I don’t know about you, but I tend to spend a lot of time in the morning looking at my closet and not being able to figure out what to wear. And not infrequently, even after I have managed to choose, I take off the skirt or top I selected and swap it for another that feels like a slight improvement. Picking the day’s outfit has definitely gotten harder over the years, and I’ve been attributing it lately to a combination of aging and insufficient early-morning caffeine. I just turned 50, though, and I’m the kind of person who is naturally awake – and immediately chatty – when I get out of bed, so I knew at some level that it couldn’t be only those factors.

For the past five months, since my full-closet declutter, it has never taken more than a few seconds. I can see every option, and while they all look good, it is very easy to determine which I want. Several factors seem to be at play here.

First, of course, is the fact that there are so many fewer options. Six months ago, I was trying to decide between fifteen or more pairs of shorts. Now I’m down to nine (if all of my laundry is clean, which is almost never the case). Given that, even if I stay home all week and wear shorts every day, that feels like a more-than-enough set of options. And having picked one or the other of my remaining pairs of jeans shorts twice, I can see that I had too many “lounge” shorts I wasn’t wearing, but could use one more pair of good jeans shorts. I.e., not only do I know what I want to wear, I know what to buy (and what not to!)

Second, I am not getting bogged down by all the unconscious negative thoughts I didn’t realize I was experiencing. I’m not having my eyes catching on t-shirts that I don’t like, that no longer fit me, or that were never really my thing but that I couldn’t admit to, having just paid for them. Those all went to other people’s closets where they will be appreciated and worn, which also makes me feel lighter and less guilty (leaving me mental space to enjoy the tops that fit great, match my remaining shorts, and fit perfectly into a single drawer).

Third, my husband’s side of the closet, which, despite being a bit smaller than mine, has consistently, since we’ve moved into this house, been neater and better organized than mine, now looks to me like a disorganized mess. His shirts, which had seemed so accessible relative to my three-on-a-hanger skirts, are clearly not so easy to get to. When I scan his shelves, I spot multiple shirts that he hasn’t worn in years and that are just making it hard to see, and pull out, the few that he consistently puts on. (But, I promise myself, I will not take that on until I finish decluttering my stuff, which remains far and away the biggest clutter issue facing our household.)

Finally, my friends are jealous. I have been gleefully sharing pictures of my newly organized, lovely, accessible, attractive closet, and I suspect that I’ll soon be receiving requests to help them do the same with theirs.

If you’re like me, you have encountered a pile of old (sub your favorite “clothing” “books” “papers” “80s mementos”) and had the epiphany that the big grey bin you found at Home Depot would be the perfect solution to this disorder. All it needs is a label. Yay, mission accomplished!

Fast forward five, seven, ten, eighteen years. Big grey bin is beneath two boxes, has gathered a few cobwebs, the label is faded, and even if you can read it, you can’t remember what it is in there. And the thought of pulling it out from beneath those boxes, opening it, and sorting through the dozens of things inside that you know you don’t want is just too daunting. So you pretend it didn’t happen.

Now multiple that big grey bin situation by a lot. What do you have? A storage unit. I.e., a seemingly helpful tool for organizing and making space that, in reality, is a predatory force preying on us when we are most vulnerable.

That might be an exaggeration, but only a very slight one. Why are storage units four-letter words in my mind? 

ONE:
They get you when you’re down. Who rents storage units, and why? People who have accumulated more things than they can reasonably store in their homes, whether because they were talked into buying things they didn’t need, inherited things they don’t want or can’t use, and/or went through a major life event that made dealing with things too difficult. I.e., you were persuaded that the new couch was necessary and perfect, only to realize that you couldn’t quite afford it and now have no space for the furniture that was already there. When your parents died, you were in no shape to sort through their drawers, cabinets, closets, and boxes, so it went, mostly intact, right into this space. Your husband’s sister had to move in with her baby, pushing old kids’ clothes you had been meaning to sort and boxes of books you read in college into the storage unit. This might sound like help when you need it, until you consider that…

TWO:
They enable you to avoid healthy grieving and processing. Of course, you wouldn’t “grieve” the bad decision to buy the couch you didn’t really want, but by shoving the old one out of sight, you allow yourself to not confront the pattern and nip this forming habit in the bud. And while it’s natural not to be able to cope with sorting your parents’ clothing, needlepoints, sentimental but not-your-thing serving platters, and old love letters in the weeks and months after they passed, the storage unit has turned those into years in which you never fully processed and missed out on valuable opportunities to use and cherish the few items that do keep them alive for you (and that you really do want to pass on to your own kids). And you are building up resentment towards your sister-in-law because the monthly rent for that storage unit has gone up a ton, but you can’t tell her that. Leading to…

THREE:
They stealthily rack up bills that, cumulatively, would have enabled you to do so many other, better things. I read in another organizer’s blog post recently that her clients’ twenty-plus year storage unit, which was housing basically her parents’ entire apartment since they died, had cost them more over those two decades than they needed for a solid downpayment on a second vacation home. This is likely on the extreme end, but the practice storage units employ of giving you the first few months cheap, or even free, and then raising the rates over time, is no accident. Most of us would balk initially at the rate we pay a few years later without even noticing. And the convenient monthly or semi-annual automatic payments guarantee that we’ll overlook the bills we’re accruing and make them feel much smaller.

This is not to say that there’s no situation in which a storage unit is a good, or at least necessary, tool. But my strong advice to my clients is to treat it as such.

Know, going in, that it is a temporary resource. Lean on it in tough times – when you can’t and shouldn’t deal with sorting and processing – but don’t let that set of crutches become a cane or a wheelchair you don’t need. Your initial criteria for choosing a unit can help ensure these wiser, more cost-effective choices. Proximity is huge – if you can’t easily get to your unit, you’re a lot less likely to actually start the sorting process at the three-month mark you set for yourself. Take advantage of those initial first months’ for free offer. If you play this right, those are all you need. Then, when you have cleared that baby out (with my help, if needed) within the six-month trial period, take yourself out for a drink on the money you earned, and toast your stellar ability to make these rules work for you.

We all have a space in our home – a closet, cabinet, drawer, or box – that started out with a clear plan for what would go there, but over time has evolved into a somewhat random catch-all. As such, it’s one of those places that, as we go through our de-cluttering process, we avoid. It’s going to be too messy.

Our buffet is one of those places in our house. Now, to be clear, the buffet itself is fantastic in every way. Michael inherited it from a great-uncle in Los Angeles who had both money and great taste. It’s got a 1930s-1940s post-Art Deco feel, with warm honey-stained wood and funky etched round handles, and it’s solid as a rock. (As the poor guys who moved our stuff from our one-bedroom downtown delivered it, they realized how underpaid they were!) It fits perfectly in our small dining room, yet it holds a surprising amount of stuff. The latter, however, has become as much of a curse as a blessing over the nearly two decades we’ve been here.

It was initially the storage space for our “nice” dishes – a subtle white-grey-beige Villeroy and Boch leaf pattern that we fell in love with at someone’s dinner party – and our tablecloths and napkins. It made sense, then, that when my sister gave us a raclette grill for our wedding, the accessories would go in there, too. And once the kiddush cups and candlesticks and the lovely glass seder plate were stashed in the bottom drawer, it became a repository for any and all other things Jewish-holiday themed: the cute havdallah set and several candles, small silver tschotchkes that Michael’s great-aunt in Geneva sent home with him from winter visits there, and of course the requisite, and always-growing, pile of kippot (which really got out of hand when our daughters’ friends started to become bar and bat mitzvahs).

You probably recognize this pattern and are wincing a bit thinking of your own “buffet.” But I’m writing to tell you not to. Over the past two days, once I got past the reluctance to tackle this cluttered monster, I’ve experienced multiple pleasures.

First, of course, now that I’m becoming a pro at knowing what I will use and want to keep and what I won’t, I enjoy the feeling of sorting the plate, placemat, bowl, and cup “nos” into neat piles and then into a big box, where they can support families who are moving into their own homes for the first time. This also means that there’s now proper, non-cluttered space for the keepers. Second, and much more joyous, many of these items – both keepers and non-keepers – brought back wonderful memories.

One of the now five tablecloths was a wedding gift from my parents’ close friends, and we still comment every time we sit down to eat about the lovely, colorful Hungarian embroidery. It recently has company from a second hand-embroidered tablecloth that my mother-in-law and I discovered while cleaning out her linen closet, and that brings its own story to the buffet. The apron that Michael’s grandmother embroidered for him with all our names – including both dogs – needs Atticus’ name added to it, which I can do. The way-too-ornate-for-my-taste tea set that I inherited from my maternal grandmother – the ultimate “if it’s got gold on it I love it” grandma – has evolved into our Mothers’ Day tradition of serving fancy tea after a brunch of tea sandwiches, scones, and cookies. Without the set, I suspect the tradition, which has become a huge favorite, including among the dads, would not have happened. And as Michael and I sort through the various tschochkes we have accrued, we can consider which few of them we really love and want to hold on to, and find a place for them that isn’t the bottom drawer of the buffet, but a lovely spot where we can display and enjoy them every day.