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Rooms are used for different purposes—often at the same time. In order to decide what should stay and where, you need to identify the different activities that take place within each room and divide them into zones. Once you begin organizing, these zones become the center for specific items related to the designated activity. Then, it becomes immediately clear where things belong, where to find things and where to return them.

Sample Zones for Basement, Attics and Other Storerooms:

Laundry
Sporting gear
Seasonal decorations

Quick Tips for Your Storerooms
Start slow. It's taken months or years to build up the clutter. Organize one section at a time. Find out the best times of year to clean out the black holes in your home and more .

Collections and mementos. Ask yourself if those items stored in a trash bag or old box in the garage are really that important to you. If they aren't honored and respected, maybe they are really clutter that you do not need to hold on to. If you truly treasure items, display them proudly and properly in your home

Streamline. If you haven't used it in a year, get rid of it.

Get stuff off the floor. Once items start spreading across the floor, it's almost impossible to keep them under control. Use vertical space and shelving units to increase your storage space.

Make the most of your space. Basements and attics are sometimes used for many purposes at once—storage, crafting, a place to watch television, etc. Once you've cleared away some of the clutter, decide what you're really going to be using your space for and organize accordingly.
Excerpted from It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh. Copyright ?? 2007 by Peter Walsh. Reprinted by permission from Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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