How to De-Clutter Your Life, the Anya Hindmarch Way

Exhausting.......1st world problems.

If I'm ever found photographing my outfits on my phone to consult later, just shoot me! No amount of organization is worth that ridiculous waste of time.

She's emojing all the way to the bank!

David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" saved my life when I read it the year I was working full-time, getting a Master's degree and 3 of our 4 children got married within the same 3 month time period. Unlike other so-called "time management" approaches it requires no visioning or prioritizing but is a practical and very doable way to accomplish a lot and not wake up stressing in the middle of the night about something you may have forgotten. I recommend it to every busy person I know.

I would be concerned about the photos, space saving but what if data is lost?

digitizing your photos is great. As long as you don't want to see them in say... 10 or 20 years.

Wow. Just wow. It's kind of amazing this woman accomplishes anything with all the time she spends organizing. This article has made a very strong case to live in the moment, enjoy the experience, and let it go. There's no reason to log every detail of every day. Or painstakingly organize your life to the point of tedium.

Wow. A lifestyle that is entirely packaged. Everything has a container, an identifier, a category, a priority, a date and time. Nothing spontaneous, no happenstance, nothing random. Is this heavenly or hellish?

Tips on how to think inside the box.

I used to spend hours categorising my documents and photos into folders - and then more hours searching through the folders for things. Then I realised the beauty of the 'heap storage method' (from IT) – if you just keep everything in one pile it is naturally arranged by date - if you dig something out to update it, it gets put back on top of the pile so natural attrition - over time the bottom of the pile - no longer needed - naturally composts and can be removed to archive or deleted. Yesterday I calculated a cost of storage - about $120 for a 500GB SSD - about 3.3GB/$. If I assume the value of my free time to be at least $10/hr, then this means I should not waste my time trying to save any less than 33GB/hr. Yesterday I recuva'd about 300GB of accidentally deleted (thanks to robocopy /mir) photos and documents. It took many hours of running recuva. Now that's done I don't want to do that again in the foreseeable. Junk can stay – too cheap.

Doesn't sound fun, spontaneous, or whimsical at all -- unlike her designs.

Thank you for this article - for me, articles on de-cluttering are de rigueur in January, the month of clean slates and new beginnings! I like the way Hindmarch uses both tech and paper to achieve organizing nirvana. And of course now I'm lusting for a label maker...but what's with the image of the neatly-stacked Frosted Flakes cereal boxes above those lovely organized files?

I've been following her techniques for year....except digitizing my photo albums. That means scanning each and every picture? With notes? I guess I need to put on my to do list to find out about digitizing photos! I do not see how people manage without these techniques. Especially the purging of clothes, shoes, accessories. Sentiment can really weigh you down. I even have a file for my own funeral, including a sample obituary. And I've arranged the funeral plot, the headstone is installed, and the cremation is paid for, including picking my body up anywhere in the world and transporting it to the funeral home. Who doesn't do this? It is such an imposition on your family if they are stuck wondering what you wanted, when you have died and can't be asked! And I insisted that my kids take their 'memory box of stuff' when they were old enough. If they didn't want something, why would I hang on to it? I do find it odd that someone who appears to be the 'queen of kitsch' doesn't hang on to it in her own life.

Several good ideas here. Thanks, AH.

I endorse being organized and everything, but sheesh, this is a sad way to live. Heaven help us from super-organized professional organizers.

Interesting. I do this intuitively in a non-professional way, it's nice to see a professional with the tools, resources, space and time to deal with it on a full-scale level. Ultimately, it's all about efficiency and in a sense, crisis control. The purpose is to liberate and enable the self to operate seamlessly in the world. I'd be interested to know what back-ups and contingencies she has and how she plans for the unforeseen. Can't say I'm a fan of her design style though .. seems kitschy.. emojis.. ugh