as notes and scraps of paper that have served their purpose, stray screws, broken pencils, dried-up pens, out-dated phone lists, and other odds and ends of no value. The put-away pile is for the extra note pads that have collected, the two of the three rolls of cellophane tape that have somehow ended up there and could be better used somewhere else in the house, a screwdriver that needs to be returned to the tool box in the garage, and other such misplaced items. The third pile consists of everything that actually belongs in the drawer. Before putting the items back, however, it's important to arrange some organizers and containers to hold everything in its place. Then each time you look in the drawer and find pen and paper just where it should be, it's likely you'll feel a bit of satisfaction and experience a little burst of energy that will move you toward another spot to work on. The better you do, the better you can continue to do. Or in other words, nothing succeeds like success.
Establishing an orderly house requires desire, good habits, energy, personal discipline, and the cooperation of family members. (Future columns will address the topics of space utilization and inviting family members' cooperation and help.) Extra effort may be required initially, but the benefits go on and on. The returns for living a true principle far outweigh any investment it might have required.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we preach and teach the ideal. It is according to the Lord's plan that we are not provided with excuses to be weak, but rather that we are given reasons to be strong. Fully realizing that we will not, in this life at least, attain the ideal in everything we do and say every day, we are nevertheless urged "to press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope" toward eternal life (2 Nephi 31:20).
Expectations are high, not to make us feel unworthy, but to assure us that our Father in Heaven believes in us, that he loves us so much that he is preparing us to return and live with him. As we strive to reach this most lofty and glorious of all estates, we are beset with countless human frailties and challenging circumstances. These are not to discourage and deter us, but rather they are to teach us to trust in the Lord through faith in him, to rely on him through humility, and to perfect ourselves through repentance.
In the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple in 1836, the Lord revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith the high standard of devotion he desired for his people as they endeavored to become temple-worthy and visit his house. This is also the pattern for each of us to follow as we strive to establish gospel-centered homes: "Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God" (D&C 88:229).
The principle of order is for blessing your home as well as the world. It's a heaven-made law.
