Clutter is like a gas. It will expand to fill whatever container it’s in. The solution is not to buy a bigger container; the solution is to purge the clutter.
Ever wonder why the widest roads have the worst congestion? In city planning parlance that’s called induced demand-- when the roadway gets more lanes, more drivers choose to drive along it, and more cars leads to more traffic jams.
The solution is never to add more lanes, which will only attract more drivers, but rather to design walkable and bikeable cities, public transit, integrated street grids, and market-rate parking systems that reduce the number of cars.
This concept of induced demand is why I’m leery of the offerings at places like Container Store. If we purchase an acrylic nail polish riser that holds 40 bottles, we’ll likely be induced to store 40 bottles of nail polish, regardless of how many of those colors we actually use. (In my case, 0-1.)
If we have a huge Rubbermaid tote for extension cords, we’ll be induced to have 1,001 feet of extension cord.
If we have multiple bookshelves, we’ll be induced to store multiple shelves worth of books.
“It will fit” is too low of a bar for what we allow in our home, and “I’ll make it fit!” is the death knell of our decluttered space.
Our biggest containers will be filled, and then our homes will be filled, and then we’ll have to drive on those congested roads to our 7-bedroom homes in the suburbs, chasing a feeling of spaciousness we’ve inadvertently eliminated from our urban homes.