Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter and Organize to Make More Room for Happiness

by Gretchen Rubin

If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

But if you don’t need it, love it, or use it, you should probably get rid of it.

Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing; leave a house empty, it rots. OVID

Walk around your house as if you were a real estate agent preparing to put it on the market. With a dispassionate eye, evaluate its worth. What aspects might drag down its value and what changes would allow it to command a better price? That junk room could be transformed into an office or an exercise room. Those overloaded shelves could be cleared out. Those burned-out light bulbs could be replaced.

Or imagine that you’re someone who’s considering paying for a short-term rental of the space. What would you think of those photos on the Airbnb website?

You learn more about a person by living in his house for a week than by years of running into him at social gatherings. PHILLIP LOPATE

IF YOU’RE AN OBLIGER: To meet inner expectations, Obligers need outer accountability, so to clear clutter, create accountability. Invite a friend to keep you company; hire a professional organizer; promise someone that you’ll deliver your hand-me-downs; invite someone to stay for the weekend; consider it your duty to be a good role model for others; think of how others will benefit from a well-organized, spacious environment; reflect on how your future self will feel; start or join an accountability group.

remind yourself, If and when I need this, I can buy it. Maybe I’ll never need it, so I’ll store it at the store.

A true home is the finest ideal of man. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Do any task that can be finished in less than one minute, without delay. Hang up a coat, read a letter and toss it, put a document in a file, throw away a pen that doesn’t work, put the toothpaste back in the medicine cabinet and close the door.

Clutter is insidious; it creeps in gradually and often we don’t notice it until it has formed an intimidating heap.

piles that interfere with the normal use of a space (e.g., the dining room table is so crowded with stuff that it can’t be used)

Remember: Nothing’s a bargain if you don’t really need or want it.

There’s something about clearing clutter that loosens our grip on our possessions. The first time you sort through that closet or that file folder, you’ll get rid of a certain number of things. Then, when you go back for a second or third wave of clutter-clearing, you’ll get rid of more. As we let go of things, it feels more and more possible—and more and more enticing—to let go of more.

Whenever you have a few minutes of idle time, take a moment to evaluate some small area. Okay, it’s time to throw out the grapes that have gone wrinkly. Admit it, there’s no reason to keep that hairbrush with the broken handle. That camera cord belongs in the camera-cord basket. The shelf-by-shelf resolution has two advantages: it doesn’t take much time and the results start to show very fast. You can fight a surprising amount of clutter without setting aside a big block of time to deal with it.

REMIND YOURSELF, “I HAVE PLENTY OF ROOM FOR THE THINGS THAT ARE IMPORTANT TO ME.”

Use your imagination to turn your clutter-clearing session into a game. Beat your best time for cleaning the kitchen. Pretend to be someone hired from an outside cleaning service. Challenge yourself to toss ten items during a commercial break. Listen to your favorite upbeat music while you sort through piles. Listen to your favorite podcast while you fold laundry. Embrace the pleasurable destruction of shredding, throwing junk mail into the recycling bin, or feeding the garbage disposal. Or

Beautiful stationery, fancy bath salts, fine cooking ingredients, fresh new white T-shirts, sharp tools, piles of unread books…these things are meant to be put to work. It’s

At the end of our senior year, after she’d frantically cleaned her apartment to get her deposit back, she told me something I’ve always remembered. “Don’t wait to clean your apartment,” she said. “I thought I didn’t really like this place. But now that it’s in such good shape, I realize how nice it was all along.”

If you don’t use an area, why not? Do you avoid your desk because it’s too far away from the activity of the house—or too close to the activity of the house? Do you find yourself sitting in the kitchen instead of in the living room because the living room is too crowded—or too bare? Do you dislike reading in the armchair because the light isn’t good or because there’s no place to put your coffee mug? Walk through a room that’s underused and ask yourself, “What could I do to make this area more attractive?” Figure out what’s needed to make the room more inviting: more light, plants, art, bookshelves, photographs, footstools, side tables? Do the items on the shelves need to be more carefully chosen? Does the furniture need to be more comfortable? But be honest with yourself. If you prefer to work in bed, rather than at a desk, fixing up your desk doesn’t matter much.

When trying to make a tough choice, challenge yourself: “Choose the bigger life.” The helpful thing about this question is that it reveals our values. Different people have different views on what the “bigger life” would include.

EVERYTHING LOOKS BETTER ARRANGED ON A TRAY. Perfume bottles. Spice jars. Cuff links. Enamel boxes. Coffee-making materials. A tray (or a basket, bowl, or plate) pulls individual items into a pleasing collection.

BRING QUIET TO VISUAL NOISE. Certain areas can get so crowded and “loud” that they hurt the eye. At home, a refrigerator door that’s plastered with school schedules, children’s artwork, expired coupons, magazine clippings, tattered flyers, and rubbery magnets is neither a helpful resource nor a place of beauty, and it will make the kitchen seem messy, even if everything else is beautifully ordered. At work, a computer screen framed with dozens of scrawled sticky-note reminders creates visual cacophony. Try to bring down the noise level.

INCLUDE A FRAGMENT OF NATURE. Shells, pebbles, flowers, driftwood, sea glass, pinecones, hollow birds’ eggs, a fern frond pressed against glass…there’s something very satisfying about seeing the outdoors come indoors. Nature has its own deep order.

When choosing where to live, you were probably drawn to certain features of your home—the deck, the fireplace, the garden, the porch, the sunroom. Now that you actually live in that place, do you use that feature? If not, can you take some steps to make it easier to enjoy it?

That is, every room should hold a bit of surprise or whimsy.

If someone asked me what my idea of luxury is, I think my answer would be: flowers in the house all year round. MAY SARTON

The association between outer order and inner calm runs deep. My possessions aren’t me, that’s true—yet it’s also true that my possessions are me.

1 |Make your bed. 2 |Follow the “one-minute rule”—anything you can do in less than one minute, do without delay. 3 |Have a weekly “power hour”—make a list of tasks you’d like to accomplish and spend one hour, once a week, tackling the items on the list. 4 |Make it fun to get the job done. 5 |Don’t let yourself fall into “empty.” 6 |Don’t put things down, put them away. 7 |Don’t stockpile; that is, don’t store more of an item than you can realistically use. 8 |Keep mementos that are small in size and few in number. 9 |Keep things organized, but not overly organized. 10 |If you can’t find something, clean up.

A PATTERN LANGUAGE by Christopher Alexander et al. This strange, brilliant book changed the way I see the world. It uses architecture, sociology, psychology, and anthropology to describe the most satisfying designs of towns, buildings, offices, and homes, by setting forth an archetypal “language” of 253 “patterns.” Instead of discussing familiar architectural styles and design decisions, it focuses on patterns such as the Front Door Bench, Child Caves, Sleeping to the East, Staircase as Stage, Cascade of Roofs, and Half-Hidden Garden. My favorite? Secret Place. As I explain in Happier at Home, I was inspired to create several secret places in our apartment. I couldn’t stop with just one.