The Clutter Fairy Weekly

As New Year’s Eve approaches, we spend moments of self-reflection and inspiration coming up with lofty goals for next year. We set them…and then promptly forget them. In episode #101 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explains reasons why New Year’s resolutions fail more often than they succeed and suggests more effe...

Season’s greetings from The Clutter Fairy family to you and yours! In episode #100 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, thanks our clients, patrons, friends, family, viewers, and listeners for your generous support this year and wishes you a joyous and peaceful holiday season filled with love and light! The text of thi...

Sometimes the pressure of other activities and priorities means that we have to put organizing projects on hold—or at least in slow motion—and it can be hard to keep enthusiasm and momentum when the time comes to restart. In episode #99 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for keeping focus and commit...

It’s easy to get confused as you navigate the blurry borders between decluttering, organizing, and ticking off your routine cleaning and maintenance chores. In episode #98 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, clarifies the distinctions between clearing clutter, organizing, and tangential household tasks and offers stra...

Stuff becomes clutter when it stands in the way of our vision for what we want and need in our homes: relationships, fulfillment, comfort, peace of mind, and so on. In episode #97 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explains how to turn clutter obstacles into the starting points and motivation for setting concrete goa...

We’ve talked about how your home’s functions, the people who live there, and your most-loved belongings can contribute to a vision for a home that supports the life you want. In episode #96 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, integrates your values, dreams, and aspirations into the process of shaping a vision to clari...

Our homes tend to fill up with the artifacts and debris of our busy lives as much as by conscious choices that we’ve made, so they can come to represent a distorted view of our lives and our tastes. In episode #95 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, suggests designing a vision for your home to guide your decluttering...

The rise of fast fashion, the ease of online shopping, and the popularity of retail therapy have left many of us with closets and dressers stuffed to overflowing—sometimes with clothes that we’ve never even gotten around to wearing. In episode #94 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, discusses fresh ways to think about...

For most people, a clutter problem doesn’t spring up overnight—it’s the result of long-term habits of delaying decisions, ignoring minor messes, and accumulating new stuff faster than you eliminate old stuff. In episode #93 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about how to stem the flow of clutter at the source b...

Some of us love to shop, and stores and online retailers with stuff to sell know how to push our buttons to make the sale. But it’s easy for our spaces to get out of balance if we bring home more than we’re using up, giving away, or getting rid of. In episode #92 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about the eff...

Sooner or later, most of us find ourselves dealing with stuff left behind by loved ones, and inherited clutter presents some big, prickly emotional challenges. In episode #91 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, shares stories from the estate-clutter trenches and suggests ways to make the clearing process easier for yo...

Halloween is right around the corner, and before you can say Boo! , it’ll be time to run the annual rat race from Thanksgiving to New Year. In episode #90 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, focuses on streamlining the holiday season for you and your loved ones and offers simpler, less stressful, less-cluttered approa...

A lot of conflicting factors compete in our heads as we weigh whether to keep or let go of stuff. Thoughts and feelings about price, value, beauty, and sentiment struggle against harsh realities of space limitations, dust, time, and mobility. In episode #89 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines mental models th...

We’re getting a break from summer heat—time to get outdoors! For those of us who struggle with clutter, outside spaces can become blocked with junk instead of supporting our outdoor aspirations. In episode #88 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about the kinds of clutter that spill out of our homes and into our...

When we talk about collecting, we usually mean the deliberate accumulation of items in a narrow category, like shot glasses, postcards, or Beanie Babies. But sometimes we end up with a “collection” without even trying: a cupboard full of coffee mugs, 17 kinds of body wash, or enough wrapping paper to last the next 20 Decembers. In episode #87 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professiona...

Ancient wisdom tells us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But negative emotions and attitudes can make it hard to find that first step in our organizing process. In episode #86 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, shares simple techniques to short-circuit negative thinking, get unstuck, an...

Aging forces us to shift our thinking about many aspects of our lives, including our mobility, safety, comfort, and independence. In episode #85 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, considers the pros and cons of “aging in place” from an organizing perspective and offers strategies for preparing your home for the futur...

Children aren’t just small adults, and kid-related clutter presents a unique set of organizing issues. In episode #84 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for organizing children’s bedrooms and playrooms. And for our kid-free audience members, we’ll also talk about man-caves and she-sheds. Show notes:...

Change is inevitable, and changes in our lives and our habits can turn important stuff into clutter overnight. In episode #83 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines how change impacts our relationship to stuff and explores how to leverage the organizing process as a means to accept and adapt to change. Show note...

There are critical areas of your home where clutter seems to be drawn as if by a magnet. In episode #82 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explains why problematic spaces collect so much clutter and suggests strategies for trouble-shooting these special organizing issues. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcfw082 The Clut...

In conversations about clutter, we frequently return to the concept of creating a supportive environment—setting up conditions for success as you work toward your goals. One key condition for success is having the right tools and supplies at hand. In episode #81 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers tips for asse...

Vacation travel means stuffing a week or two of your life into one weight-limited suitcase—or at best, into the cargo space of a car. In episode #80 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers pointers for right-sizing your packing to prepare for stress-free vacation travel. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcfw080 The Clu...

Careful packing can save time and money and make or break your move, but how you unpack can set the tone of life in your new space for years. In episode #79 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for unpacking a recent move (or the remnants of an old one) to optimize the use and enjoyment of your new sp...

We’ve compared prioritizing projects to a juggling act, but with training and practice, decluttering can be as elegant as dancing. In episode #78 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers principles for setting organizing priorities to help you “choreograph” your work on a variety of spaces and projects. Show notes:...

We took the week off from our live show, but we’ve put together a bonus edition of our webcast and podcast to respond to your comments and questions. In special episode #77 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about clutter negotiations, e-mail bankruptcy, catch-and-release shopping trips, and why Gayle doesn’t n...