When you decide to declutter and organize one space in your home, but cannot complete it without finishing another space first... you have triggered a clutter avalanche. Read this blog post for a few real life examples.
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What is a clutter avalanche?
First coined by The Messy Minimalist, a clutter avalanche happens when you decide to declutter and organize one space in your home, but cannot complete it without finishing another space first. The decisions for these two spaces trigger decisions in third, fourth, or fifth areas of your home. The desire to update one area of your home has triggered an avalanche of decluttering and organizing.
How to Tackle a Clutter Avalanche
Just start. Trigger the avalanche. It’s not going to get done if I allow myself to remain stuck in the decision making paralysis taking place in my head.
See one thing at a time. I could not visualize the goal of what I wanted the organization under the sink to look like but I knew I wanted that one bin in there. I started with that and allowed momentum to build.
Do not give up. Roll WITH the avalanche down the mountain. Organizing and decluttering along the way, I ended up rolling down the mountain with momentum. That momentum turned into motivation to keep going until I was done.
Clutter Avalanche Episode 1: Cleaning Products
What triggered this avalanche? My kitchen sink bin. It’s stored on a top shelf with other cleaning supplies. I wanted it under my kitchen sink for easier access to the items I need to clean the sink… by the sink.
Logical.
But I didn’t have space under my sink. I had to make decisions about the cleaning products under there (where would THEY get moved to?!) in order to make space for the one bin I want under there.
I didn’t even know what cleaning products I had in the house, and had some stashed in the main floor closet.
The avalanche was triggered. I gathered all the cleaning supplies onto my kitchen counter, and now had an empty cabinet under the sink, an empty cleaning supplies cabinet, and cleared the overflow shelf from the closet.
I’d made a clutter mess because I wanted to relocate one bin of particular cleaning supplies.
Here’s a link to that episode.
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Clutter Avalanche Episode 2: Kitchen Declutter!
What triggered this avalanche? My food processor. I want my food processor stored in the appliance cabinet. I use it often and wanted it closer to the “appliance zone.” The zone has a dedicated cabinet for appliances below the countertop area we use appliances on.
The latest applicance made it too stuffed and I like an uncluttered kitchen cabinet. I like to be able to reach in, grab what I need, and pull it out without having to move things around. Same with putting things back in. I like it simple and easy.
The little food processor triggered the second avalanche.
In order to reorganize the kitchen applicance cabinet, I needed to decide what to remove. But where should those items move to?
I have another cabinet that has the mixers and mixer parts. Some stuff could fit there. Should I move the mixer parts closer to the actual mixer?
I have another nearby cabinet that has room and stores our pots and pans. But if I put things into that space, then I’ve blocked access to the pots and pans.
Yes, moving one thing aside to get one thing out is too complicated for me.
The coffee grinder is not used as often as these other appliances and could move to where we keep mugs and coffee. Makes sense. Coffee stuff with coffee stuff. I don’t have a ton of space in that cabinet.
So now deciding to deal with this one appliance cabinet avalanched into organizing stuff in two other cabinets and now I have three areas I’m working in.
Watch Episode 2 here:
My journey to minimalism has taken years (without professional organizers). I started decluttering in 2019 after a delivery from our Navy storage space introduced hundreds of boxes - and thousands of items - into our home. Instantly, we had physical chaos and mental disorder from the clutter we didn't even know we had.
I would love to travel this journey together with you. Subscribe to my email list for regular updates, and good luck wth your decluttering!
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