Containerizing done right.

Yesterday we dealt with the seven most pervasive containerizing myths, not least of which is that clutter control will make you a happier, leaner, cleaner, richer person. In brief, we concluded that stuff management will not save your relationship, make you a best-selling author, save the world, simplify your life or containerize your sanity.

Buy all the bins you want: once your hoarding habits threaten to send you to the loony one, not even Oprah’s organizing guru will be able save you. These solutions, on the other hand, just might.

1. Bin Alternatives

To wit:

“Clear plastic or neon bins carry with them the prospect of an organized life, one in which the bills are always paid on time and days unfold in containable, sterilized batches of predictability…”

Solution: Don’t become Bin Laden. Containerize with old soup cans and buckets.

2. Consume Mindfully

We wrote:

“A garlic dicer will not simplify your life, it will clutter it. The same goes for more storage.”

Solution: stop buying so much crap.

3. Rethink Space

Our suggestion:

“Plastic bins aren’t always the answer; consider shelving in your future.”

Solution: Amend shelving to ceiling storage, the new vertical.

4. Store Creatively, Cheaply

“Who says storage has to be transparent, neon or pretty? It just has to function.”

Solution: Invest in functional, creative and cheap containerization.

5. Containerize Don’t Consume

“Avoiding the Container Store will lead to a debt free lifestyle. Buying less stuff will guarantee it.”

Solution: Repeat #2.

6. Containerize Efficiently

“The reason you haven’t written your first novel is not for lack of desktop organization. It’s because Office Max is selling you too many writing blocks…”

Solution: For this, we turn to the containerizing blog called I’m An Organizing Junkie, to deal with this affliction we’ve all been able to relate to at one point or another. The site asks us to consider process as an anagram: “P” as in planning your attack; “R” for removing items; “O” for organizing said items. But before moving on to “C” for containerizing, add a “Y” for yard sale (see I’m an Organizing Junkie for the rest of that anagram).

7. Don’t Store: Clean

Yesterday’s final myth was: “containerizing will make my space a cleaner place.” Today’s biggest busting truth is this: that is simply not true. Containerizing really just means shuffling an item to a pile and then moving that pile into a box because you don’t know what else to do with all that crap in the pile that is now in a box – which is now containerized for what?

Excessive containerization is like a contagion, a rotten apple, a bundle of bad berries. Bad berries are bad. Bad berries = dirty, slimy goo in an otherwise clean refrigerator. You wouldn’t hoard the berries. You’d compost them. Then clean the refrigerator or the storage container the berries rotted in.

The point is, only cleaning will make your space clean. For everything else, there’s Oosouji.

Images: Rubbermaid Products; The Kitchn; HGTV.com; The Family Handyman; Apartment Therapy;  Kibogaoka

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The Japanese consider it inauspicious to drag old business – including clutter and dust – into a new year. You should, too.

“Just one last cigarette,” you inhaled on New Year’s Eve. “And I’m through,” you exhaled, blowing your promise in the wee hours of New Year’s Day. Sorry, 3 a.m. is technically tomorrow.

With the New Year comes the same old promises either made in the throws of drunkenness or the penance of a hangover. You promise to save money, get fit, lose weight, gain weight, get laid, go celibate, sober up, de-clutter. As far as the cigarettes are concerned, seriously, it’s 2012, quit already!

The rest of it – the money, love, body, and (especially) clutter woes – just might resolve themselves on their own if you start the year off by observing Oosouji.

“Big Cleaning”

Oosouji literally translates as, “ooo” (big) + “souji” (cleaning). It’s how the Japanese ring in the New Year. It’s a tradition that’s on par with the spring cleaning westerners reserve for cherry-blossom season – long past the expiration date of one of the top fifteen resolutions Americans make (and break) year after year: getting organized. Also at the top of that should’a, could’a, ah f*ck it list: finishing home improvement projects.

Japanese homes get a top-to-bottom scrub at this time of year as well as business offices and lots of school desks. The concept is that by eliminating the dirt from the old year, it creates a clean emotional slate with which to plan ahead for the next year.

The Japanese also plunge into the Big O as a way of showing the gods that they care, that they wouldn’t be embarrassed to have Toshigami over for a cup of tea come January. Gods don’t like clutter. They find it sloppy and lowly; humans tend to view it as a distracting and pretty major productivity killer.

Cultivate Minimalism

There’s a reason the Japanese are revered for their minimalism. It’s reflected in their architecture and design. Considering it in the cultural context of Oosouji, though, minimalism is something that is culled and cultivated, an art borne out of self-discipline.

Get 1, Toss 2

Follow the Zen Habits method of managing your stuff.

“The rule: whenever you bring in an item, you have to throw away two other items. First you cheat, by throwing out two pieces of paper, but soon you will have to move to big stuff.”

Welcome to self-discipline 101.

Take the Holiday Box Challenge

Care of the clutter experts at Organized Home, challenge yourself to: “Fill every seasonal mailing box [you received] with items suitable for donation to Goodwill…and deliver them to charity before year’s end.”

Except don’t wait until then. Do it now.

Turn Trash into Cash

Hold a stoop sale or, if your front door greets grass instead of concrete, a yard sale following the same tenets of New York’s finest.

Coming Out of the Closet

We store our past, present and future selves in our closets. Unless you’re in possession of a Bravo-scale closet, you only have enough room in there for the here and now. Even if you do have more shelf space than Oprah, a dress that you barely fit into then, kind of aren’t sure about now, and might possibly wear at some point down the line does not belong in there. It’s just not healthy to cling to that size zero past. You’ve got hips now. Move on.

Another juicy tidbit from Home Organizing:

“Behind the hangers and shelves and boxes lies a second reality. To declutter a clothing closet, you can’t stop with the clothes. You have to move on to the clutter of the psyche that lies behind the possessions.”

Therein lies the lesson, grasshopper.

The fastest way to sabotage a weight-loss, money-saving, or otherwise-self-improving plan is dragging all that dust and dirt and grime and mess with you from the year before. Start by chasing the dust bunnies out from underneath the bed and then deal with the personality crisis in your closet. After that, you can resolve to do just about anything.

Images: And Done; Tonomagokoro; Kibogaoka; K. Barker; Noukka Signe

The post Before You Commit to Anything in 2012, Do Oosouji appeared first on EcoSalon.

Clever solutions for stylish clutter control.

Estimates show that we use about 20% of our objects 80% of the time. Why, then, are our lives so cluttered? It could be that we have an overabundance of stuff – here’s a hint: we do. Or perhaps we haven’t yet discerned the fine art of fitting all those bits and pieces seamlessly into our personal sanctuaries.

A word of caution: I’m a proponent of downsizing – even purging – to get to a minimal way of being. But there is a better way, a cleaner and prettier way to selling off that 80% horde. Indeed, these clutter solutions prove that there is a sexy way to stick your stuff where the sun don’t shine.

Hidden compartments behind expensive works of art are typically reserved for grand houses under investigation by Sherlock Holmes. Now thanks to iBride, you can bring some of that nineteenth-century style and mystery to your own abode.

From the series “Les Dandys,” these hidden bookshelves depict a trio of Baudelaire-era gentlemen in immaculate dress and rams’ heads. Sexy beasts, if I do say so myself.

These mile-high bookshelves are deceptively tall. Designed by London and Germany based architecture team Kraus Schoenberg, this integrated and stylish book cranny is one of the main storage features in an affordable, prefabricated low-energy house.

Repurposing staircases as storage drawers was, I’ve read, invented by Japanese cabinet makers. They called them kaidan tansu; I call them very cool.

Another variation on staircase storage, this serves both form and function.

If you’re lucky enough to land an antique mail sorting cabinet, turn it into a gorgeous storage opportunity. It’s an enviable solution for shoes, hats, and scarves.

Had I grown up with this cloakroom under the staircase, I’d be a much more organized person today. Certainly our most family-friendly clutter solution.

Yet another inventive use for our trusty friend, the mirror. It’s a logical arrangement: jewelry, makeup and other flair tucked tidily inside a sturdy floor-length.

Try as we may to meld the modern television set with the wall, it nevertheless detracts from the quiet simplicity of our homes. Perhaps by tucking it discretely behind the stairs, we’ll forget it’s even there. Out of sight, out of mind…until it’s time for True Blood.

Now that the clutter’s sorted, how about a therapeutic purge?

Images: Storage Geek; iBride; Kraus Schoenberg; The Lennoxx; Spoon & Tamago; House to Home Pinterest; Department of the Interior via Kim Ficaro; HB

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