Today in the Dilly Bag, a tip for decluttering that can actually be fun.  I call it DBS – Decluttering By Stealth.

If you want to get poetic about it, and who doesn’t, let’s say you can cut your clutter down to size by giving it – and you – a small surprise.

And who doesn’t love surprises?  Why do we read crime fiction?  Because we want to know how it turns out.  We want to know how the crime is solved, how the hero brings the villain to heel, and justice.

Decluttering By Stealth will surprise you and the clutter.  Before you know it, your clutter, brought to justice by you, hero of the Stealth Squad, is cooling its heels in the freezer, or forgotten in the rubbish.

How do I know this?  I tried it, and it worked.  You heard me, it worked!  Yippee.

How, I hear you ask?  Good question, Grasshopper.

I sat at the kitchen table the other day and glared at the refrigerator.  I was glaring because:

• I couldn’t see how much money I’d won with my instant casket tickets,
• because they were hidden behind my partner’s work schedule,
• which in turn was flapping across an information brochure for African drumming classes,
• which was half-obscured by a swatch of out-of-date raffle tickets,
• several pizza cafe menus from which I planned to filch delicious ingredient combinations,
• an article from the Sunday paper about making your own nut milk,  and,
• a Picasso-style scattering of colourful magnets, including a series of insulting Shakespearean quotations given to me by a friend (what’s the hidden message there, thou wretched offspring of a milksop, thous face of a donkey’s nether parts?).

Then, it hit me like a road train in 18th gear: I could do something about that fridge door, right here, right now.

So I did – in ten minutes, the fridge door was clear and Spray ‘n Wiped to within an inch of its enamel. 

Here’s what happened to the clutter:

• instant casket tickets in wallet
• work schedule in partner’s study on  (tidy) corkboard
• drumming brochure near phone for contact call and booking
• raffle tickets in bin,
•  along with menus I’ll never get around to copying
• Will I make nut milk?  Maybe, one day – into the suspension file in my study with all the other articles untimely ripped from the gourmet-cook-on-a-budget pages
• The magnets?  Ah, some of them are actually useful to have around in plain sight – they live in a tidy line running down the side of the fridge, almost, but not quite out of sight: the vet, the doctor, the city council, our computer guy, our internet provider, the library’s hours, the emergency number for electrical charges, and, of course, Nick’s Fridge Seals (you never know when you’ll need a trained fridge seal).
• The Shakespearean quotations were bequeathed to a young rake of my acquaintance to distribute as he see-eth fit.

It took me less time to clear the fridge door than it did to write this post.

Become a member of the Stealth Squad and DBS your way to a zen household, or at least a zen fridge door.

Decluttering your life by surprise and stealth has many benefits, some of them being:

• Segmented attacks are short and sweet.  You can fit them into your day almost anywhere
• They’re more fun and less worrying because you haven’t had the time to think about it.
• If you’re a Declutterer By Stealth, you can surprise yourself when you get up to get a spoon for your tea, and before you know it, that pesky utensils drawer where you haven’t been able to find the garlic press for three years, is Tidy in Ten (minutes, that is).

Try it, it works – and you might find something you thought you ‘d lost (your sanity), or something you can write a nano memoir about.

As Nike says, Just Do It. 

Remember: Memoir = Life = Now