Outer Order, Inner Calm

by Gretchen Rubin

  Some people say that, to the contrary, they revel in not making their beds. Fair enough! Everyone’s happiness project is different.

  IF YOU CAN’T FIND SOMETHING, CLEAN UP.

  This is astonishingly effective.

  DON’T STOCKPILE.

  It’s easy to get into the habit of saving every rubber band, promotional mug, or baseball cap that you acquire—but don’t stockpile more than you can reasonably use. Decide how many backups you need and don’t accumulate too many extras.

  Keep only a few shoeboxes, shoe bags, and shopping bags (and don’t store them in the valuable real estate of your clothes closet).

  Watch out for accidental stockpiles. Have you somehow amassed four jars of coriander or nine cheap conference tote bags?

  The mere fact that you’ve acquired a sizable collection can make something seem more valuable. “I can’t put ten years’ worth of National Geographics in the recycling bin!” But if you don’t look at those magazines, they’re clutter.

  If possible, take steps to avoid acquiring these items at all. For instance, if you find you’re amassing big quantities of ketchup packets or plastic utensils, ask for “food only” when you order takeout.

  Have a purpose for your possessions. Don’t get into the habit of keeping things for which you have no use.

  GO SHELF BY SHELF.

  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.

  GET RID OF SOMETHING AS SOON AS IT BECOMES WORTHLESS.

  I was on a sailboat when a friend’s shoe fell overboard. He immediately picked up the matching shoe and tossed it into the water. I remember feeling shocked, by both the deliberate littering and the decision to throw away that second shoe. He was wrong to litter, but he was right that the unmatched shoe no longer had any value.

  Remind yourself: Even if it’s otherwise perfectly “good,” you can’t use a blender without a handle or a paper shredder that doesn’t turn on. The broken umbrella, that dry Magic Marker, the outgrown dog collar from your dog’s puppy days, the hair dryer that makes an ominous buzzing sound—you’re not going to use these things. Get rid of them.

  END EACH STAGE OF YOUR DAY WITH THE “TEN-MINUTE CLOSER.”

  We give children transition times to help them move from one activity to the next, and adults benefit from transitions as well.

  Before you leave work, take ten minute to put things in order. This transition time helps to mark the end of the day—and it also makes it far more pleasant to return in the morning.

  Glance over your calendar for the next day (this step has saved me a lot of trouble)

  Throw away trash, such as food wrappers or dry pens, and remove dirty dishes

  Put loose change in a change cup

  Stash pens, paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands, and other supplies (by the end of the day, I have seven pens scattered across my desk)

  File or discard any papers that you no longer need

  Close any open drawers or doors

  Shred

  Put away anything set in a transitional space, such as folders “temporarily” placed on the floor

  Pack up anything that belongs at home

  For extra credit:

  Do a ten-minute email blast. For ten minutes, go as fast as you can through your email inbox and blast out as many responses as you can. Unsubscribe to any unwanted email newsletters.

  Set up for the next day by gathering any necessary items (an especially good idea if you are sometimes late for work)

  Before walking away from your workspace, take a moment to revel at how orderly and clear it looks.

  At the end of the evening, do a ten-minute closer at home.

  Put shoes away

  Hang up coats

  Close all drawers, closets, cabinets, and doors

  Shove chairs back into place

  Wipe the kitchen counters

  Put dishes in the dishwasher

  Put newspapers and magazine in the recycling pile (if, like me, you’re old-fashioned enough to read paper newspapers)

  Set the TV remote control back in its holder

  Toss junk mail

  Unpack any delivered packages

  Before walking to your bedroom, take a moment to revel at how orderly and clear your home looks.

  PUT THINGS AWAY NEAR WHERE THEY WANT TO BE.

  It’s an odd phenomenon: some objects seem to want to live in a certain place. They naturally gravitate there, no matter what. If you find yourself moving an item from point A to point C, over and over, figure out whether you can store this item at point A or at least at point B.

  It’s easy to decide that an object “belongs” somewhere, but nothing must be kept in a certain place. You may think your robe belongs on a hook in the bathroom, but if your robe seems determined to make its home in the TV room, maybe you should let it live there instead.

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

  The point of cultivating habits for continuous clutter-clearing isn’t to achieve some particular level of perfection. It’s to create an environment where we can feel, “I have plenty of room for the things that are important to me. I can find those things, I can see them, and if something new comes into my life, I have room to expand.”

  5

  Add Beauty

  To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

  FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

  Having made choices, created order, learned about ourselves, and mastered helpful habits, we’ve gone far to beat clutter.

  But to create outer order and inner calm, it’s not enough to eliminate clutter; we want our surroundings to be beautiful.

  We have paradoxical desires for our surroundings. We want a sense of abundance and plenty, and also of order and spaciousness. We want to feel both calmer and more energized. We want a quiet retreat for privacy and also a convivial center for hospitality.

  With color, scent, space, light, and display, we can work a transformation. We can ensure that our places feel well used and valued, with no neglected corners, unusable areas, overflowing shelves, or nasty places. That new order creates a sensation of renewal.

  We can curate our possessions to spotlight the people, places, and activities that we love.

  And once that beauty is created, it’s important to revel in it—to experience the inner calm that flows from outer order. Now that I don’t spend time hunting for my missing gloves every morning, I can use that time to savor my first cup of coffee.

  Add beauty.

  CHOOSE A SIGNATURE COLOR.

  It can be fun, and add to the beauty and harmony of your home, if you cultivate a certain shade of chartreuse, aquamarine, olive, or slate and make it “your” color.

  A signature color makes decision-making easier. What color should you choose for your cell phone case or your exercise clothes? Your signature color, of course.

  And seeing splashes of a color you love will raise your spirits.

  Or maybe you don’t have a signature color—maybe you have a signature pattern, like polka dots, stripes, animal print, or paisley, or a signature material, like denim, leather, or velvet.

  TO GET IT DONE, MAKE IT FUN.

  As Mary Poppins famously says, “In every job that must be done, there is an element
of fun. You find the fun and—snap! The job’s a game.”

  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 turn clutter-clearing into a fun event. A friend works in a profession where she receives mounds of gifts every holiday season, and after every family Christmas dinner, she fills a side table with the items she doesn’t want and announces, “Help yourself!” Her guests are thrilled by the things they find, and she puts nice possessions into the hands of people who will appreciate them.

  CONSIDER A CHILD-FREE ZONE.

  If you live with children and if your home is big enough, you may want to create a child-free zone.

  Children like to run around, make noise, and make a mess. Their belongings seem to spread everywhere.

  For this reason, try to create at least one child-free zone—a space where children aren’t allowed to go without permission. Maybe it’s your bedroom, maybe it’s the living room, maybe it’s a corner of a room.

  Ideally, it’s a place where adults can find privacy, order, and quiet when they need a respite from children’s activities.

  ENLARGE YOUR WORKSPACE.

  Many of us spend time in workplaces that feel cramped. While it’s easy to dream about more elbow room, we can make our current workplace feel more inviting and spacious by clearing clutter.

  First, tackle your own space. Be ruthless about clearing your desk, computer desktop, shelves, drawers, and cabinets of anything you don’t need, don’t use, or don’t love.

  Then, consider whether you might be able to convince your coworkers to join in the effort.

  By clearing out whatever has accumulated at the tops of bookshelves and cabinets, under desks, in corners, in hallways, on notice-boards, and on every flat surface, everyone in the whole office will gain more breathing room.

  Your workplace might even designate a chief order officer, to give someone the specific responsibility and authority to tackle office disorder.

  Space is beautiful.

  SPEND OUT.

  Do you have the impulse to save things, to hold back? I sure do.

  I loved my delicate white wedding china so much that I used it only a handful of times during the first twenty years of married life, for fear that I’d break a plate or chip a bowl. Finally, I decided to face my fear, use the china, and enjoy it as long as it lasted.

  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 satisfying to use the things we own, and it’s wasteful to save them for a day that may never come. Recently, I had to toss an expensive scented candle, still untouched inside its wrapper; I’d “saved” it for so long that the oils had separated and leaked. Why was I saving it?

  Put things to good use. Spend out.

  TIRED OF YOUR PLACE? CREATE SOME OUTER ORDER.

  During college, a friend lived off campus. 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.”

  Often, when we want to make a change or improve an experience, we think, I need to do something drastic. Like move somewhere new.

  Sometimes that’s true. But sometimes we can take steps to improve our situation right now, within the bounds of our present experience. If we clean the apartment now, we might find that it’s nicer than we thought.

  USE MORE BY HAVING LESS.

  One of the most pleasant aspects of clearing clutter is that once we get rid of things we don’t use, need, or love, we boost our enjoyment of what we have.

  After I’ve cleared out my closet, I find it much easier to get dressed and I wear a wider variety of outfits, because I like all the clothes I own and can find everything easily.

  Every time I clear out my children’s belongings, they suddenly have more fun with what they keep. They have more space to spread out, they can find the things they like more easily, and the process of clearing clutter reacquaints them with forgotten possessions.

  Having less often leads us to use our things more often and with more enjoyment, because we’re not fighting our way through a welter of unwanted stuff.

  WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE.

  The vocabulary that we choose influences how we perceive a task.

  On your file folders, you might update the label contacts to read friends and family, or you might change the label of articles to read to travel and vacation.

  On your calendar, you might write “Play piano” instead of “Practice piano,” or “Email time” could become “Engagement time.” You might schedule a “personal retreat day,” a “catch-up day,” a “ditch day,” or a “mandatory vacation day.”

  Instead of telling yourself, “I need to go through my photos and discard the bad ones,” you could tell yourself, “I’m going to curate my photo collection.”

  Different vocabulary appeals to different people; speak to yourself in language that you find most compelling.

  CULTIVATE AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE.

  Sometimes our stuff drives us a little crazy, so it’s helpful to stay grateful to our possessions: for having served us well, for embodying someone else’s affection for us in the form of a gift, or for giving us a thrill upon purchase.

  And most important, we should be grateful that we’re lucky enough to have these things in our lives.

  An attitude of gratitude, even for inanimate objects, makes us happier.

  EMBARRASSED?

  Are you embarrassed by any item you possess? It’s a bad feeling. Take steps to fix it, clean it, or get rid of it.

  MAKE LIVING SPACES MORE LIVABLE.

  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.

  ADD A TOUCH OF LUXURY.

  Just a little luxury can add beauty to our lives.

  A set of gorgeous colored markers, an excellent chef’s knife, Egyptian cotton sheets, a wallet made of the finest leather, a really good umbrella…a splurge in the right area can make our lives much more pleasant. When my husband developed a taste for bourbon, I bought him two crystal glasses to add to his enjoyment of the drink.

  We can add a touch of luxury at work, too. Using exceptionally well-made tools or introducing a note of whimsy makes work more pleasant. For my own office, to put the “fun” in “functional,” I chose file folders printed in bright patterns, sticky notes decorated with a playful design, and an elegant book weight.

  These tools—which are nicer than they strictly need to be—help me enjoy my work.

 
CHOOSE THE BIGGER LIFE.

  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.

  For instance, when my family was debating whether we should get a dog, I was suspended between the pros and the cons—until I thought, Choose the bigger life. For us, choosing the bigger life meant getting a dog. And we’re so, so happy with our dog, Barnaby.

  For someone else, choosing the bigger life might mean not getting a dog, and by not getting a dog, that person would be able to travel for long periods or have more money to spend.

  By choosing the bigger life, we make space for our lives to expand in a new direction.

  MAKE AN ENTRANCE.

  When people walk through the door, they want to dump their bags, kick off their shoes, and drop their coats. This means that entrances tend to become cluttered and chaotic.