Hasta La Ideas

Reader Kelly submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

Your advice on doing the laundry is fantastic. I’ve employed several tips with great success. In particular, I’m a fan of clothing items that need little care (e.g. no ironing, dry cleaning, etc.). However, I’m unable to find usable suggestions on HOW TO PUT THE LAUNDRY AWAY. One mantra of simple living systems is to touch things only once (mail directly from the mailbox into office without setting on kitchen counter first and while throwing away junk mail before you even bring it into the house), but I’m unable to find a laundry system that doesn’t result in piles and piles of clean laundry that needs to be put away. Getting it into the washer and dryer is easy — how can I get it to put itself away? My kids are 2 and 4 years old. I do one load of laundry a day. It ends up sitting in our enormous rolling laundry cart in the laundry room, where we all gather in our underwear looking for clean clothes. Please help.

I laughed aloud when I read your description of your family gathering in the laundry room looking for clean clothes because I have done exactly that on numerous occasions. My guess is that anyone with a washer and dryer at home has done this, but maybe around a couch, dining table, or wherever clothes are folded. And, I don’t know why, but I’m usually standing on my tippy toes, quickly shifting my weight from foot to foot, on a mission to locate clean socks. You’ve just described the human clean clothes hunting ritual!

To find a solution to this problem, start by making sure you don’t have more clothes than storage space. If drawers and closets are cramped, you might be avoiding putting clothes away because you can’t easily do it. You shouldn’t have to push down on clothes to shut drawers, and you shouldn’t have to use your elbows and exert upper body strength to cram clothes into a closet. Also, check out your closet and make sure that whatever method you’re using to organize your clothes is simple to maintain. If your closet organizing system is too convoluted, you might be avoiding the chore for this reason.

Although your rolling laundry cart is really cool, it might not be the best tool for your family. You may be better served by having four labeled, stackable, laundry baskets or a rolling, 4-bag, laundry sorter. Each night after dinner, you and your husband can take five minutes to put away the clothes in your designated bin or basket and then spend another five minutes helping your kids with theirs.

Challenge everyone to a race, play upbeat music, and/or make the new routine as much fun as possible. After a few months, it will become second nature and putting away laundry will no longer be an issue. As your children get older, they’ll be able to put away their clothes without help (around age 5 or 6) and eventually even do their own laundry (usually around age 10, 11, or 12). I’m definitely looking forward to these milestones in my house!

Be sure to check out the comments for even more suggestions from our readers for ways to help get clothes out of the laundry room and into their proper storage spaces.

Thank you, Kelly, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Reader Shalin tipped us off to a fun photo set on CNN.com featuring “Amazingly tiny home offices from closets.” Image six is my favorite:

From the CNN.com description of this office:

Mark Halliday of Franklin, Massachusetts, says he finished this office in one day at a cost of around $45. “We needed an office, but it didn’t make sense to use an entire room for it,” he said. He and his wife used hanging shelves and leftover paint from another project to create the work area.

I’m a big fan of the closet office, especially when living in a small space. For additional inspiration, check out the five closet offices we’ve featured in the past as Workspace of the Week features:

• Closet office
• Hidden in a closet
• Multi-functioning clothing and office closet
• More closet workspaces

(Image via CNN.com via Mark Halliday.)

On page 23 of Unclutter Your Life in One Week, I promote the idea of discovering your style to help you keep clutter out of your closets. If your closet is limited to clothes that fit, clothes you want to wear, and clothes that project your desired image, you’re less likely to find yourself overbuying or with a mess you can’t control:

You may not know exactly what you want your clothes to say about you, but you probably have a good idea what you don’t want them to say. When I was in my twenties and leading a forum on school uniform policies, a group of high school students told me I dressed like a “frumpy pants.” It was a few seconds after that moment that I decided I didn’t want my clothes to say that I was a “frumpy pants.”

Years later, after reading Carrie McCarthy and Danielle LaPorte’s book Style Statement, I figured out a more proactive concept for my wardrobe choices. I’ve found that having a defined style has made it a lot easier to keep clutter out of my wardrobe. Nothing comes into my wardrobe that doesn’t project my image.

I like to think of my wardrobe as being an exclusive club that only the best of the best can get into. I’m the bouncer, and I get to decide what items make it past the red velvet rope, and what items don’t.

I’m not a fashionista, and if you knew me in the world beyond the computer screen you would probably laugh at the suggestion that I even think about my clothing. I predominantly wear solid colors. I have three of the exact same dress in black, gray, and white. I have three styles of t-shirts in four colors (black, gray, white, and navy blue). I have three pair of black pants from the same manufacturer but in different cuts. And, I look nice in these things. They work for me. They say, “uncluttered,” which is what I want them to say. Clothes that say, “complicated” or “fussy” don’t make it past the imaginary red velvet rope into my closet.

Discover your style, stay true to it, and get the pieces of clothing that don’t represent you out of your wardrobe. If you don’t know your style, check out the following resources:

• Carrie McCarthy and Danielle LaPorte’s book Style Statement, which I mentioned earlier. Most of the images in the book are female-focused, but men can get just as much out of the text.
• A lot of my female friends swear by The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style. Only 10 styles are in the book, and they’re all female styles, so it’s not a comprehensive text.
• As far as men’s fashion goes, I like Details Men’s Style Manual. It starts with the extreme basics and moves on from there.

I had a good laugh at this sketch from this past weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live, and I wanted to share the fun. Erin lost it at “Dirt!” and now I can’t stop chanting, “Pies! Pies! Pies!” And, we should definitely warn you, it’s probably not safe to watch at work because of the “testimonial” in the middle of the sketch.

Instead of buying an expensive gown that you’re only going to wear once to a wedding, formal holiday party, or some other black-tie affair, consider renting a dress through RentTheRunway.com. Best of all, after you send it back, your closet remains clutter free.

It’s the female equivalent of a tuxedo rental shop, which is a much-needed segment in the market in my opinion. And, for a percentage of what you would pay to buy the dress, you have the convenience of not having to deal with future cleaning, storage, or the garment going out of style.

From the website:

1. LOVE
Browse through our array of A-list designers and find a dress you love. Or two!

2. WEAR
Schedule a delivery date and your dress will appear on your doorstep, in two different sizes. Just to be safe.

3. RETURN
Put your dress in our handy pre-paid package and drop in the nearest mailbox. We take care of the dry cleaning!

My only hesitation with the program is the cleanliness aspect, and RentTheRunway answers this explicitly:

All RTR dresses will ship to you directly from the cleaners, without any handling in between. We’ve partnered with a premier dress specialist in NYC—Slate Dry Cleaner—and developed a process that ensures stringent quality control. We’ll only ship dresses that receive a 100% fresh seal of approval. Slate Dry Cleaner is an expert in eco-friendly, luxury dry cleaning. Their environmentally safe process certifies that every garment is thoroughly cleaned and cared for, maintaining the impeccable quality of the garment while being kind to the environment (not to mention to your health!). Our packaging is also specially designed to fully protect the dresses during shipment.

Learn more about the program in the Frequently Asked Questions section of RentTheRunway.com.