Put it there now

(I learned this from decluttering author Dana K. White.)

The most effective advice I’ve received about how to organize my living space is “put it there now”. As in, if I see something that is out-of-place but I know where it should go, it is best to pick it up and put it there now.

Duh. This sounds obvious when written down, but I can attest that it is news to a certain type of person who has trouble with their stuff.

In particular, “put it there now” means avoiding these behaviors:

• Making a mental note of “Oh, I should put that in the garage later”.
• Waiting until there is a larger collection of things that go in the garage and moving them all at once.
• Actively searching for additional items I can take with me to the garage.
• Making an “items-to-put-in-the-garage pile” that is closer to my current location.
• Bringing the item closer to the garage with the intent to put it in the garage later.
• Putting the item in the garage, but not in the correct place in the garage.

Obviously these are not hard-and-fast rules, like if there really are a ton of items to put away it’s fine to move them all at once. But it’s best to default to just putting the damn thing away immediately. Yes even if the cleaning behavior is less “efficient”. I suspect I’m very prone to optimization games; figuring out how to “efficiently” put everything away becomes a puzzle and I get so eager to solve the puzzle that I forget to, like, actually put things away.

I’m also ridiculously distractable, so it’s important that putting something away is an atomic operation. Either an item is put away or it isn’t and the “to-put-in-garage pile” does not count. Nothing more discouraging than coming back to a mess on the floor and thinking “right, I was cleaning earlier but didn’t finish, and now there’s an even worse mess”.

And I will forget my pile of mental notes and then feel anxious about which notes I’ve forgotten about. So no mental notes.

notes on more of White’s advice

• The right place for an item is where you’d look for it if you needed it, and if you don’t know where you’d look for it, you might as well not have it.
• If you’re doing a lot of decluttering you might have a “donate this” box and a trash bag. But no unsorted “keep this” box because going through the keep box becomes its own project. Don’t make more projects for yourself.
• Putting 1 item away is already a success.