Control What You Buy Or It Will Control You!

Recently, I returned to a client’s home to help her tune-up the clothes closet in her bedroom. When she opened the door, the first thing I noticed were the boxes of cereal and paper towels that had taken up residency on the shelf. Like many New Yorkers, my client has limited closet space for her clothes, none of which she could afford to share with food and paper goods. When I asked her why they were in her closet, she said she didn’t have anywhere else to put them. Since I had helped her reorganize her kitchen a couple of years ago, I knew that there should have been sufficient space for reasonable quantities of these items in her kitchen. So, what had happened? The answer was simple: she was overbuying items.

Now, I’m all for buying quantities of items if it’s more economical or time-saving and you have the space to do so, but I am NOT in favor of buying quantities of items if they end up occupying space in your home that you can not afford to spare. Every possession is a responsibility that requires management – yes, even boxes of cereal and paper towels! –and, at a certain point, excess can end up creating stress, clutter and disorganization. For our ancient ancestors, food and other essentials were scarce and whoever had the most had the best chance of surviving. While we may still be hard wired to think the way our ancestors did, fortunately, such is not the case today, especially here in NYC, the city that never sleeps with its 24-hour bodegas, supermarkets and drugstores. You can buy almost anything you want or need at any hour of the night or day.

Is storing a few boxes of cereal or paper towels in your clothes closet a tragedy? Obviously not, but it can be a slippery slope that fosters the creation of clutter and disorganization over time. And, once “creep” starts, it can be difficult to stop. Before you know it, items start creeping into all sorts of places they don’t belong and, eventually, you can loose track of what is where. That leads to buying duplicates of items you know you have but can’t find, which creates clutter and wastes money.

Like most things in life, it’s a matter of balance. You need to find a happy medium between enough and too much. My suggestion is to let your items’ containers determine how much to buy. If you’ve only got half a shelf in a cabinet to store cereal, then don’t buy more than will comfortably fit on that shelf. If you keep paper towels in a basket under your sink, then don’t buy more than will fit in the basket. Using the container in which an item is stored as your guide will naturally and sensibly help you know how much to buy and how often to shop. I also strongly suggest that you make a shopping list before you go out to shop and stick to it. If you do, you have a good chance of staying lean, preventing “creep and staying organized.