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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mariel. I have a series of hooks by my front door for coats and stuff,

and there are five hooks. You know, you'd think that would be enough, but somehow all five of them

are dragging under the weight of my stuff. Tote bags, backpacks, my leather jacket, my wool coat,

my puffer jacket, a hoodie, my denim

jacket, that red leather purse that I never actually used. The clutter, it just piles up at the

front door on the table, on the desk, on that chair in my bedroom that's never available for

sitting. Star Hansen is a certified professional organizer.

And she says all of this stuff is trying to tell me something. Clutter does speak to us. Clutter is

talking to us because we are talking to ourselves through our clutter. And so what becomes clutter

and where your clutter accumulates says a lot about what's going on with you.

Maybe you're a busy parent or you're up against too many deadlines at work or you're going through a

health challenge. Clutter looks like anything you can imagine. Clutter looks like the way we talk to

ourselves. It looks like our calendar. It looks like our Netflix queue. You know, it's not just physical

stuff. It's anything that is causing chaos in our lives. But we can get this under control.

On this episode of LifeKit, how to declutter. LifeKit reporter Andy Tagle talks with Star about

organizing. And it's not all pretty boxes, label makers, and throwing out

everything in your house. You know, it's like we have this assumption that we should just jump and

get rid of things, right? Thanks to all the like makeover shows and all of that. They just say, it's so

easy, just get rid of it. But it's not, right? The more that people address that deeper root of

the clutter, the easier it is to

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