Amy Revell

Literally an hour ago, I got off the phone to a lady who said she hadn't used the second story of her home in two years, actually hadn't walked up the stairs to it.

And that's, again, not an uncommon experience is there might be a spare room that you just don't go into or a cupboard that you don't open or a shelf that you don't look at or a shed that you don't go into or part of the garage that is just like out of mind.

I don't want to deal with it.

You feel that dread and overwhelm.

And so if it has started to affect your function, that's a really great way to know.

If you no longer sit on the couch to relax with your partner at the end of the day because there's just too much washing on it or there's kids' toys everywhere or it's just chaos, your clutter is malignant.

If at nighttime you climb over things to get into bed or you can't vacuum the floors because there's just stuff everywhere, there's boxes and toys and doom boxes and piles of clothes, your clutter is malignant.

And I want to also give you hope.

Malignant clutter can be managed.

And the reason that it can be managed is because I have seen it time and time and time and time and time again that someone reaches out and says, my clutter is impacting more than just the space that it's taking up.

And I want to do something about it.

And so the things that you can do about it is identify, as we talked about, like where is this malignant clutter living?

And then you might try and tackle just a little bit.

So could I reduce it so that it's in a contained space?

Okay, the moment the clutter spread out down the wall of our hallway, is there a box that I can get and just contain it?

And once it's contained, yes, you still need to go through it.

But containing the clutter when it's become malignant is actually really important.

It might be that instead of allowing paperwork to overflow and sit on top of a filing cabinet, you put it in rather than allowing the kitchen dishes to just sit on top of the lunchboxes or the appliances to sit on the bench.

you go, okay, I'm going to put them away into the cupboard.

So finding homes for things is a part of managing malignant clutter.