Kelly Belka
Owner & CEO, KB Organizing Company kborganizingcompany.com
Spring cleaning goes deeper with KB Organizing Company’s evidence-based and streamlined take on decluttering. Clear your space, clear your head and harness the power of mindfulness to make your home your own again—not just a storage space for your stuff—with this simply sensible advice from owner Kelly Belka!
A Bit About Belka
“Some professionals say they were born this way, always organized,” Belka says. “That’s not the case for me.” The messy teen grew up into a homeschooling mother who quickly recognized how clutter was curtailing her family’s ability to function.
She got rid of at least 50 percent of her stuff. “I know people who have gotten rid of 80–90 percent,” she says. “It sounds like a lot, but imagine things shoved in every cranny, things hidden for years.” If you feel the volume of stuff in your house taking over, take inspiration from Belka. You don’t need to be a born neat freak to get organized and stay that way, shedding the negativity of chaotic surroundings and taking back your home.
“I will never go back to being a slave to my stuff,” Belka says, “because your home should work for you, not the other way around.”
The Declutter Data
We might feel a moral imperative to get our stuff in order, to escape the stigma of being messy, lazy, a slob. But Belka’s not about shame or appearances, she’s about evidence-based improvement to quality of life.
“Your clutter can have a deep, lasting and negative impact on your psychological well-being,” she says, “which is helpful to know so that you can begin to learn why it’s happening and how to fix it.”
She can reel off numerous studies that show clutter can contribute to feelings of fear, tension and worry, decrease cognitive function and impair sleep. Clutter can also be a good barometer of our existing mental state, as anxiety about time scarcity for cleaning or emotional attachment to our stuff can lead to or worsen clutter.
“How your home looks could be how your body is feeling,” Belka says. Whether clutter is causing or caused by stress, tackling some of that visual noise may offer relief.
How your home looks could be how your body is feeling.
The Purge
The first step to getting organized is always decluttering. Trying to put away reams of junk that you don’t even need is a Sisyphean nightmare. Belka uses a mindful interrogation of items to decide what stays, asking of each thing, “Do I need it? Do I use it? Do I love it?”
Two pitfalls in discerning whether to keep something are the sentimental attachment an item might hold and the sunk-cost fallacy. You might value the memory stored in a certain set of books or feel like you can’t part with a dress you’ve never worn just because you spent so much money on it. Belka asks, “Do you want the item or do you want the space?” Notice which value you’re prioritizing and that you can make a choice about it.
Maybe it’s time to prioritize a peaceful space for your future self to come home to!
Stem the Tide
It’s never been easier to buy things, whether it be one more plant, book, pair of shoes or the result of foraging in the little treat wonderland that is Target.
There’s an action point where mindfulness can be applied to clutter before it ever reaches your home. “A hack that I use personally as well as advise to clients is one in, one out,” says Belka. “If you have events coming up and need a new dress, buy it and get rid of another dress. Add the new and take out the old.”
Consider, with each purchase, the usefulness, importance and purpose of the item. And vitally, where it will live in your home.
Proper Places
Even if you’ve decluttered your house and have gotten down to the essentials, if those items don’t have homes, re-cluttering is inevitable. “You’re going to put it down and leave it there,” Belka says. This is a deceptively massive pitfall that easily leads to accumulating piles of nonsense.
The effort to keep things tidy becomes quick and easy when the final destination of any given thing is known. Hang your keys up, put your laundry away, put the mail on the desk and protect your future self from becoming overwhelmed.
With your home decluttered and, most importantly, a home within your home for each of your things, it’s just a matter of returning things to the places they belong in a timely fashion. “I know every thing that I own,” Belka says. “I know where every thing is that I have and use, and I like it that way.” Sounds like a superpower, and that superpower could be yours!
Published as “Ask the Expert” in the May 2024 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
