The Clutter Fairy Weekly

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...

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 #37 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, discusses habits—the routines or patterns of behavio...

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 #36 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about emotions—the positive ones that can supp...

Decluttering isn’t just a process—it can be a philosophy, a way of life. Our webcast series, “A Decluttering Philosophy: Changing Our Relationship to Stuff,” examines the relationship with stuff from several different angles, including positive and negative emotions, habits and behaviors, ethical and social questions, and practical approaches to change. In episode #35 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly,...

Do you dream of a world without paper? The idea of “going paperless” has been around for years, but many of us still struggle to avoid drowning in paper. There’s not a simple route to paperlessness. Paper comes from many sources, so it requires a multi-pronged solution. In episode #34 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texa...

Serious readers often collect books much faster than they can read them, and buying more books than you can read is not too different from accumulating any other kind of clutter. In episode #33 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about bringing the buying impulse into line with how much you actually read and exp...

Sooner or later, we lose interest in our recreational pursuits or we no longer have the time, energy, or physical capacity to pursue and enjoy them. After the thrill is gone, what was once essential equipment becomes nothing but clutter. In episode #32 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about how to think about...

The ever-changing definition of style constantly compels its devotees to buy the latest and greatest, and yesterday’s fashions get pushed aside. Unchecked, the compulsion inevitably leads to cluttered closets and overflowing drawers. In episode #31 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about how to take control of...

Are you a bargain-hunter? Do you keep your eyes open for coupons, Groupons, rebates, and specials? Here’s some shocking news: a bargain is only a bargain if you need what you’re buying. In episode #30 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks about how to shift your thinking to become a more conscious shopper and resi...

Collecting can be a fun and satisfying hobby. But the passionate pursuit of the “complete” collection can become a monster, gobbling up our time, money, and space. And collecting behavior extends beyond “collectibles” into excess accumulations of other kinds. In episode #29 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, talks ab...

How do you make sure that your project is moving forward? An important key to sustaining your momentum on organizing projects is maintaining awareness of how far you've already come. In episode #28 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers suggestions on ways to measure, track, and report your decluttering progr...