Survey #258—Full Response from Jennifer
| Pronouns | She/her |
|---|---|
| What useful decluttering or organizing strategies or methods did you take away from the book? | The container is "the bad guy" (the boundary) I can have as many socks as I want...as long as I keep them in ONE dresser drawer. This keeps me from having...a lot more socks than that! |
| What parts or aspects of the book did you find difficult to grasp or challenging to apply to your home or situation? | Making individual trips rather than grouping a few things together and making one trip. If I have a finite amount of energy (or have to do something like take a bunch of stairs), 'one things at a time' is not the best way. |
| White suggests a decluttering process that requires making a final decision about each item (keep, trash, or donate) and placing the item in its appropriate home right away rather than into a “keep pile” or “keep box” for later organizing. If you’ve used her method, how has the “take it there right now” approach worked for you? What are the pros and cons of her suggested strategy? | Pro is I can stop when I want and I'm not leaving a mess. As mentioned before, having to take a zillion trips rather than grouping is a recipe for wearing myself out way faster. |
| A big part of White’s decluttering philosophy is the “container concept”—the idea of setting firm limits on the containers you use to hold your stuff, where “containers” are understood to mean the boxes, bins, racks, baskets, drawers, cabinets, shelves, etc., that you use to hold stuff, as well as the rooms that must contain the containers—and then decluttering to fit those limits. If you’ve used her method, how has the “container concept” helped or hindered your decluttering? What are the pros and cons of her methodology? Are there areas or categories of stuff for which it works better than others? | I LOVE THIS CONCEPT. It keeps me from having too much of one thing. I think it works the best for small things that are easy to collect or be gifted. Things like socks and mugs. I have ONE shelf in a small kitchen cabinet for mugs, which limits me to about a dozen. I don't need any more than that and if I do, I have to decide whether or not it's worth it to get rid of one of my older mugs/pair of socks for a new pair. (Socks are a little easier as they do eventually wear out.) |
| White suggests following the “visibility rule”: Start every session of decluttering in the most visible places in your home. If you’ve used her method, how has the “visibility rule” helped or hindered your decluttering? What are the pros and cons of her suggested approach? | I think it's very useful if guests are coming over. Clearing the kitchen counter, dining or coffee table, and getting things up off the floor in the room where the guest will be (likely, kitchen or living room) can go a long way to making the house look a lot less cluttered and a lot cleaner than it actually is. |
| Here’s your chance to ask Gayle and Ed any question you’re curious about. It need not be related to this survey’s topic(s). If we think that your question—and our answer—might be useful or instructive to The Clutter Fairy Weekly audience, we’ll share them in an upcoming episode. | To both Ed and Gayle: What items of yours do you use the container method for (if any)? |
| Future topics | Storage solutions that last a long time. In this economy, it can be easy to choose something that is the least expensive, but sometimes that means the quality is sub-par. I'd like y'all to cover storage solutions that are affordable and stand the test of time. |
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