If you drive down any neighborhood street in America, no matter what the cost of the homes, you’ll find at least 50% of the drive-ways have a car parked in them. That doesn’t mean the people in the homes have company, it most likely means the garages are full of stuff and there’s no room for the cars.
I was recently on a television talk show in Portland, Oregon and I talked about how we Americans have too much stuff. The hostess of the show told me she’s embarrassed to pull out of her garage because it’s crammed full. I said, “Well at least you can get your car in the garage!” She said, “It barely fits and it's a three-car garage!”
She looked so concerned and she truly was embarrassed. If you’d like to watch the show, just click on the photo below. Notice in that photo the car is in the drive-way and there’s evidently not room for the kids’ bicycles in the garage either.
Have you thought much about this problem? Do you think that there's habitual behavior behind it?Actually behind any constipated garage is one sentence that's used over and over: "Just put it in the garage for now." Every time you say that, what you're really doing is postponing decisions. What if you quit that right now? What if you stopped unconsciously storing stuff for a later mountain of decisions?
That's not going to get your garage emptied, because to do that, it's going to take some focused decision-making time. If you spent just 15 minutes a day on decision making in your garage it could act like a laxative for the problem and you'd get some exercise for your body and your brain. There are really only three decisions to make on each item you've put in the garage, give away, trash, keep. If you decide to keep something, ask yourself, "When was the last time I used this?" If it has been more than a year, it needs to go into the give away or trash decision. If your car has been rendered homeless for more than a year, then most likely the stuff you're keeping hasn't been used in that length of time either. ),
If you haven't read "The Joy of Being Disorganized" there's a great chapter in it called "There Arose Such a Clutter." It will inspire you to streamline your home and get your car in the garage so you can get the feeling you get when you're on a vacation.
To purchase "The Joy of Being Disorganized" just tap on the cover.
Love,