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Arun Venugopal: This is All Of It. I'm Arun Venugopal, in for Alison Stewart. All right. Let's get started with the hard truth. As painful as it is to admit, summer is rapidly coming to a close, but there's still time to get your house in order before a return to the routines of autumn. Today we're going to discuss some practical tips for decluttering and organizing your personal space.

This includes going through your closets, your drawers, setting up those desks and home offices and rearranging your kitchen cabinets, or finding new places to put all your stuff, your pots, pans utensils, everything. Whether you plan on moving in to a new apartment soon or just want to clear some space for that house guest who's stopping by for a few days, or maybe you just want to reduce the stress in your life, our next guest can provide a little guidance.

Lauren Iannotti is the editor-in-chief of Real Simple. It's a lifestyle magazine that provide solutions for everything, from cleaning, to beauty, fashion, and health. Lauren, welcome to All Of It.

Lauren Iannotti: Hi, Arun. Thanks so much for having me.

Arun: Listeners, we want to hear from you too. What are some of the home projects you've been working on the summer? Any areas that you plan on decluttering? Which areas of your home have you successfully reorganized already, or which are just incredibly intimidating to take on in the first place? Maybe you're just getting started and you just have a question for Lauren. Bring it to us.

Let us know. You can give us a call or you can send us a text. The number is 212-433-9692. Again, it's 212-433-WNYC, or you can just hit us up on social media @allofitwnyc. All right, Lauren, let's talk about clutter. I'm just curious, is the conversation fundamentally different? When we're talking about clutter, is it fundamentally different for people living in these little bitty New York apartments versus people who are in the suburbs, or is it just a difference in degree?

Lauren: In scale, yes. I think it's fundamentally the same actually. I think that we're in a battle for our spaces. No matter how big your space is, it's just relative. I guess, I would have to admit, it's particularly acute for those of us who live in the city or as I do, in a narrow townhouse just outside the city, and are negotiating our spaces constantly, and trying to figure out how to contain all the things that we love, that we need, that we want, and figuring out how to cohabitate with all of that stuff.

Arun: Especially all the sentimental stuff, it's hard.

Lauren: It's so hard. Can I just kick this off by saying, if you love your stuff, and if you function really well amid clutter, more power to you. Please stick around and hear some tips, but honestly, we're not here to judge and we're not here to tell people how to live their lives. Plenty of people work well in chaos, but for most of us, we know, the studies have shown that for most of us, and in particularly women, clutter stresses us out, and it makes us unhappy, and it can actually contribute to anxiety and depression.

The research is there. It's proving what probably a lot of us already knew, that when we look around ourselves and we see spaces that we don't feel we have any control over, that feel packed full of stuff that we just don't have in order, it can hurt our mental health.

Arun: As New Yorkers, we can always, I guess, comfort ourselves by pointing at other people, thinking about those notorious hoarders you read about now and then, who become trapped inside all their stuff that they have accumulated over decades. For all of those of us who live in the state of denial, what is a telltale sign that you really need to declutter your own home?

Lauren: Is it harming your relationship with your space? Is your space functioning for you? Is it making it harder for you to live? Is it making it harder for you to get out the door in time? Is it making it harder for you to plan meals and get them prepared for yourself and possibly for your family? I think that's the key. The key is, is your space working for you? And looking around. If it is, honestly, again, I'll say, if it is, great, but if you feel either physically or emotionally like this is not going well, then it may be time to take a hard look around.

Again, sometimes when we're decluttering we really have to be a little bit ruthless and a little bit harsh on our own stuff. It can be a very emotional process and painful sometimes, but you will come out feeling so good after you've accomplished some of these things and you start with baby steps and you can get yourself there.

Arun: Listeners, if you have a question, send it our way. You can call us or you can text us. Number is 212-433-9692. You can also hit us up on social media @allofitwnyc. Where is a good place to start? This can be such a paralyzing process, people don't know where to begin. Do you have a good place just to begin?

Lauren: Well, I have a couple of ideas for that. My first piece of advice would be to just find a little small area, a little corner. If you're feeling overwhelmed, if you look around and you really don't know where to start, find a little spot. Maybe it's your junk drawer or maybe it's where you keep your Tupperware, which is a real pain point for me, it's just hard to maintain. I find that if I just take that one little spot and I-- you're going to have to carve out time.

It's not something that you're going to be like, "I'm on my way out the door to work, but I'm just going to do this." You really have to commit to this and carve out a little bit of time, say, "I'm going to give it a couple hours on a Sunday morning. I'm just going to take this on, really get it in great shape." Then what I do is I really relish my success. If I got that junk drawer under control, and that thing is constantly getting more stuff, and everyone contributes to it in my family of four.

If I get that thing feeling good, I will just go back and look at it. I will look at it, and it's almost like ASMR. That's wonderful. I'm just going to keep going back to it and really giving myself that nice hit of dopamine over it and rewarding myself for it so that I'll know how good it feels and then I can take on another thing and another thing. That's one bit. Just take a little corner, give yourself time to do it, be present while you do it, in a sense, and mindful because it's not something you're trying to dash off. It's something that you're doing for yourself and doing for your feeling with your space.

Then the other bit of advice is you might want to do something that's really visible. Your entryway, for example, you might want to start there. It's often a dumping ground for people. Especially in a New York City apartment, it's probably a little narrow space right near your apartment doorway and it gets filled with shoes, and if you have kids, probably book bags, maybe a laptop bag. It's the drop zone, as we like to call it.

We look at that and we think, that's impossible and I'm never going to be able to get that under control. Start there. It's the first thing people see when they come to your house, too. That'll give you a little bit of victory and you'll take that with you and spread it around.

Arun: Let's take a call. This is Sherry calling from New Jersey. Hi, Sherry.

Sherry: Hi, how are you?

Arun: Great. Do you have a question for Lauren Iannotti?

Sherry: I do. I have a passion for photographs and now I have accumulated old photographs in boxes, photos I've taken. What is a suggestion to maybe just with an archival folder, should I organize them by family, by year? Are there any efficient ways you could suggest for old photos?

Lauren: Hi, Sherry. Thanks for your question. These are printed photos?

Sherry: Yes.

Lauren: Prints, not negatives. If they're valuable to you and you want to keep them-- You say archival, and that makes me think you might want to keep them for a long time and generations. You're probably going to want to make sure that you store them in a way that they're not going to deteriorate in any way. That may mean you need to consult with a photo-- there are several companies, if you google it, a photo restoration or a photo preservation, like interest.

Otherwise, depending on how you use them, if you want to categorize them however you would use them. If you're thinking, "Well, I'm going to go try to go back and try to find that thing for the summer of 1998 when we all went to the lake that time." Then it's best to have them organized by date. I think a lot of people also probably have this issue with their camera roll, how to organize that stuff and it's almost similar because you can make folders in your camera roll and do the same thing.

How are we going to keep them? I think the best way to keep them is the way that's going to best serve you. Or if it's by family photos, versus friends from college, versus-- that might be another way to do it. It sounds like you might be collecting them from-- did you buy them at a secondhand store? You went to the thrift shop or whatever, and they're more artifacts to you, you might want to be framing those and putting those up.

It sounds like there might be something interesting in the collection that you might want to hang. Again, remember storage includes vertical storage. Stuff that you would hang, stuff that you would post, place in different places, create a gallery wall, that kind of thing. There are lots of cool things you could do with it. Just make sure it's working for you.

Arun: Let's take another call. This is Dina calling in from Manhattan.

Dina: Oh, hi. Good afternoon. I thought that a way for me to declutter my apartment is to re-gift or just give things a way that I purchased and loved because I would hate to just-- because I'm hoping to move in a year. It's nice to put it out. I know in the buildings, they have the laundry rooms, people put out free stuff for people and I've gotten some nice things, brand new stuff. How do you re-gift something? Do you have to say that you're re-gifting it? Is it a good idea to do that for a way to declutter the apartment?

Lauren: Oh, yes. Absolutely. The goal is not to leave stuff that's going to wind up in the landfill. I think regifting is great. If it's a milestone for somebody, I wouldn't maybe give them something that you've used, but if it's something that was valuable to you and you're going to hand pass it along and you want-- I think the idea is to present it and say, "I got a lot of joy out of this and I thought you would like it too."

Personally, my big decluttering play, I have an identical twin. Not everybody has this, but I have an identical twin sister, who I love to shop and she doesn't, [chuckles] so I hand her a lot of my gently worn stuff and she loves it, she's grateful for it. Hi, Liz. Any way that you can re-home something, I think is just absolutely the way to go because even if you're-- Goodwill and Salvation Army are also awesome resources, but a lot of that stuff they can't use, but if it's from person-to-person and you explain, and you know this person is going to appreciate it and love it, and that it'll stay there and it won't end up in a landfill, I think that's a beautiful thing.

Arun: Lauren, have these Buy Nothing groups that some people are very active on. Is this a growing phenomenon local neighborhood Buy Nothing groups?

Lauren: It's huge. It's taking that-- like one of the callers said, she likes to drive around on garbage day and pick up stuff that people are putting out. This is the digital version of that. They're putting something out on the curb and you're hoping that somebody's going to want to pick it up and they'll come and get it from you, and especially in a city like New York, it's dense, there are lots of people. It's absolutely a great resource. You just want to be very, very careful and safe about when you're exchanging stuff and how that exchange happens.

The Buy Nothing groups are wonderful. I think everyone's goal is to purchase less stuff, and not have stuff moving through your house because the less we use, the less that's going to end up in the trash, and that's what we all want for our planet and for ourselves. Any of these resources that help with that are a beautiful thing.

Arun: We're talking to Real Simple's Lauren Iannotti about decluttering. We're taking your questions, your comments, your suggestions. We'll have more after a break. You're listening to All Of It. I'm Arun Venugopal, sitting in for Alison Stewart. Today we are talking decluttering with Lauren Iannotti. She's the editor-in-chief of Real Simple, taking your questions, comments, suggestions.

Here's one text we got from a listener who said, "I got divorced two years ago. My wedding album takes up space unnecessarily, but represents thousands of dollars spent and aside from that, just feels cynical to throw out. No anger attached to it, but no desire to spend time looking at it either." Lauren, suggestions?

Lauren: That's a tough one. I'd have to say you've got the negative somewhere, right? I'd get rid of it. I'd move on. I think maybe it's that last symbolic element from a former life of yours and I'd move on from it, especially if you have a small apartment.

Arun: What is the way one gets rid of those specific things? Do you just throw it in the trash? What is it?

Lauren: Bonfire? I don't-- [laughs]

Arun: Cathartic.

Lauren: I don't know if that's the environmentally friendly way to burn it. It's a good question. If they're personal photos and you don't want them to be potentially scooped by somebody else, you should probably shred them. That feels extra violent, so maybe just stick it under the bed and worry about it later.

Arun: [laughs] I like that. Deferred action. Okay, another person asked, getting rid of 200 books. The libraries don't take them. Where do I donate?

Lauren: You can wait for a book sale at a local school. Many, many of them do them. It depends on the books, I would say. A lot of libraries do take them. Maybe the NYPLs don't. I actually don't know, but certainly, there are book sales that happen. Churches do book sales, so I'd look into churches. I have tried to donate books at a Goodwill and they didn't want them.

Arun: Housing Works maybe?

Lauren: What's that? Yes, Housing Works may take them. That's a good point. I think you have to do a little bit of research, a little bit of googling around and you'll find a place. You can find someone to take free stuff in most cases. You just got to do a little bit of homework.

Arun: Let's take another call or two. Claudia calling in from Putnam County. Hi, Claudia.

Claudia: Hi. I'm calling this, I actually have an apartment in Manhattan and I have lived there for many years. I had a family who lived there, and now my kids have grown up and gone away, and my husband has passed away. I am not moving, but I would like to declutter. I have a lot of clothing from another lifetime. I have probably 1,000 books and I have furniture. I have tried various ways to dispose of these things and I've hit a wall.

Housing Works, I've given a lot of books to, and a lot of them, they don't want. The clothing, I have no idea what to do. It's not really Goodwill clothing. I don't want to do The RealReal, which I did try at one point in time and was very unhappy about. In terms of furniture--

Arun: It sounds like a real dilemma you've got here. Lauren, this is tough. What would you recommend for Claudia?

Lauren: The RealReal and other resale sites are a job in and of themselves. It's a lot of work. If you have a wardrobe full of clothing that you're ready to move off of your space, it's almost like you'd have to hire somebody, which actually you could. You could hire somebody in TaskRabbit to go through this stuff. If you've already been through this stuff and you know what you want to get rid of, you know.

Also, there are organizations that will take anything and then sort of sort it, and decide where it goes after that. There's a veteran's organization that will just come and pick everything up. They're not going through it yet. Then they're going to take it off offsite and then they're going to go through it. If you feel like that's not giving its due, like this is valuable stuff. It sounds like if the clothing isn't Goodwill clothing, you think you've got some fashion there or something like that, that may not be the thing.

If you're done going through it and you just are ready to have it off, they would be a great resource. Then at some point, try as we do to not throw anything away. In the end, there may be stuff that doesn't have a new home. There may be stuff that people don't want, and that's when you just have to figure that. There have been stories in the Times about how a lot of people are finding that they have all these things that were so valuable to them and their kids don't want it and their grandkids don't want it.

They're not into fine China or whatever, was valuable to one generation may not be valuable to subsequent generations, in which case I think it may be a case of just putting it out on the street before garbage day and hoping that someone finds it and loves it and takes it.

Arun: A producer here is noting that the city takes textile donations. I guess that's one approach. At green markets, which we can see those big old bins that people can dump their clothes into. Freecycle. Another suggestion from a listener who says that it's a great way to find a local place to donate in your own neighborhood. Let's take another call. This is Anne calling in from Staten Island. Hi, Anne.

Anne: Good afternoon. I'm so happy to have the opportunity to ask my question because after 38 years, I'm selling my house and I can handle 10 rooms, basic 10 rooms, but the attic is a nightmare. What makes it very difficult is I just am recovering from a hip replacement, so I'm not taking those two flights of stairs. Although I have loving family who are willing to help, my sons and daughter-in-law, they have a ruthless attitude towards my belongings, and I'm very sentimental.

I need some help how to deal with their help, but at the same time reign them in. Anything you can suggest, I would appreciate it.

Laure: Oh, man, that's hard. It sounds like you need someone who's going to be as sentimental about the stuff as you would who can stand in for you to do the job that you feel you need to do. Could they be the muscle and you're managing them? Maybe that's the way to do it and they could start a bucket brigade of bringing stuff down from the attic, and there's some way station there where you can say that there, that there.

I think that would be the way they could be the most helpful to you. You just have to make sure they understand that it's not their job to decide where things go, it's just their job to support you as you decide. Does it sound like that might work?

Anne: Diplomatic. Yes, because I do need their help. My other concern is they bring things down from the attic, then they have to deal with that. I have a large living room, but I have antiques in the attic, I have hand-embroidered pillowcase tablecloths that are from my great-grandmother. I'm thinking also, what do you think of this? Of hiring somebody to assess what I could sell or give away. What do you think about that?

Lauren: I think that's a great idea. I think if you think you might have some valuable stuff in there, then I would think that would be a very smart thing to do. It may be hard to find a person whose vast knowledge can encapsulate all of those things, but they're out there.

Arun: Lauren, are they reasonably priced? I have no idea how much you'd be spending on something like this.

Lauren: I think some of them actually might take a commission if they're helping you sell stuff. I think they'd be reasonable, and then it's more than you're going to get if you're trying to take a guess. I think it's probably a good idea.

Arun: Let's take another call from Alice in the East Village. Hi, Alice.

Alice: Hi. I'm trying to get off of speakerphone here. I do help people downsize to move and it's been a very interesting experience and I just think the most important thing is that you will actually let go of a lot of stuff. It might not be as much stuff as your relatives want you to let go of, but the most important thing is that if you actually look at the things you realize that you might never look at them again.

You'll be much more likely to just say, "You know what? I looked through this box, I saw it, I took out a few pieces of paper that I think mean something to me or will trigger my memory, and the rest, just let it go."

Lauren: Yes, I agree with that. I also think you can take pictures. We have these supercomputers in our back pockets at all times now, most of us. You can just take that out and take a picture of something that's valuable to you, and then you've kept it, and then you can say goodbye to the actual object.

Arun: Thank you for that, Alice. I'm just curious, Lauren, I remember years ago, I traveled. I went to Paris and I was staying in someone's home. They weren't there and I was just like, "Where is all this guy's stuff?" It was just mystifying. There's just hardly anything in this French man's home and I'm just wondering if this is a cultural component that we're not really grappling with in this conversation.

Lauren: You mean are Americans worse at hoarding than Europeans or other folks?

Arun: Do you know? I have no idea.

Lauren: Yes. I think it's a consumerist culture. Our whole economy is based on-- I feel like 80% of our economy is about consumers. Yes, we are a consumer culture. There are others, Japan has the same problem despite their reputation. They definitely are a nation of hoarders. Yes, it's particular to us and certainly I think the pandemic had us buying all element of things that we would need temporarily to survive that moment or to feel okay during that moment and that we now no longer need.

I think a lot of people are grappling with that. There are definitely people who have a lot of stuff in Europe too. I think it's specific to us for sure. It's especially pronounced for us, but it's worldwide.

Arun: Let's take one more call Richard calling in from Manhattan. Hi, Richard. Do you have a relatively quick question for Lauren Iannotti?

Richard: Boy, do I have a very strange problem? I have this one shelf in my closet and it contains the urns of deceased people. I've got an aunt, an uncle, a colleague, a parent, and there's one in which the label is falling off. I have no idea who that is, but they're all up there in the shelf and I'm not sure what to do with them.

Lauren: Where do you think they want to be? I mean, this is a very personal and emotional question and it's going to be-- you asked to answer it probably better than me, but have you thought about where they might want to be and have you considered scattering ashes? Did they leave any wishes? Why are you the family member who's got them all, I guess this is the other interesting element to this.

Richard: Yes, it's strange how I happen to be the one who stepped up and took responsibility and in many cases, they died without expressing their final will and testament. I just have been hanging on with them for so long and that question you posed, what would they like? It's probably different for each and every one. I've got six of them now.

Lauren: Well everybody likes a beautiful view, maybe there's a place where you can scatter them where it's legal and you're allowed to do that together and they can all hang out in a beautiful forest somewhere together and for eternity.

Arun: Thank you for that call, Richard. I want to point to a couple of other listener comments. One person has a very helpful tip, donate your books to the book vendors on the street. I guess that's something that we see everywhere in New York are people who are selling books secondhand. I guess that's one good suggestion. Anything else you want to add in 20 or 30 seconds, Lauren, before we have to go?

Lauren: No, I think that's a great thought. Any time you can bring something back to where it came from and donate it back to somebody who could actually really use it. Clothing hangers can go back to the store or back to the dry cleaners, et cetera. Anytime you can take something back to its source and they would actually value it, is a great call.

Arun: All right, well we're going to wrap it up right there. We've been taking your questions and suggestions regarding decluttering and we've been talking to Lauren Iannotti. She is the editor-in-chief of Real Simple, a lifestyle magazine that provides solutions for everything from cleaning to beauty, fashion, and health. Lauren, thanks so much for coming on All Of It.

Lauren: Thanks for having me, Arun. I had a great time.

 

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