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" One late-summer Sunday evening, as I was unloading the dishwasher, I felt overwhelmed by a familiar but surprising emotion: I was hit by an intense wave of homesickness. Homesick \u2014 why? Perhaps the hint of some scent, or the quality of the light, had triggered a long-forgotten memory; I didn&amp;#039;t know. Yet even though I stood in my own kitchen, with my family in the next room \u2014 where Jamie, my husband, watched golf on television while Eliza and Eleanor, my daughters, played restaurant \u2014 suddenly I missed them terribly. &amp;quot;May I offer you some dessert this evening?&amp;quot; I could hear Eleanor asking, in her best waitress voice. &amp;quot;We have apple, blueberry, and pumpkin pie.&amp;quot; I glanced into the next room, where I could see the tops of the girls&amp;#039; heads; as usual, they were both wearing their straight brown hair in long, messy ponytails, and Eleanor sported a crooked waitress cap. What was this yearning I felt? I was homesick, I realized with a funny nostalgia, for the here and now: Jamie and I, with our two girls under our roof, our parents strong and busy, two little nephews just learning to talk and play, everyone healthy despite a few long-standing medical concerns, and no disaster looming except the woes of sixth grade. Suddenly, the idea of home exploded in my mind. &amp;quot;Home!&amp;quot; I exulted as I put the last mug on the shelf. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll start another happiness project, and this time I&amp;#039;ll focus on home!&amp;quot; My mind began to race with ideas. For the nine months of the school year, September through May, I vowed, I&amp;#039;d strive to make home more homey. First, I&amp;#039;d address basic tasks: I should make sure that we had some working flashlights and a fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink \u2014 things like that. But beyond those rudimentary steps, what should I do? &amp;quot;Order is Heaven&amp;#039;s first law,&amp;quot; wrote Alexander Pope. The quote popped into my head, and I thought about how surprising but inescapable the inverse relationship between happiness and clutter is. For me \u2014 as for most of us \u2014 fighting clutter is a never-ending battle; although I&amp;#039;d labored to clear clutter as part of my first happiness project, I wanted to find additional strategies to stop its insidious progress. When I know exactly where to find the things I&amp;#039;m looking for, and I can easily fit a letter into a folder or a towel onto the shelf, I have a comforting (if illusory) sense of being more in control of my life generally. Eliminating clutter makes the burden of daily life feel lighter. Inspired by William Morris&amp;#039;s rousing call to &amp;quot;Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,&amp;quot; I resolved to go shelf by shelf, then drawer by drawer and closet by closet, to consider each of our possessions. Did one of us use it or love it? Would we replace it if it were broken or lost? If so, was it in the right place? As I walked around the apartment, I tried to see it with fresh eyes \u2014 the way I see it just before guests arrive or after we&amp;#039;ve returned from a week&amp;#039;s vacation. I noticed the dusty glass of the sconces, the fingerprints on the doorjambs, the broken knob in the bathroom, the empty cereal box in the fridge (for reasons lost in the mists of time, we store our cereal in the refrigerator). I didn&amp;#039;t expect to find much \u2014 but when I really looked, I saw a shocking number of things that had been plunked down in the wrong place, sometimes for years. For instance, four years ago, to listen to a hypnosis tape, I&amp;#039;d pulled out my old-fashioned tape-playing Walkman. After I&amp;#039;d finished, I&amp;#039;d absentmindedly set it on top of some books on a bedroom shelf. It was still there, exactly where I&amp;#039;d left it. All around my house, I saw misplaced or unused objects, invitations to dive in and begin my new happiness project. But in any serious battle against clutter, I always start in the same place: my clothes closet. Nothing makes me feel more organized, and when a friend once confided, &amp;quot;I cleaned out our closets, and I feel as though I&amp;#039;ve lost 10 pounds,&amp;quot; I knew exactly how she felt. Fortunately, my mother was coming to town. I have a blind eye for fashion, but she has a beautiful sense of style. Hanger by hanger, I tried on practically everything in my closet for her. Did it still look good? When was the last time I&amp;#039;d worn it? Realistically, would I wear it again? &amp;quot;This white shirt \u2014 I like it, but I&amp;#039;m worried that I&amp;#039;ll stain it,&amp;quot; I told my mother as we began. &amp;quot;Wear everything as much as you can,&amp;quot; she advised. &amp;quot;Wear it out! It&amp;#039;s not doing any good hanging in your closet. And instead of wearing the same few things over and over, try to wear all your clothes.&amp;quot; Great advice. Next:   Sorting through my clothes and having an orderly, organized closet gave me the energy and enthusiasm to tackle other jobs. As I worked my way through our apartment, I adopted several strategies to make the exercise more effective: Clean as you go. When I found stale cornflakes in a silverware drawer, or a clump of toothpaste dried onto the medicine-cabinet shelf, I took the time to clean up instead of making the empty promise &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll deal with that later.&amp;quot; Abandon a project. One very effective way to complete a project is to abandon it. A source of clutter in my apartment \u2014 and, worse, in my mind \u2014 was the uncomfortable presence of unfinished projects. While going through our toy closet, I spotted a kit for making a miniature mountain scene that Eliza and I had planned to build together. In the store, it had looked fun, but we&amp;#039;d opened the box to find several closely printed pages of confusing instructions. &amp;quot;This looks hard,&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d said, feeling defeated. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll do it another day.&amp;quot; There it had sat for months, opened but untouched, a reproach. Now I removed the useful materials, added them to our art supplies, and threw away the box. Buy what you need. I often delayed buying things, thinking Maybe we don&amp;#039;t really need this or I&amp;#039;ll buy this some other time. And when I did buy, I bought as little as possible. I&amp;#039;d get one bottle of contact lens solution at a time. I resisted things with highly specific functions, such as a computer case or rain boots. Instead of using a ladylike toiletries kit, I&amp;#039;d reuse a resealable plastic bag. Then I suffered needless annoyance because I didn&amp;#039;t have what I needed or was using something that wasn&amp;#039;t exactly right for the task. If it&amp;#039;s broken, let it go. Why was it so hard to admit that something \u2014 our defective toaster, Eliza&amp;#039;s frog clock, three crippled umbrellas, the cracked vase \u2014 was broken? Ditto with tech gadgets we&amp;#039;d replaced yet of which, inexplicably, we&amp;#039;d also kept the broken or outmoded version. I also tossed things that seemed potentially useful but somehow never had gotten used, such as an oversize water bottle and a complicated corkscrew. Same thing for duplicates \u2014 how many spare glass jars could we use? Use your good things up. Things I wanted to save, I often never used at all. What&amp;#039;s the point of fancy bath gel if it never leaves the container? A friend confided ruefully, &amp;quot;I saved my expensive truffle oil so long that it spoiled in the bottle.&amp;quot; Go ahead, use things \u2014 even your nicest things \u2014 up. I&amp;#039;ve often heard that happiness is having less. But as I cleared clutter, I learned that happiness is not having less or more. Happiness is wanting \u2014 and using \u2014 what I have. No matter how nicely organized, useless things make clutter. If you&amp;#039;re not going to use it, pass it along, give it away, or throw it away \u2014 but don&amp;#039;t keep it. It was time, for example, to give away the rice cooker I&amp;#039;d given Jamie for his last birthday. He loved to cook, and I&amp;#039;d thought it was a brilliant idea for a present, but he never used it. Ditto for items introduced under the Grandparent Privilege. Just as the grandparents set their own rules for bedtime, snacks, and TV-watching, they got to buy whatever they wanted for Eliza and Eleanor. Through the girls, my mother-in-law indulged her secret love for solar-powered prisms, sets of miniature colored pencils, and the like. These things were fun, but had to be rounded up regularly lest they spread into every corner. Next:   However, I felt a powerful connection to sentimental things I associated with my daughters. Occasionally, getting rid of a childhood relic was a joy \u2014 but more often, I felt a sense of loss. Eliza didn&amp;#039;t care about Mr. Chicken anymore, and Eleanor would never use her beloved purple sippy cup again. Both girls had outgrown the mermaid and Dorothy costumes that had seen so much wear. But what should I do with these objects? I&amp;#039;d better decide what to keep \u2014 now, I reasoned. The longer I held on to things, the more sentiment I would attach to them, and I couldn&amp;#039;t keep every toy or book my girls had ever loved. (And not only toys and books: On one shelf-by-shelf expedition, I unearthed a tube of Baby Orajel left over from teething days, and found it surprisingly hard to toss this artifact of babyhood.) Some things I would never give up. Eliza&amp;#039;s first pair of glasses, with the bright blue-and-yellow frames. The &amp;quot;Candyland&amp;quot; shoes that Eleanor had worn so often. The mermaid costume. But how would I organize and protect these things? Then it hit me: Start a memory box for each girl. While considering whether to keep items as mementos, I noticed that when I consciously permitted myself to save a particular thing, I was able to get rid of more stuff; because I knew I&amp;#039;d saved one Polly Pocket doll and dress so we&amp;#039;d never forget that long era, I was able to get rid of the rest of our hoard. Carefully preserving a few pieces of artwork meant that I didn&amp;#039;t have to keep every drawing. Also, although it usually pained me to relinquish toys and books outgrown by the girls, I was able to surrender them cheerfully if they were going to Jack, my sister&amp;#039;s adorable baby; I sent him two big boxes of board books and the plastic shopping cart, filled with plastic food, that he&amp;#039;d loved during his visit. Knowing that Jack would enjoy these things eased my sense of loss. I became more cautious about what I acquired. I turned down conference swag (coffee mugs, T-shirts, tote bags, etc.). I ignored bargain-buying opportunities. I told a friend about my shelf-by-shelf exercise, and she nodded. &amp;quot;Oh, I know the feeling,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;My apartment is packed with junk. [True. And not only that \u2014 I happened to know that she had three storage units.] One of these days, I just have to get organized.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Well,&amp;quot; I suggested cautiously, &amp;quot;you might try getting rid of stuff first. Then you won&amp;#039;t have to organize it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What do you mean?&amp;quot; she asked in a suspicious tone. &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t actually need those papers, you can toss them instead of filing them. If you never wear a lot of your clothes, you can give them to Goodwill, and then you don&amp;#039;t have to find room for them in your closets.&amp;quot; I didn&amp;#039;t mention her storage units. Some depths are better left unplumbed. &amp;quot;Oh, I use most of my things,&amp;quot; she assured me. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t need to get rid of much. I just need to buy some supplies so I can have a better system.&amp;quot; I didn&amp;#039;t trust myself to answer. No surprise, I&amp;#039;ve noticed that it&amp;#039;s the people with the worst clutter problems who have the instinct to run to buy complicated hangers, elaborate drawer compartments, or color-coded plastic boxes. Organizing supplies can be wonderfully helpful \u2014 as long as they actually create more order with necessary objects and don&amp;#039;t merely enable us to jam more clutter into place. As I went shelf by shelf, I worked through a quick checklist: Do we use it? Do we love it? As I applied the checklist, I recognized the important difference between something that wasn&amp;#039;t used and something that was useless. Eliza didn&amp;#039;t use her tiny animal ink stamps anymore, and I didn&amp;#039;t use the gorgeously bright vintage paper hats that my mother had given me \u2014 and yet these things were precious in their way. I wanted my home to be filled with objects of symbolic and sentimental attraction as well as practical value. Some things kept their place. There&amp;#039;s a useful term from the world of cooking: mise en place, French for &amp;quot;everything in its place.&amp;quot; Mise en place describes the preparation done before starting the actual cooking, such as chopping, measuring, and gathering ingredients and implements. Mise en place ensures that once a cook has started, there&amp;#039;s no need to run out to the store or search for a sifter. Mise en place is preparation, but it&amp;#039;s also a state of mind. As I cleared clutter, I felt a growing sense of peace. Nothing is more satisfying than a home that works easily and well. Reprinted from Happier at Home, copyright 2012 by Gretchen Rubin. Published by Crown Archetype, a division of Random House, Inc. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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