Ten is a disaster. One is a perfectly spotless house. “This is a 4,” pronounces Pam Young, dressed in her down-to-work denim. Peggy Jones, her sister and colleague in today’s rating, nods in agreement.
The Slob Sisters is their name.
Wading through disorganized, paper-strewn, pile-ridden homes and teaching their brother and sister slobs how to clean up their acts is their game.
In September, the Home section sponsored the Project CHAOS contest. (CHAOS being the Slob Sisters’ acronym for Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome, because the house is too messy.) We invited readers to tell on themselves, to tell us about the mess under their own roof and to focus on one room in particular.
The prize: a day of reckoning with the Slob Sisters.
Seventy-one individuals, a class from Lemont High School and the Elm Creek 6th Grade from Maple Grove, Minn., confessed their slovenly ways to us in letter form.
We chose Ann Fisher of Oak Park as the grand-prize winner, not because she was the top slob, but because she best represents Most Of Us.
Most Of Us are well-intentioned cleaners who have let things slip. The visible mess in our homes may not be all that bad. That’s because Most Of Us are magicians, able to cram, jam and stuff a heap-load of stuff inside a pencil-size drawer.
But inside our closets and cupboards, Stuff lurks. Stuff grows. And we live in fear of Stuff swallowing us up.
“Last night I couldn’t find the checkbook,” Fisher, a working mother of two, admits. Or the $1,300 in matured savings bonds, or the extra set of car keys.
The Sisters, who arrived at Fisher’s house at 8:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, were unruffled by the confession.
“Before we got organized, we used to lie on our couches, look at the ceiling and wish we lived up there, because it was the only place that was clutter-free,” says Young, a self-professed “reformed slob.” The Sisters, who hail from Washington State and were in the Chicago area for a home improvement show, have been clean for 20 years and have authored a number of books on the subject, including their how-to manual “Get Your Act Together” (HarperPerennial, $11).
“Your drawers–they are constipated. We have to free that,” says Jones, who has just finished poking around Fisher’s house. Fisher shares it with Bill, her husband of 26 years; son Ed, 15, and sometimes her daughter Betsy, 20, who is mostly away at college.
“It is called being organized from the inside-out,” Jones continues. “It (the mess) has been pushed into things, hidden. But when it is clean from the inside-out, it is a different feeling. It is a liberating feeling.”
Here’s Fisher’s current feeling about her dining room, the disaster room which won her this day-with-the-Sisters: “Our dining room. Take it. Please,” she begged with powerfully few words.
There was more:
“The room (which is all of maybe 13-by-13-feet but unfortunately opens right up into the living room) also has the computer, all of Ed’s trumpet music (loose on the floor), three trumpets, two telephones, a piano and more music than will fit in the bench, a built-in china cabinet with drawers so full you can’t open them, three more CD cases, several hundred more floppy disks (mostly without labels)) a red nose flute, a five foot tall orange tree grown from a seed Ed planted when he was 4, a dozen African violets, an unattractive rubber plant. . . .”
You got it. It’s more than a special-occasion room. Fisher calls her dining room-from-hell “grand central station.” She’s OK with that, she confesses to the Sisters.
Her goal is to make this working room work better, says Fisher, a legal services attorney who labors 55 to 60 hours a week and who would love to hire a housekeeper–if surfaces were clear enough to make it worthwhile.
Fisher tells the Slob Sisters she wants to clear out the clutter in the room, turn the built-in cabinets into a pretty display area for her serving pieces and turn the built-in drawers into a desk space for herself.
The theory
There is a peanut-gallery today: three Project CHAOS runners-up who were rewarded with the opportunity to observe the Slob Sisters in action.
That method has been refined and refined again during the Sisters’ 20 years of reform, which they believe distinguishes them from other organizational specialists. They were not born organized. They have lived the pitfalls of messy people.
Their theory is simple: You simply have too much stuff.
Their technique for purging is called “de-junking,” and it is quasi-scientific.
You get to keep 10 percent of just about everything you currently have–the best 10 percent of all decorative objects in your home, the best 10 percent of all toys, the best 10 percent of all family treasures, love letters, children’s artwork.
What that really means is that you must be prepared to get rid of as much as 90 percent.
Of course, the rule does not apply to important records and financial information.
And of course, the percentages are arbitrary. If you are already pretty streamlined, you will not need to do nearly as much purging. But for most CHAOS sufferers, letting loose of 75 to 90 percent is the right percentage, according to the Sisters.
Where to begin
The Slob Sisters have choreographed the process of de-junking, knowing that disorganized souls often dart all over the house in a frantic (and ultimately, ineffective) attempt to clean.
“You start in the room that bothers you most,” says Young.
You start with closets, cupboards and drawers. “We hated that thought when we were starting,” says Jones. But “it will open up a lot of answers to a lot of other things.”
You move from top to bottom (top shelf or drawer to bottom) and then you move clockwise around the room.
Now, here’s the kicker: You gut the drawer or shelf in question, one drawer or shelf at a time.
“We will take every single thing out and we will dust. You will handle every object, and you will make a decision–right today, right now,” says Jones, with Fisher in tow.
Fisher (and anybody trying this method) gets four options–and only four.
She can:
1. Throw whatever it is away.
2. Give it away, either to a charitable organization or future garage sale.
3. Store it (meant for seasonal or seldom-used items).
4. Put the item away.
The throw-away stuff goes in 30-gallon trash bags. The other items are placed in a box meant for storage, or another for donation/selling or a third for items that will be put away later.
Rules are rules
The Slob Sisters have several rules:
– Once you touch an object, you cannot put it back down without making a decision, without putting it in one of the designated boxes or trash bag.
– If you decide to give something away, you give it away in the condition it is in. You cannot wash it or mend it. You are only setting yourself up for failure.
– Set a timer at 15-minute intervals to keep yourself focused and paced. Work for just an hour at a time–an hour a day, an hour a week, depending on your schedule.
After an hour, deliver the items in the put-away box to where they belong in the house, or put them back in the spot you just cleaned. (The Sisters estimate that after every hour of cleaning, you will spend 10 minutes in putting things away.)
If your store-it and giveaway boxes are not full, save them until the next round of cleaning.
Decisions, decisions
“My problem is not wanting to throw anything away. How do you get over that?” asks Ruth Fitzwater, our runner-up from Highland, Ind.
The Sisters insist letting go isn’t that big a deal. Remind yourself that the clutter is clogging up your life, says Jones. And with each object you hestitate on, drill yourself with these questions: When did you use it last? Will use you it tomorrow? Next week? Next month? In six months?
The answer will be clear.
“It’s fun to find out who you are, what you want and don’t want to keep,” says Young.
The “real you,” continues Jones, “gets buried in the stuff that comes to you, stuff that is given to you, the stuff that you might have had good intentions about, but couldn’t pull off.”
Fisher discovered she couldn’t pull off her attempt to be The Party-Giver.
Out went 16 dusty bottles of alcohol, bought for a party in 1979 and never opened again, and eight fancy liquer glasses, which were never used. “We don’t drink,” she laughs.
Other assorted “outs,” bound for charity or her neighborhood’s block sale: highball glasses; silver bowls; a crystal water pitcher; two champagne glasses; a green ceramic bowl that reminded Fisher of her Grandma’s set (but even Grandma said she never owned anything of the sort). Fisher never used any of them.
To the garbage: papers galore; kids’ school pictures (that were not favorites); ashtrays; expired coupons; old keys; old Christmas cards; pieces of earrings.
In the end, Fisher filled five, 30-gallon trash bags and her ration of designated boxes.
And in the end, the dining room was clean. The cabinets and drawers were clutter-free and organized the way Fisher wanted them.
Says Fisher: “I always thought I had to move to have this much free space again.”
… AND ANOTHER THING ON CHAOS
The Slob Sisters speak out on:
Junk mail: “Junk mail for us never gets into the house. It goes (directly, unopened) into the recycling bin.”
Junk drawers: “We lost our junk drawer privileges. It turns into a junk room, then a junk end of the house.”
Coupons: “Here’s how you decide (whether to keep clipping). If you pick into your stash of coupons and any of them is expired, it is not successful. It also is a weight on your mind.”
It also is time-consuming. It also promotes piling of papers in your house. You lose your coupon-cutting privileges for one year.
Burned candles: “We’ve seen used birthday candles that somebody put in a Ziploc bag. When would you ever put candles back on somebody’s cake? Used candles are not pretty, and the whole point is to set up that beautiful table with new candles.” Throw them away.
Memorabilia: “We think God gave us memory, so we don’t have to dust the memorabilia.”
ARE YOU A SLOB?
If you aren’t certain whether you are or aren’t a CHAOS sufferer, go through the Slob Sisters’ checklist of telltale traits. If you possess most of these symptoms, make sure you read all of the accompanying story.
The good
– Fun-loving, spontaneous, interested in many things
– Good conversationalis
– Optimistic, live for the moment
The bad
– Struggling and frustrated with keeping up
– Late, overdrawn and overcommitted
– Have a sense that you could be more, do more
-DE-JUNKING SUPPLIES
The Slob Sisters believe in keeping it simple. The following is what you’ll need to get on the road to organization.
– 30-gallon trash bags
– Piggy bank for loose coins
– Timer
– Two shoe boxes–one for photographs, the other for cassette tapes
– Pen and scratch pad to note follow-up tasks
– At least four produce boxes–the kind with deep lids
– File folders
– Your usual cleaning supplies
THE FACTS
The Slob Sisters cometh
What: “This Whole House: A New Reason to Come Home,” a five-hour retreat for women only (based on the Slob Sisters’ upcoming book) that will explore the spiritual side of homemaking
Where: Marriott’s Lincolnshire Resort, 10 Marriot Drive, Lincolnshire
When: Saturday
Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Admission: $75, includes lunch
Call: 800-238-8840; reservations required
