“Quality over quantity” has become a platitude in a world where everyone is familiar with the benefits of minimalism. We utter the term often, but in the same day we fall down walking the walk when faced with a killer sale at our favorite store, or a perceived need for five Old Navy shirts when one will do.

I sometimes have to get very creative in the approach I take to motivate someone to clear off their desk. If you’ve brought piles into 2020 and need an extra push to finally zap them, this might be the incentive you need to clear them off (or to at least remove them just to put them back):

2019 marks my eighteenth year as a professional organizer and the eighth year in a row that I’ve reflected on what I learned as a professional organizer in the past year. I am sure to never repeat a lesson from a previous year.

This time of year many of us are reminded of how disorganized our greeting cards are, and this is a twofold problem: blank cards AND the cards we’ve received. When I first meet a new client with these problems, the cards they’ve kept might be thrown in a box at best, or at worst, scattered throughout the home, mixed in with current and important documents.

I know a few minimalists, and I am decidedly not one - compared to them at least. Compared to the average American though - I am certainly one. Even I have too much of some things. I like stuff too.

Friends and family give me a hard time for my pouch collection.

Serena Williams once said “Pressure is a privilege.” It revealed the perspective of difficulty as sometimes being a privilege. If this is true, then the abundance of things, even things we don’t want, could also be privilege.

Is clutter privilege?