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Clutter Control

Get your life and your home organized this spring

BY JUDY MARTEL

One day, Stacey Prillaman of Hobe Sound decided to take action toward her vision of an organized closet. When the day ended, she had her dream space, and something unexpected-a new outlook on life.

Prillaman says her closet was overwhelming. “After 25 years of marriage, eight (job) relocations and a three-year period of interim storage for a lot of stuff that had to be held until our home in Hobe Sound was complete, I found myself with the walk-in closet from hell.”

The closet became a repository for a little bit of everything. “It was sort of the library, game room, keeper of photographs, musical and miscellaneous black hole stuff that also included random artifacts of family history. I literally found myself walking a wide circle around this closet every time I approached the family room,” says Prillaman.

That’s when she called space organizer,Amber Quinn.

Working together, the pair not only organized the closet, but Quinn taught Prillaman a new way to look at her possessions.

“There is something about our stuff that is somehow interconnected to our intimate subconscious,emotional hangups,” says Prillaman. “How many times have all of us picked up the same junk, knowing that it needed to be tossed, only to be met by some guilty story in our heads and, oops, the stuff gets put right back?”

The secret of effective space planning is to go beyond the bins and color-coded folders, and provide a peace of mind that comes with freedom from clutter.

“Clearing out the stuff in your life is great therapy. It creates more ’space’ in your mental life that will, in turn, be supportive of joyful creative growth,” says Prillaman. “This not only feels good, it is a precursor for laugh-out-loud positive change in your life.”

Quinn, of Jupiter, says she’s surprised at some of the items people keep, and though she says she could throw out stuff in her house all day, she does understand that one person’s trash is another’s pretext for a trip down memory lane. “My husband’s an incredible packrat,” she says. “I think he has every concert ticket from every concert he’s attended since he was 12.” Her solution is to let him have his half of the closet, but with a caveat: She gives him containers for certain items and when the container is full, he has to throw some of the items away if he wants to add to it.

“Clearing out the stuff in your life is great therapy. It creates more ’space’ in your mental life that will, in turn, be supportive of joyful creative growth.”

Understanding the psychology of the power of stuff is one thing. Getting people to part with it is another. Quinn says clients begin the process hesitantly, but once they get in the groove, they often see how much they have that they don’t need. “I do think it’s draining to have so much,” says Quinn. “It takes up space in your mind. Once you get rid of the stuff, it makes your day more efficient.”

Ali Kaufman of Boca Raton developed her business, Space of Mind, to encompass the mental and physical aspects of organization. She helps people create systems for each of the three spaces in their lives that should be free of clutter-mental,physical and cyber. Once the physical space and the cyperspace are organized, clients usually find that the mental space takes care of itself, by virtue of renewed energy.

“If we’re in a state of overwhelm, we don’t see the problem because there’s too much clutter in the way,” she says. “I help create an internal commitment for my client.”

Kaufman, who had been managing a designer consignment clothing store in Harvard Square, Boston, came to Florida four years ago to start a business organizing closets. She quickly realized that the scope of her business could be much broader, and that she’d have to get to the psychological root of why people live in chaos to really solve the problem.

The former software developer had studied to be a rabbi, and she finds she calls upon both disciplines when working with clients. “As a software developer, I use my logical side so we can create systems and not reinvent the wheel each time,” she says. “You tend to get into trouble organizing if it doesn’t work for you.” Handling the emotional aspect of organization, she says, is like being a rabbi. “It’s very spiritual. You’re in someone’s space.”

Kaufman was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when she was 20, and she says that it helps her understand other disorganized people. She assesses clients by how they process information-are they visual, verbal or kinesthetic (handson)? Then she determines what type of organizer they are: a piler, a filer or an avoider. From there, she can get down to work.

“Most organizers are geared toward filers, and putting things away in a certain way. But you can be a little messy and still be organized, which is why creative people don’t get Martha Stewart,” she says. “All artists will tell you the creative process is messy.”

Her clients typically identify her as someone who can organize their space, but when the work starts, it becomes less about the physical space and more about the emotional freedom. “It’s more about what it feels like, and less about what it looks like,” Kaufman notes. For that reason, she doesn’t adhere to strict rules about color-coding and certain sized boxes for rganization, but rather, what works best for the client.

“We’re disorganized because of emotions,” she says. “We feel the energy of our stuff even when it’s not in front of us.”

For example, she says, some clients are at a standstill simply because they don’t know how to handle the mail. As it piles up unopened, the stress piles up as well, and finding a system to begin the process of going through each day’s mail is the first step to organization. “Often (disorganization) is a problem with creating a goal,” she says. “Creating a system is just defining the steps.”

Cyperspace is a growing area of stress in people’s lives, Kaufman says, and we need systems in place to handle it. “Think of the last time you went on vacation, had a great time and came back to 600 emails,” she says.

For Prillaman, the benefits of clearing out a physical space only to unexpectedly unlock the emotional benefitswas a refreshing outcome.

“If I had attempted this project on my own, I would only have cleared out one-tenth of what we accomplished that day,” she says of working with Quinn. “We created an incredible pile of ‘to be tossed stuff’ that day. Amber insisted that all of it be loaded into her car; otherwise it would have sat in my garage for who knows how long.

“So she drove away, smiling and waving, carrying my excess stuff away and leaving me feeling happier, lighter, more organized and literally more purposeful in regards to my life. And given her wit and entertaining personality, I actually had a fabulously fun time cleaning out a closet.”

Tips for finding your space of mind in all that clutter:

1. Do a brain dump before you get started. Take a few minutes to write down your goals, fears, supplies, questions, etc.

2. Work to your best attention span. Don’t overdo it. Schedule organizing tasks in chunks of time that won’t burn you out.

3. Create activity zones in your physical space. When you’re trying to declutter, move like items together and set up spaces according to the activities you’ll be doing there.

4. Your organizational systems should reflect your processing style and personality. If you’re a piler, don’t try to be a filer. Set up a system that let’s you use piles. Know how you process information, too – if you’re visual, verbal or kinesthetic, you’ll want to create systems that match the way you think to organize.

5. Set up a command center to track your incoming and outgoing communications and calendar appointments. This should be the spot where you open mail, empty backpacks and handbags.

6. Put organizing on your calendar! Make it part of your routine to do the maintenance tasks that keep you up-to-date.