A clean sweep: Getting rid of your clutter

a clean sweep is sometimes the only sensible solution when confronting all our unnecessary stuff easier said than done our cover story is reported by Barry Peterson take a drive across America and along with the mountains and rivers this is a big part of the passing scenery self storage facilities there are more of them than Dunkin Donuts Subway's or McDonald's combined think about that and that's just for the stuff we can't fit inside our homes where there's more stuff piled in closets bedrooms garages basements some of these pictures were sent in by you Sunday morning viewers suffocating under an avalanche of stuff that's the whole meaning of life isn't it trying to find a place for your stuff that's all your house is your house is just a place for your stuff so this is my basement this is what I like to call organized chaos Stacy surace appreciates the late George Carlin's humor though she's not exactly in a laughing mood I would love to purge about 70% of this basement as she sorts through her possessions in suburban New York the accumulation of a single mother with two kids she's a bit desperate I've been meaning to have a garage sale for ten years it's just very overwhelming I'm like oh my gosh it's so much stuff I don't know where to begin I'm gonna have to keep category mm-hmm we're gonna have the donate category and then we may even have a third category she decided to seek professional help professional organizer Rachel Sager oh my god sue I was looking for this who just so happens to be our clinical social worker I know your lack of attachment and your lack of trauma based accumulation this is not a hoarding situation this is life situation so exactly how do we end up like this we don't know how to manage our money properly and so when something is on sale we feel we might as well get it in every single color we have so much stuff because we don't do enough research before we make a purchase we have so much stuff because we are insecure Rachael Sager is a member of the National Association of productivity and organizing professionals part of the 1 billion dollar industry helping the rest of us get the clutter in our lives out of our lives Ellen de Lappe is president she sees in our consumer society the roots of too much clutter I will find things in bags that have not even come out of the bag it's the thrill of the hunt it's the thrill of the purchase sometimes Americans are by far the world's largest consumer culture result an overstuffed closet and occasionally sitcom gold right okay well this is all of the stuff that doesn't fit and in any category it is worth noting that some people find clutter helps with creativity Albert Einstein once joked if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind of what then is an empty desk a sign he was not alone Steve Jobs and Mark Twain also had notoriously messy desks but Claire Reeves who lives in Houston wants the clutter out of her life all right Owen Jimmy tackle the closet yes she turned to Ellen Delap for help so what would you say your goal for this space would be I I mean I like to be able to walk in out come the items she bought and we'll never use I thought I would use that I haven't even opened up and the dresses she will never again where are you ready to release it I think I'm ready to release it okay good Claire Reef says she learned a lesson about too much stuff from hurricane Harvey when she helped her neighbors who were flooded out just the sheer volume of stuff that to come out and that just gets trashed and it just reinforced that if everybody's safe and everybody's healthy that's what's important in life not all of this not all of this now that you've done this how do you feel I feel great it's like a weight lifted off your shoulders except for those of us whose stuff ends up in a storage unit this is the saddest of all now instead of free garbage you pay rent to visit your garbage the folks on the A&E hit reality TV show storage wars might beg to differ when people stopped paying the rent their storage lockers get put up for auction the buyers are hoping to find hidden treasure for this episode filmed in Van Nuys California Ivy Calvin bid he holds it all to his store grandma's attic where he says everything sells I just know that this business never dies ever when if people are having a bad time they can come here when their pockets are full they come here raining snowing they come here adding more clutter is a habit Andrew Mellon hopes to change this is scarves and hats the only thing that's in here scarves and hats author of unstuff your life Mellon has been called the most organized man in America it will take the same amount of time for you to hang up your coat in the coat closet it will - drop it on the chair listen to his advice about saving old clothes I feel like I've just given away some part of my youth I'm not gonna be young anymore because the clothes are gone well you're not gonna be young anymore because you're not gonna be young anymore it has nothing to do with the garments that you're wearing Mellon uses his 633 square foot New York apartment so short sleeve then long sleeve as a classroom for his clients clutter is nothing more than deferred decisions and he doesn't even have the luxury of a garage according to the Department of Energy 25% of people with two car garages have no room for the car and 32% only have room for one we park cars that are worth tens of thousands of dollars on the street because our garages are full of stuff that in many times is worthless you explain that because we're not thinking about the choices that we're making and if you're still an offense about whether to tackle spring cleaning any time soon here's a little gentle persuasion there's a statistic that says that we waste a year of our life looking for lost or misplaced eyes really yes because it's five minutes here it's ten minutes there one sentence to get people off the sofa and starting to declutter what is it set yourself free it's just stuff it's just stuff

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 1,668,779

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, clean sweep, clutter, hoarder, stuff, national association of productivity and organizing professionals, napo, declutter, andrew mellen

Id: W2oN7gTbHp0

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 22 2018