It’s all too easy to get caught up in buying a little something here and there while on vacation. Vacations have us feeling freer to buy that t-shirt we’ll unlikely ever wear at home, that scarf (because it fits in our bag, not because our wardrobe needs it), or that tiny sculpture that seems irresistible at the time.

In the age of simple, graphically manicured websites, librarything.com stands out as a relic from decade’s past.  I don’t discriminate though; as long as a product or site works, it’s pretty enough for me. I suggested this book cataloging site to a client who was resistant to let go of books for many reasons, but the main one being that she didn’t want to lose track of the books she had, and interests thereof.

Do you really still have VHS tapes?  If so, I’m going to read your mind in an effort to help you let go of them. You still have a VHS collection because:

- They may have sentimental footage. This is the only good reason for keeping any - and still, rarely good enough considering you can’t even remember what that footage could be!)...

As I like to reinforce in my Minimalism video series, I too am on the spectrum of “struggles with clutter.” Everyone has a clutter tolerance threshold. As a professional organizer, my threshold is low, but the struggle is real. Low as it is, it gets crossed, and I snap! Here is a picture of how I WISH SO BADLY my dining room looked on a typical day. 

The title says it all.  The same goes for offices and just about every other room we occupy.  Any organizer (or reformed clutter bug) could have told you this, but we now have research to prove it!  NPR’s A Cluttered Kitchen Can Nudge Us To Overeat, Study Finds sums up a recent study published in the journal Environment and Behavior.