Clearing the mess inside and out

USD’s Humanities Center welcomes New York Times bestselling author, Gretchen Rubin to the KIPJ stage

Danielle Agnello / A&C Editor / The USD Vista

With four sets of furniture in a room less than 250 square feet, living in a Maher Hall flex room could get messy pretty quickly. How do college students manage to stay organized and maintain their sanity in a tiny room jam-packed with piles of stuff that accumulates throughout the semester? Four-time New York Times bestselling author, podcaster, and speaker Gretchen Rubin seems to have all the answers.

As an expert on the linked subjects of habits, happiness, and human nature, Rubin strives to convey how people can better their lives by staying organized. Her audience is extensive, as her mastery of the subjects enables her to communicate complex ideas with humor and intelligibility. Throughout her work, Rubin implements cutting-edge techniques, the wisdom of the ages, lessons from popular culture, and her personal experiences to further her pursuit of making humankind happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. 

“Freeing clutter makes us feel more engaged with the things that we do have,” Rubin said. “And by creating outer-order, we appreciate the things we own more.”

 Dean of The College of Arts and Sciences, Noelle Norton, Ph.D., spoke about the college’s  mission statement before she introduced Rubin to the audience. 

“The College of Arts and Sciences along with the Humanities Center are deeply committed to liberal arts,” Norton said. “We are deeply committed to humanities behind and beyond these walls, and we invite writers to our stage to open the world of ideas to our students.”

Rubin contributed to enriching USD’s student body by furthering their understanding of human nature. In her latest book, Rubin discusses how maintaining an organized space has an outstanding influence on our mental health.

“Life is easier when you can find things more easily,” Rubin said. “People spend an average of 55 minutes each day finding lost items in the clutter.”

Rubin also told the audience that outer order frees people from negative emotions, unfinished projects, and our fantasy selves.

“I, myself, only recently got rid of a pair of leather pants,” Rubin said. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought them. Every time I would try them on I felt ridiculous.”

Rubin illuminated her own troubles, along with the lessons she has learned from past experiences.

“By tackling little challenges, we prepare ourselves to attack these greater challenges,” Rubin said.

Rubin, known as “the queen of the self-help memoir,” believes that people have to want to help themselves in order for her to do her job. Rubin merely informs; maintaining outer order and an individual’s overall well-being is ultimately in the hands of the individual. She explained that it is imperative that people actualize the information they’ve absorbed from Rubin and take all that she says seriously in regard to maintaining outer-order to sustain their inner-calm.

Rubin continued to discuss what helps people maintain order and how to begin the process.

“Do not start by vowing you are going to get organized,” Rubin said. “If you get rid of all the file documents, you might not need to get a file cabinet.”

What Rubin conveyed to her audience is the importance of decluttering before purchasing more stuff to get “organized.” Countless times, Rubin has found people don’t need organizational and storage drawers after they’ve sorted through the abundance of stuff they’ve accumulated throughout the years.

A device Rubin uses when clearing out her closet and deciding whether an article of clothing needs to be tossed is the “ex-factor test.” In short, it requires the individual to imagine how they would feel running into their ex wearing the article of clothing in question. If the person would be even slightly mortified wearing the item, it should be freed of their possession.

Rubin also asked the audience to consider three questions when deciding between keeping or purging an item.

“Do you use it?” Rubin said. “Do you love it? Do you need it? If the answers to these three questions are answered yes, the item is still useful.”

Rubin’s tips continued as the night went on. She shifted her focus from decluttering items already in people’s possession to ensuring individuals resist the want to purchase unnecessary items. When shopping in a store, Rubin suggested not taking a shopping cart. She claimed that when people have something to put all of their stuff in at their convenience, they will want to buy more than they need to since they have room for it all.

Similarly, Rubin advised people to refrain from buying items that are not currently needed in order to keep unnecessary items from taking up space for essential ones.

“Remind yourself to store it at the store,” Rubin said.

This tip led her into her next one regarding impulse online shopping. She recommended deleting all accounts and to shop as a guest so that people have to fill in all of their information, which can be a hassle. Once online shopping isn’t as easy as a click of a button, people tend to forget about their once-full online carts, merely due to the inconvenience.

After Rubin shared all of her helpful tips for decluttering space, she told the audience ways they can maintain their outer order. The one-minute rule and power hour are two essential methods she enforces.

“The one-minute rule gets rid of the scum of clutter that accumulates on the surface,” Rubin said. “While the power hour consists of allocating one hour to complete a list of tasks that has piled up and that you have been meaning to complete.”

Rubin’s personal stories, use of vivid language, and humorous tone fostered her credibility with the audience. Similarly, her speech delivery helped the audience relate and open up to her during the question and answer portion of the night.

“We’ve all created a giant mess and had to dig ourselves out of it,” Rubin said. “But we have to remember that most of the time we like the memory invoked with the possession, not the actual item.”

The main takeaway Rubin left the audience with was that in essence, preserving an organized space is directly linked to living a happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative life.