Make a Little Space to Organize (1)

To unclutter your small home efficiently and effectively, you must first eliminate your emotional baggage

It's even easy for homeowners with vast amounts of space to get buried alive in clutter. All the more so for those in small apartments and condos. Such places often lack an attic or basement for all those unread books and clothes that don't fit.

Don't let your lack of space serve as an excuse to put off getting organized. The first step in decluttering is to take an objective look at the space you want to straighten up. Identify what
you don’t like about it, and what you do. Imagine how you’d like it to look.

Haul out everything, and start sorting your junk into piles.

The advantage is that you’ll have everything categorized so it will be easier when you put all that stuff back. It’s also helpful for identifying redundancy, said Faith Smith, owner of Smith Organizing Services.

“You may find, once you get all the clothes together, that you have 17 pairs of black pants,” she said. “You can cut that in half.”

Set aside a spot for trash and another for things to be donated to charity.

Info Cloud
Teaching Topic: Cut the Clutter 削減贅字
Clutter can accumulate just about everywhere on your desk, in your closet, in your garage.

And in your writing, as a writer it’s important to keep the clutter to a minimum, because clutter can weigh down your writing, make it longer and more or distract your readers from the main points you’re trying to make.

One way to eliminate clutter is by cutting out needless repetition and redundancy. Did you get that, of course there are times when careful and intentional repetition is effective in establishing and clarifying a point.

Right, okay here is an example of a repetitive phrase that more often than not can be eliminated “foreign imports”.

Because by its very definition, import means coming from another country. So grab an eraser or use your delete key and remove the word foreign.

Okay, how about this one? Unexpected surprise, oh what do you think? If something is expected, can it still be a surprise?

Okay, listen to this sentence and see if you can detect redundancy. We should develop mutual respect for each other.

It’s redundant, because mutual and for each other mean the same thing. So choose one and cut it out.

Language Lab
unclutter v. 整理, 清理
/ˌʌnˈklʌtɚd/
not filled or covered with unnecessary things : not cluttered
- It took us a whole weekend to unclutter our garage.
declutter v. 清理
- We decided to declutter our house before our relatives came to stay for the weekend.

condo n. [= condominium]
a room or set of rooms that is owned by the people who live there and that is part of a larger building containing other similar sets of rooms — compare apartment
- George bought a condo in our community.
- The condos in this area are all luxurious.

vast adj.
very great in size, amount, or extent

haul v.
/ˈhɑːl/
to pull or drag (something) with effort
- The driver spent an hour trying to haul the stuck truck out of the mud.
- After sitting down for hours, she hauled herself to her feet.
- The tugboat hauled the broken-down boat to the harbor.

redundancy n. 多餘的
/rɪˈdʌndənsi/
the act of using a word, phrase, etc., that repeats something else and is therefore unnecessary
- Martha's wardrobe is full of redundancy.
被解僱
the act of ending the employment of a worker or group of workers;
the fact of being dismissed from a job because you are no longer needed;
- The merge means 3000 redundancies.

mms://203.69.69.81/studio/20151214baac63ad25ec11ecdd61cb1f3ea4715ee75409b16999c6d06ca32168ba95009c7bc.wma