I’m guilty of a horrible transgression: I’ve bought way too much stuff to hold all of my stuff. I mean you know you’ve got a problem when you convince yourself that if you just buy more containers all of your problems will be solved. Except that being disorganized isn’t the problem. The stuff is the problem.
Buying everything in The Container Store won’t miraculously turn over-accumulation into order and reason. News flash: it doesn’t. You just wind up with more stuff.
My indoctrination into The Container Store religion started as a freshman in college. During orientation, which happened in July before school started in August, there was a sample dorm room that was open for new students and their parents to view to give you ideas for how to organize and decorate your room. I suspect that the majority of visitors were of the female persuasion.
The room was ‘sponsored’ by The Container Store, which was conveniently located directly across the street from campus. Never mind that the sample room (and my eventual actual room) was so small you and your roommate could lie in your beds, spread your arms out and hold hands. No, the geniuses at The Container Store made the sardine box sized room look like a freaking castle. The matching comforters and throw pillows didn’t hurt either. Or the student discount advertised on the brochures.
And I guess that image stuck with me. It still does. I mean I figured that, no matter what size your home, if you just got enough hooks, containers and divided boxes, you could make it look super cute, organized and better. And you’d win homemaker of the year.
Except, that’s a lie. No amount of organizational stuff can overcome having too much crap.
According to this survey conducted by Huffington Post,* home organization is a stress trigger for a lot of people. A lot of the survey participants said “they worry that their home isn’t clean or organized enough.”
Huffington Post Survey Infographic
47 percent of respondents said that home organization was as much of a stress trigger as unexpected expenses. And the primary source of home-related stress was reported as being clutter.
As we get rid of the crap in the storage containers, we no longer need the containers. We’ve already donated I-don’t-even-know how many baskets. There will continue to be more.
And now these – they used to be in Stephen’s office:
Since we don’t need them, I’m listing them on Freecycle. They are bulky and took up quite a bit of space. Stephen purged the stuff that was in there and now we are getting rid of these ugly things. Score!
Do you have an addiction to organization goodies? I’ve had to swear off of that store. I won’t even go in there. It’s too dangerous.
*I know the Huffington Post is not the pinnacle of hard hitting journalism, but the survey was recent and didn’t seem too far off conceptually.
I am lucky enough that I do not suffer from this addiction, but I can definitely see how it would be easy to believe that all of the clutter would be solved with the proper storage. But if we just eliminate the stuff, then we can save the time, money and stress to organize it. What will the Container Store do if too many people follow your path..lol.
You must be my twin lol. Right now I am staring at eight containers of various sizes and shapes. I know I have to get rid of them but what if I need to put something in them . . …..
I love a good container or basket . . . it’s an addiction 🙂 Everything has a place and everything in its place is my motto . . . even if that place is a basket on the floor. I LOVE The Container Store!
Fortunately, where I live, we do not have a container store. I live on an island.
But, DH loves containers (he is a classic hoarder) so we do have containers from his trips “away”. I use 2 of them to store my out-of-season clothing in the basement because I like my closet to look almost empty which it is since I have hardly any clothes. I have no idea what he fills up the remainder of them with because I refuse to look. As long as they live in the basement I don’t care. Well, I do care, but he refuses to change so that is a lost cause. He is constantly trying to persuade me to buy more storage things but I refuse and just give the stuff away instead.
I just got rid of an identical plastic drawer set this week….one of countless donated over my 5-year purge. As they are emptied, out they go. The end is finally in sight.
Oh my yes! I even have trouble recycling “good” cardboard boxes! But I too am making progress in that regard.
dont get me started.
how about ‘good take out’ containers from a resturaunt, sigh.
For the last 16 years I’ve lived in a small house – 80 years old, used to be a farmhouse, so there is very, very little storage. So little storage that a previous owner had to build 3 of the 5 existing closets out of sections of the rooms they’re in. (I can tell they’re not original to the home, because the added closet walls are made of drywall, whereas the walls of the house are ooooooold paneling-covered plaster.)
This was the first house I ever owned as an adult, bought mainly because my ex had an emotional attachment to the neighborhood, and I regretted buying the house for, oh, probably the first 12 years I lived in it. On one hand, it needs a lot of work that we never got around to (I’m getting there slowly now, but yeah, poor little ramshackle abode of mine…). And on the other, more distressing, hand, there was so little room for stuff!
I couldn’t fit all of the furniture that I loved and/or wanted to buy (and sometimes bought regardless of having no room for it), and there was NO storage space! I couldn’t find enough room to store the kitchen stuff I used daily and the kitchen stuff I used rarely, all of the many, many sets of bed linens I had accumulated (lots of hand-me-downs, but in great condition of course), all of the holiday decorations, all of the family mementos I couldn’t decide whether or not to get rid of, all of the off-season clothes… I ended up with extra dressers, tons of plastic storage bins stacked against walls, more containers than I knew what to do with, honestly, that I purchased just in an attempt to feel like I could get organized, without ever actually getting organized.
And then I made some changes in my life. As a result, the last several years of my life have been a journey for me. I first realized that I did a whole lot of therapy shopping. I realized I didn’t need most of what I bought. I realized I didn’t need a lot of what I had. Etc.
These days, I love my little house. It’s cozy, and there is not too much clutter. My entire wardrobe (all seasons) fits in my tiny bedroom closet and a pair of modest-sized dressers. All of the holiday decor fits in one half of a tiny closet, with a few shelves of boxed mementos on the other side. My storage pantry is slowly emptying of kitchen stuff as I get rid of stuff I don’t use. All of my linens fit in once small antique cabinet. I’m getting rid of furniture I really don’t need (why do I have 2 kitchen tables and 2 desks and like 6 random unused chairs? I don’t know).
Before getting divorced, and before getting a handle on the therapy shopping, we had 2 rooms we couldn’t even walk through, they were so filled with stuff; and the only way to get to the bed was via a path created by kicking stuff out of the way. Now the bedroom never has anything on the floor except a rug, one of the two stuff-filled rooms is a functioning part of the household, and the last stuff-filled room is only partly filled with items I am getting rid of.
I still have progress to make in terms of organization and tidiness, and there are still drawers and boxes that need to be cleaned out, and I still find myself buying things I don’t need. But I am a bit proud of the progress I’ve made. I mean, the only storage container I’ve bought in the last 2 years was a little basket for dog toys, for the puppy I adopted last year (the puppy I never would have gotten a few years ago because I worried a dog would get into the crap we had lying around and eat things or pee on things).
So good for you making all of that progress! You should be proud of yourself!!!
There is something so satisfying about being able to get rid of the storage containers that are supposed to hold stuff. I got rid of several myself recently and it sure was freeing!!
Yes!!!
SO true, I read a great decluttering blog, and they are anti ‘organise’ Their idea is that if you have less, organising isn’t needed. If you only have three books, there’s isn’t disorganised and organised, they just are. That being said, I’m a sucker for the container store etc. I have to remind myself that pretty stationary boxes will not improve my life, and are just more stuff! It’s a big step freecycling storage options, I have at least two ikea cardboard boxes that are surplus and I’m just not prepared to part with them?! Weird right?
Yes, exactly on the notion that if you have less there is no need to organize. I don’t think it’s weird that you are attached to the Ikea boxes. Everyone finds attachment to different things. Yours is just a cardboard box! It’s liberating to let it go, though. Good luck!
Me and my husband have a bit differing ideas about stuff and storage. We have been debating about buying an extra shelf for the home office for some time. I think that we should go through all the stuff that seems to require and additional shelf and see if we actually need the new shelf or should just sort through and get rid of the stuff we don’t use. As this is not a very easy task, my husband would be prepared to buy the new shelf and just put the stuff there. Dilemmas, dilemmas…
As I have been decluttering lately, I understand why people just toss their unneeded stuff into the trash bin – it is quite difficult to get rid of stuff in a responsible way (donation, resell, reuse etc), at least in our small town in Eastern Europe. Luckily we have very little superfluous stuff compared to “real” consumer societies.
It is VERY hard to get rid of stuff in a responsible way. Very hard. Yes, we are in the thick of a consumer society here. It’s sad, really. We’re trying to change our ways and we’re making progress. Thanks for commenting!
I’m trying to keep storage in its place, just to store stuff that would otherwise take up a lot of space, and be impossible to organize. But when I’ve used up all those spare toiletries, pens, whatevers, I’m getting rid of the storage and they will not return!
Yay!
Oh man, I hear ya! We have gotten rid of so many storage containers. I have a big stack of shoebox sized plastic boxes next to the desk right now waiting to be passed on to some friends who do Operation Christmas Child every year.
That’s a lovely idea!
That magical thinking isn’t limited to organizational receptacles. I have two cabinets full of cleaning products. My house is clean, but these products don’t miraculously self-deploy, and not one of them makes cleaning any easier than any of the others.
Oh, yes. The cleaning products are up soon!