Conquering clutter

A South Portland woman tackles her home's overflow by
committing to getting rid of '365 Things in 365 Days.'

By MEREDITH GOAD/Staff Writer January 13, 2008

John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Julie Falatko of South Portland, here with her son, Eli, kept a journal detailing her yearlong effort to rid her home of clutter. Falatko admits it is a never-ending challenge, however, and says there are still a few cluttered areas in the house that need to be addressed, including the desk pictured behind her. Her most ironic giveaway of the year: several books on decluttering.

John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Julie Falatko’s sons, Henry (right) and Eli, pick up toys in the boys’ bedroom. Falatko spent the past year trying to declutter her house by getting rid of something every day. But she admits the task is especially hard with growing kids at home.

LESS MESS: HERE'S HOW

HERE ARE SOME creative ways to dispose of clutter, courtesy of

1-800-Got-Junk?

-- Donate your full-back TV to a college or university dorm

student, or take it to an e-waste recycling business such as End

of Life Electronics in South Portland.

-- Offer your leftover Christmas wrappings to a local art teacher

or craft program for kids.

-- Staples accepts computers, monitors, laptops, desktop

printers and fax machines regardless of brand or whether it was

purchased at the store. Data is destructed and parts

disassembled for recycling. There are four locations in the

Portland area.

-- Start a cell-phone drive in your community. There are more

than 150 million unused cell phones sitting in Americans'

homes. Phone Fund (www.phonefund.com) refurbishes them

and

resells them to secondary markets. The proceeds help schools,

churches and other organizations who wish to raise funds for

their projects. The shipping is covered by the organization.

-- The Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Portland

redistributes furniture, appliances, toys and clothing to needy

people in the community.

-- If your athletic equipment is in reusable condition, think of

donating it to a local community group such as the Boys Scouts

or Boys and Girls Club. Other programs take sports-specific

equipment. World Vision's "Get a Kick Out of Sharing" program

collects new and "gently used" soccer balls for children in

poverty-stricken countries.

-- Fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury and cannot be

thrown out with regular trash. Stores across the state collect and

recycle these light bulbs through Efficiency Maine's compact

fluorescent lamp recycling program. To find a location near you,

visit www.efficiencymaine.com.

-- Riverside Recycling takes used tires and turns them into

asphalt.

-- Public libraries, schools and used book stores are looking for

children's books and other reading materials. Call ahead to see if

they're accepting.

SOUTH PORTLAND — Julie Falatko walked to the little table where her 2-year-old son Eli was playing with his toy trucks. She picked up an object that looked something like a fan. It was a white piece of paper stamped with a purple lizard and glued to a Popsicle stick.

It's the kind of preschool art project that can be found in every family's household, the sort of thing that eventually gets tucked into a shoebox in a closet or left in a box in the basement for the next 30 years.

"I'm not going to claim to be clutter-free, because with kids, there's no way that you can do it," Falatko said. "Like, here's this. Where will this end up? It's nice, but it's not like some great artistic achievement of his. It's something he stamped out and pasted onto a Popsicle stick."

Falatko has given a lot of thought to clutter over the past year. Literally, 365 days' worth of thought.

The 36-year-old mother of two spent all of 2007 getting rid of household clutter using a method she calls "365 Things in 365 Days." She kept a journal about it, too, recording every half- empty bottle of shampoo and old knitting magazine that she tossed.

"February 6, 2007

56. A National Geographic from 2000.

March 18, 2007

70. Threw away four jars of home canned artichoke puree from 1999. Gross."

Clearing the clutter can sometimes seem overwhelming, but we all try -- especially this time of year, when New Year's resolutions are still fresh in the mind. The National Association of Professional Organizers has dubbed January "Get Organized Month."

Bill Paesano, general manager of 1-800-Got-Junk?, a residential and commercial junk removal company that services Maine and most of New Hampshire, said the beginning of February brings lots of clutter junkies and hoarders "out of the closet."

Paesano recently cleaned out a home in Portsmouth that contained 35 years' worth of clutter. It took 10 open-bed trucks to haul everything away.

"We took out literally three trucks just of books," Paesano said. "It's amazing the stuff people hold onto."

Falatko's house was nowhere near that bad, but by December 2006, she had begun to tire of the seemingly constant clutter. A shed was so full of stuff that it couldn't be opened without everything falling out. There was work to be done in the attic, but Falatko and her husband, Dave, dreaded moving all the boxes that had been stored up there.

There was a set of permanent markers Falatko kept hiding from her kids, who somehow kept finding them.

"There were all these little things, I didn't know why we had them in the first place," Falatko said. "The thought of having more things come into our house (at Christmas) was making me so anxious."

SETTING GROUNDRULES

The first entry in Falatko's journal reads: My hope is that by getting rid of all these things that we don't use, I'll open our life up to more. More time so that I won't be cleaning around all the things. More mental freedom without the closets full of things.

First, Falatko came up with some rules:

She decided she didn't have to throw out exactly one thing a day for a year because if she had a yard sale, that might not work. But she wanted to average one thing a day.

She had to have owned an object for at least three months to count it as clutter.

She did not allow herself to count as separate items things that more logically made up a bundle. For instance, if she wanted to sell 20 cloth diapers on eBay, they counted as one item, not 20. "I didn't want to give myself any areas to cheat," she said.

The first thing to go was an envelope for some American Express Gift Cheques the family received when Eli was born. It had been tacked to the bulletin board in the kitchen for 10 months.

Other items tossed on Jan. 1: Eli's saggy crib bumper and a Curious George trading card cut out of a magazine. Falatko's oldest son, 4-year-old Henry, had tired of the trading card, but it still found its way into the toy basket.

Falatko got rid of 52 items in the first month. She found, like many people, that her home had clutter "hot spots."

There was that little-used kitchen cabinet where she discovered one no-bake lasagna sheet and a partially empty container of teff, "which I bought thinking it would be Our New Grain, but which we obviously haven't taken to eating."

There was the "oil and vinegar cupboard" above the stove. Falatko found three bottles of rice vinegar, two bottles of cooking wine, and several other bottles that were either unused or empty.

Some of the items Falatko tossed had sentimental value and were more difficult to part with, such as the wedding veil, wedding gown crinoline and wedding corset she discovered casually stored in a box in the garage. Falatko soon realized that if she had really cared about the veil and other items, she would have stored them properly.

She also remembered that she still has the earrings and shawl she wore on her wedding day to pass on to future generations, and that made it easier to get rid of the other things.

"Most of the time, things that (people) think have value to them don't," said Bill Paesano of 1-800-Got-Junk? "We see a lot of people who keep stuff in storage facilities forever. You'd be surprised, when we go to the storage facility, everything's going. Nothing stays."

Other items Falatko found were obviously junk, but she had no problems getting other people to snap them up like candy when she posted them on Internet sites such as Freecycle, Craig's List or eBay. She even got someone to take a collection of used bras of different sizes.

Baskets are an iconic form of clutter -- everyone has them gathering dust in various corners of the home. Falatko posted five baskets on Freecycle and got 15 responses from people essentially begging her for them. Same thing with a cat hair mitten.

Yes, a cat hair mitten.

"I think there are probably people on Freecycle who have their own clutter problems," Falatko said.

Her most ironic giveaway: Several books on decluttering.

The item that makes you want to go "ewww!": A pair of stretched-out Speedos.

Perhaps the weirdest moment in this grand experiment was when Falatko's cat, Peatie, died in March. Falatko recorded the internal debate she was having in her journal:

"I did have a brief moment wondering whether I could add Peatie to the 365 things list (has this whole project made me ruthless?) but since I wasn't really wanting to get rid of him, I'm not going to put him on."