The Clutter Fairy Weekly

Sometimes we make our lives harder by tying ourselves up in knots—confusing the problems we need to solve with our emotional responses to them. In episode #62 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for cutting through our emotional tangles to arrive at creative, practical solutions to clutter problems....

Shopping can be satisfying, fun, and even therapeutic. But “retail therapy” becomes a problem when it contributes to the clutter in our homes. In episode #61 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines the phenomenon of “retail therapy” and offers strategies for keeping balance and perspective in our shopping habits....

Spring in the northern hemisphere is right around the corner, bringing warmer days, more daylight, and fresh energy. In episode #60 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, looks at often-neglected areas of our homes and lives and offers pointers to help us spring forward in the coming weeks. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/t...

Tackling clutter is really two jobs: reducing the backlog of accumulated stuff and cultivating habits to keep the mess from getting worse. In episode #59 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers a dozen five-minute tasks to jump-start your clutter-prevention strategy, plus a pet-centered Weekly Tittle. We dedicated...

Addressing the clutter challenges that our viewers and listeners face is the heart and soul of our efforts, and neither snow nor ice nor burst pipes can slow us down for long. In episode #58 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, reports on the winter storm that paralyzed Texas last week and responds to comments and ques...

Containing the day-to-day accumulation of clutter while trying to reduce a backlog can feel like a juggling act. But like juggling, organizing isn’t magic—it’s a skillset you can learn. In episode #57 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, discusses setting priorities, one of the key skills for an aspiring “organizing ac...

Get Organized Month 2021 is now behind us. Are you running out of steam on your long-term organizing commitments? In episode #56 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for finding—or recovering—the motivation to keep your organizing projects and resolutions going strong. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcf...

We often talk about how clutter disrupts our comfort, productivity, enjoyment, and pride in our homes, but in some circumstances, it even becomes a threat to health and wellbeing. In episode #55 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, asks questions aimed at uncovering where clutter danger lurks in our homes and offers st...

No two people approach decluttering projects and tasks exactly the same way. In episode #54 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, discusses a variety of organizing styles and offers suggestions for identifying a decluttering workflow that fits your strengths and needs. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcfw054 The Clutter Fa...

The changing seasons of our lives require fresh approaches to the way we use and manage our homes. In episode #53 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, discusses the challenges of finding ourselves with an “empty nest”—and of children or elderly parents moving back into our spaces. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcfw053 T...

Food writer Craig Claiborne called cooking “child’s play and adult joy.” But a kitchen full of recipe clutter can drain all the joy from cooking. In episode #52 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for filtering and organizing your saved recipes. We also introduce a new “homework assignment” segment—a...

It’s hard to believe there are only two decluttering days left in this very, very long year! In episode #51 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers 10 quick ideas—in the form of a countdown, of course!—for making the most of the last fleeting moments of 2020. Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcfw051 The Clutter Fairy W...

Season’s greetings from The Clutter Fairy family to you and yours! In episode #50 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, expresses our holiday wish that you’ll set aside a moment for self-care during this season. We hope a peaceful pause will leave you in better health and spirits and more ready to give of yourself to th...

Our stuff becomes clutter when it stands in the way of other things that we want and need: relationships, fulfillment, comfort, safety, peace of mind. In episode #49 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explains how to leverage clutter challenges as the inspiration and starting point for setting goals and planning orga...

Does your to-do list shame you for what you haven’t accomplished instead of helping you manage your time and tasks? It’s easy to forget that the to-do list is supposed to work for you, not vice versa. In episode #48 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explores sources of task-management resistance and talks about rede...

One way to quiet the negative emotions that trouble us as we work to let go of clutter is to shift our focus to something more positive, like the thought of how our stuff might help someone else. In episode #47 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, suggests ways to lighten the clutter load during the giving season throu...

The most basic way to avoid a clutter problem—or to get control of the one you already have—is to stop accumulating stuff in the first place. By paying careful attention to our collecting habits, we can change our behavior to cut off the “fire hose” of new clutter. In episode #46 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, su...

The holidays mean family and fun, carols and candles, good food and gratitude, shining lights and festive spirits. But they also mean stress and burden if we overcommit, overspend, and overwhelm ourselves with fresh clutter. In episode #45 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, suggests lightening your load and brighteni...

What does it mean when we give something away or when we decide to hold onto things? In episode #44 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about ownership, gift-giving, and how our judgments of value impact our decision-making about what we keep and what we’re willing to let go. To read the list of statements prese...

Decisions about what we keep in our spaces are often influence by notions of value—especially monetary value. In episode #43 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, discusses definitions of value and factors that complicate our thinking about monetary value as it relates to the decluttering process. The Clutter Fairy Week...

Feeling sentimental about our stuff is a big reason that many of us keep more than we can manage. In episode #42 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines the rationalizations we use to hold on to things that we should logically let go and suggests an approach to decision-making that balances sentimental value with...

In previous episodes, we’ve explored the feedback loop of clutter and negative emotions. In episode #41 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines how living in clutter reflects negative emotional patterns, such as distraction, resistance, and avoidance of pain. She suggests how the decluttering process can serve as...

Are there things that are objectively clutter, or is clutter simply a matter of style? In episode #40 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explores the many criteria by which we may identify and categorize clutter for ourselves and the people with whom we share our spaces. The Clutter Fairy Weekly is a live webcast and...

Decluttering isn’t just a process—it can be a philosophy, a way of life. Our ongoing series, “A Decluttering Philosophy: Changing Our Relationship to Stuff,” examines the relationship with stuff from several angles. In episode #39 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, wraps up the series by looking for practical approac...

Decluttering isn’t just a process—it can be a philosophy, a way of life. Our ongoing series, “A Decluttering Philosophy: Changing Our Relationship to Stuff,” examines the relationship with stuff from several angles. In episode #38 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, asks ethical and environmental questions that can gu...