This isn’t a book review, so much as a shameless plug for my own book. I haven’t finished reading this month’s book yet – real life interfered with plans – so I’m referring to The Clutter Book: When You Can’t Let Go instead.

I’ve noticed that people are wowed by “Before and After” photos of cluttered spaces and often look at them as evidence of great work. What does the picture show, though, except that the clutter is gone? Has it been moved out of the frame or into a different space in the house?

I worked with a client yesterday on a severely congested garage and although we didn’t get rid of anything except some empty boxes, we made a huge difference in the space flow. How? By moving things into places that made sense.

It’s nowhere near ready for a magazine photo shoot. There’s still no room to park a car (they’re storing an apartment’s worth of things for a child for a short time), but the space is much more manageable and they can access what they need. That’s a great before-and-after, in my opinion – same stuff, better outcome.

Once we were able to reach the things that needed decisions made about them, the client could discard things that no one wants and remove things that didn’t belong in the garage.

Don’t look for before and after photos in The Clutter Book, because you won’t find any. The best photos are of the hard work that you do to get your spaces in order.