Why we overlook an obvious solution

It breaks our brains, but it's the easy answer.

A client hired me a few months ago to restore sanity to her bedroom (plug for my 1:1 consults). Her closet was bursting with clothes, shoes, and accessories. In the small room she had squeezed a shoulder-height dresser and an IKEA PAX wardrobe, as well as bedside tables with drawers. As we inched around the room, she asked me if I thought getting under-bed storage boxes would help.

This is a really common scenario: lots of things and not enough places to put them. As I discussed last week in my gentle and not at all tyrannical style, people typically solve this by buying storage furniture. Today we will unearth why that is.

And discuss a different solution.

What are we supposed to do with our clothes, if not add places to store them? Live with piles everywhere? The solution is dead simple, but as you’ll soon learn, humans are wired with a cognitive bias that prevents us from seeing it.

This client needs to own fewer clothes. The solution is to subtract the stuff.

People often look at me dumbstruck when I break it to them: shrink your wardrobe to fit the space available. Your clothes cannot be allowed to expand beyond the space you have, or else you’ll never be free of clutter.

This is not in any way a moral judgment. I do not care how many clothes you own, unless said clothes are creating chaos in your life. I just report the physics: your collection needs to fit the space allotted, otherwise the collection will not fit.

So simple, yet so upsetting, right? That’s because our culture has evolved norms that it’s fine and expected to have 500 pieces of clothing. It’s your house’s fault they don’t fit into the closet, so if anything what you need is a bigger house. Or more furniture to fit your clothes. Solve through purchasing!

Image from Pexels

But instead of blaming your space what if we blame your wardrobe (or if blaming isn’t your jam, shift focus), and concentrate our effort in making it smaller? Interestingly, this is not the solution our brains are inclined to find…