Are you overwhelmed by clutter? There’s a really good chance that one simple tip can help you. Take a look at what’s actually in your clutter. Are your empty organizing containers part of the problem? Sometimes the organizing bins are the clutter!

It’s very common that piles of clutter are storing something as valuable as life itself …air.

Um, the thing is, it’s not your job to store air, so you are off the hook.

Instead, let the air roam free, and recycle the cardboard boxes and paper bags. Consolidate those three mostly-empty bins of nearly the same thing. Recycle the plastic bins, or use them to, you know, store actual stuff. Put the pretty bins on a shelf or in a closet, and get something, anything, a little more organized. Because the bins on the floor were not the look you were going for.

This is a much better look for your home office/ living room/ bedroom. You can see in the far right background that we’ve got a small batch of donations in the other room batched to head off to a donation drop off point, we moved the file cabinet from the basement up to the office so it could actually do it’s job and get papers off the floor. I know, I know, you don’t love to file. But it sure looks better than the alternative, right?

A few of the empty containers were redeployed onto shelves, and the rest of the bins holding toys and such were taken to the playroom.

Paper bags and cardboard boxes do not belong in your living space. Not if you are trying to get organized.

Look! Carpet! Yay!

Most of the organizing magic here was just deciding not to hang onto empty bins “just in case.”  Those empty bins and half-empty containers needed to go.

The next time you find yourself keeping containers for “just in case”, ask yourself what you want more: do you really want to be storing air, or do you want to see the floor?

Decide to organize.