Clearing Clutter

I consider myself to be a relatively neat person, but my husband, Anil, has a different view of my organizing skills. He told me recently that if I could get organized he’d give me a crown. I don’t care about the crown, but who can’t benefit from a little more order in life? So, I invited Lisa Zaslow to my home for an organization consultation. Lisa is the CEO and founder of Gotham Organizers, a New York-based firm that specializes in helping people clear their clutter at home and at work. I hoped she could offer me some advice on how to make better use of my closets.

What a difference an expert makes! Lisa made me feel better immediately by letting me know that compared to most of the clients that she sees I am amazingly neat. “Even the clutter you have is neat,” she said. “It’s squared off in nice straight piles, which are themselves very considered in that they all contain similar items. Everyone has what I call ‘a tolerance for chaos,’” she told me. “And I would say your husband’s tolerance level is lower than anyone I would ever meet.” Thanks for affirming my instincts, Lisa! Nonetheless, I do accumulate more clutter than I’d like—and I’m committed to containing it—if not for my own peace of mind then for my husband’s.

Most of my clutter comes in the form of books and magazines—thanks to the nature of the business I’m in—and I fall in the category of people Lisa calls “pilers,” as opposed to “filers.” “All you need to do to go from a being piler to a filer is to turn your piles 90 degrees and put them on shelves so you can easily access them,” she said. Easier said than done, I thought, since I don’t really have any bookshelves, except for one narrow tower in my bedroom. But now I have the confirmation I need from Lisa to convince my husband that the bookshelves I’ve been telling him we should build are really necessary.  If we build them he’ll be able to see my filing system for what it is—a filing system—rather than clutter.

Lisa pointed out several locations in our apartment where built-in bookshelves could be constructed. She also went through our closets with me and told me that because the vertical areas in our closets are mostly empty, we were wasting what she calls “prime closet real estate.” According to Lisa, this is the area in a closet that falls between the shoulders and the hips and is easiest to access. If we were to put shelves in the closets in these areas, we’d have room for even more stuff, she said.

The last thing I want is more stuff. In fact, I intend to purge a lot our stuff over the course of the next few weeks. But I do want the stuff I keep to be better contained and easier to access. So I’ll follow her advice and see about installing some custom shelving. She told me she likes the Elfa system, which is available through the Container Store. I’m also going to try to find a carpenter or cabinetmaker to build some doors into the wall in front of the area beneath our staircase to create some easy-to-access storage space there. I showed Lisa a photo of the concept, which was featured in Terence Conran’s new book called Essential Storage (Conran Octopus)—you can see it in the photo above.

I’ll write more about Lisa’s tips for how I can get more organized in another post. In the meantime, visit Lisa’s Web site to find lots of her great ideas. Or look for my book Money-Wise Makeovers (Filipacchi Publishing) for other expert storage solutions in every room in the house.