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PackRatItus: Interior Living Room Finds the Cure!!
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If you haven’t succumbed to the virus “PackRatItus” yet, you’ve definitely been to someone’s house showing signs of this horrendous disease. There are so many differing strains of PackRatItus that sometimes it goes undiagnosed for years. Perhaps your affliction is not too serious yet. If so, treatment is available, and you will likely not perish from the disease.
Diagnosis for PackRatItus involves a careful and deliberate assessment of your living area, being very mindful to check the nooks, the garage, under the stairs, the attics, and the basements for visible signs of the bacteria known as “clutter” or “junk”. Once it is determined that you have become afflicted, immediate steps should be taken to rid your home of this bacteria, using liberal doses of “cleanacillan”, “orginization-aspirin”. (Most medications can be found over the counter at your local “Get Off Your Butt” store. 
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Seriously speaking, I call excessive clutter “PackRatItus” because accumulating junk over the years is something that happens right under your nose, and gets worse and worse when you pay no attention. It breeds in your home just as an infection worsens in your body – without careful and deliberate treatment.
There are ways to coordinate, organize, and banish your clutter, leaving you with plenty of room to walk to your kitchen (without tripping over your 1970’s bean bag chair). Here’s 5 steps to take that can alleviate the disease and give your home a breathe of fresh air, leaving you with peace of mind and unstubbed toes.
1. Do you have a shed? Perhaps you’re in a condo… if so does your condo have a storage area?
- If you have items strewn about your home that mean something to you – things that have sentimental value but are of no immediate use – then for the love of God gather them up and take them to your storage area. (Always a good idea to organize these items as well, so they are easy to find – see step 2). If you have no storage area, look into self storage facilities that may be close by. These places are almost always within a 10 minute drive from your home, and you can normally get one for as little as 30.00 per month.
2. Ikea is the Google of the interior design world. Ikea is your friend. At Ikea there are many shelving units and storage bins that will help you to organize your clutter into far smaller places. I once turned a garage full of clutter into a closet sized masterpiece of organizational brilliance by utilizing cheap and useful shelving + storage crates that I found at Ikea.
3. Get the book “Declutter Fast” by Mimi Tanner (click here for your copy) There is no one alive with more passion about de-cluttering your space than her. The book is just short of brilliant and explains in no uncertain terms how a cluttered home leads to a cluttered life. It’s also worth noting that by using the advice in her book, your de-cluttered home can reduce your daily stress level significantly.
4. Yard Sales are not just for families that wear matching track suits!!
- I know, I know. That guitar you received for Xmas on your 14th birthday is just waiting for you to learn how to play. However you’re 40 now – so to be blunt, give up the dream already!! Let a neighborhood kid have a go at being the next Segovia, because that guitar is making your living room look like a pawn shop! (and you know it)
- A yard sale can give you extra cash for redecorating, it can be a socially relevant thing to do (if you’re trying to get to know neighbors) and if you’re truly lucky, someone may actually buy that giant fish bowl your Aunt gave you in 1965 (the one that gives the kids nightmares).
5. Get the book “Declutter Fast” by Mimi Tanner. I know, I know, I’ve said it already but it definitely bares repeating. This is a real gem and goes into far more specific detail than we at Interior Living Room have time for at this point. It really is worth the small investment if PackRatItus has you feeling ill.
There will be future posts on this topic for sure, as we receive tons of emails asking for advice, but for now there’s bigger fish to fry here at Interior Living Room, and Mimi seems to have it covered nicely for now. Look for the links above or check the fancy shmancy book cover below to grab your copy.
So, if your case of PackRatItus is not terminal, there is hope, as you can see from above. Just pick a day, take the time, and treat the problem with the medications prescribed here. Oh, and drink lots of Orange Juice. That seems to help everything.
I’ve never been one for too much clutter but in the last year or two I’ve begun to feel the need for even less stuff around me. It is as if the fewer things I have to deal with the easier it is to keep my home neat naturally but the biggest change I have noticed it that the less i have around me the better I feel. I see the most difference in how much more positive and creative I am. Funny isn’t it.
I used to find comfort in having lots of things around me but somewhere along the line that changed and I don’t think I am alone in that feeling. I think collectively we all feel a need for more breathing room and less clutter. We want clearer mindless, less to worry about, and whether we realize it or not less stuff.
It is well worth it to give yourself the gift of getting rid of your clutter. It is often just difficult to find the time and energy to get rid of the stuff you spent so much time and energy acquiring. The book you mention sounds like it provides strategies to get over this barrier.
Spot On Kate. At a certain point in life we all need to de-clutter and reorganize. I design and decorate for a living and yet I am completely guilty of hording things. Some of the most difficult items for me to let go were things that my mother had left after she died (rest in peace) It just felt as if I was betraying her memory to store them.
This is one way in which the book I featured in this post can help. There is a definite co-relation between a cluttered home and a cluttered and bogged down life, and the book points out why that is. Once I cleared out my own home it felt like life just somehow got… easier (if that makes any sense at all lol)
Too much of anything is unhealthy, it weighs a person down, whether it’s too much food, too much alcohol, or just too much stuff. It’s all relative I think.
Very cool website, but you must improve your template graphics.
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