by Kelly Ann Butterbaugh
When their closets began overflowing, Kelly and Bob Butterbaugh had to make some tough choices.
Kelly’s side: He has too much junk
Living in a small cape cod without an attic or a garage, there isn’t a great deal of storage space in our home for unnecessary items. Since the basement serves as a much needed workshop, everything seems to find its way into our closets upstairs. Yet, every time I open a closet I’m disgusted. I want my closets organized, with easily accessible contents. Instead, they’re a jumbled mess of clothing mixed with odds and ends. Bob and I have tried to clean them, but we always wind up fighting over what goes and what stays. In the end, everything stays and we’ve accomplished nothing.
I’ve been involved in a lot of activities and have many mementos. Bob insists they’re just junk and need to go. But when I look at the pile of his things, I can’t understand why we should keep them either. He even saves the plastic cups from sporting events!
We share closets and dresser drawers, and Bob is always complaining my clothes take up too much space. Yet, he hangs everything, even shirts that should be folded in dresser drawers. I need that space in the closet for my skirts and dresses.
“Why can’t you get rid of some of these work coats?” I complained one day as we attempted yet again to organize the coat closet. “You don’t wear most of them and they take up too much space.” “Look who’s talking!” Bob retorted. “Your shoes fill this entire rack. I have to keep mine upstairs.”
By the time we finished, the only things we’d lost were our tempers.
There must be a way to organize our house without winding up at each other’s throats.
Bob’s side: She won’t get rid of anything
When it comes to filling up the closets, it’s not my stuff that’s taking up the most space. Kelly has so many things she’s kept for sentimental reasons. Yet when it comes time to clean a closet, she’s quick to get rid of my stuff. She forgets I have sentimental attachments too.
Kelly has all her old prom dresses, college notebooks, and childhood stuffed animals. She can’t see that just because we get rid of the items doesn’t mean she won’t keep the memories.
What’s worse is that she’s claimed the larger of the dresser drawers, and so I have to hang most of my clothes in the closets. My shirts are so wrinkled from being crammed in the cramped space, I have to iron them a second time before wearing them.
Trying to clean the coat closet was the last straw. Kelly has nearly 20 pairs of shoes, and my 3 pairs are forced to live in the upstairs closet because there’s no room for them on the shoe rack downstairs. My work coats bother her, but I earned them by striving to meet safety and quota standards each year. Many of them are brand new, so it would be a waste to give them away.
There must be a way to live with my wife without all her stuff.
What Bob and Kelly did
Bob and Kelly’s breakthrough finally came one day while watching television. As they were channel surfing, they landed on a home organizational program. The couple on the show were organizing a messy room.
“They put everything on the lawn so they could see as they sorted,” Kelly relates. “We laughed at first because the entire lawn was covered with the contents, but then it seemed like a good idea.”
So they decided to start by emptying and organizing their bedroom closets. “We spread out everything in the living room,” Bob recalls. “Almost in unison we exclaimed, ‘We’re those people on TV!’”
Visualizing how much was actually in their closets not only embarrassed Kelly and Bob, but helped them resolve to find a solution for all their clutter. They agreed they needed to do some serious purging—on both their parts.
They laid down ground rules to keep things fair and to eliminate arguments. First, they’d remove all items from the closet and divide them into “his” and “hers” piles.
Next, they’d determine together what was functional and necessary. For instance, the hallway closet had to contain the vacuum, the step ladder, and the dog food.
Finally, for every one item Kelly put back in the closet, Bob put one item in as well. When the closet was full, everything left in the hall would go to charity. It made decisions more crucial but fair. In the end, they found themselves bending to accommodate each other.
“When my appliquéd seasonal flags took up most of the hanging space, Bob volunteered to store his hunting vest in the basement,” Kelly says. It made more sense to keep it with his fishing and hunting equipment which was already tucked away in one of the few dust free areas of the workshop.
“And when I needed to keep my bowling bag upstairs and accessible, Kelly agreed to part with a few stuffed animals,” Bob adds. “She kept a few that were really special, and we took pictures of her with the ones we donated to a children’s charity. It helped knowing they were going to such a good cause.”
When tackling the clothes closets, they realized sharing wasn’t working. Since there are two closets in their bedroom, they designated “his and hers.” While it had seemed a good idea to share the closets before, keeping all the folded clothes in one and all the handing clothes in another, this no longer worked. What they were learning was that they had to group like things together to make the organization work.
“My closet has more space for folded clothing, and Kelly’s has more space for her hanging dresses and skirts. Neither of us is allowed in the other’s closet,” explains Bob.
Now, after purchasing a used chest of drawers which they refinished, they have “his and her” bureaus as well. Tied to the tried and true idea of the bedroom set, they had been saddled with one chest of drawers and a smaller dresser. By breaking the set and thinking practically instead of traditionally, both Kelly and Bob have an equal number of drawers and the onus is on the owner to weed out what needs to go and what needs to stay.
Listening to each other’s feelings and setting up ground rules has strengthened their communication—and eliminated a lot of disagreements.
“We don’t argue about petty things anymore,” Kelly says. “Before, we’d get frustrated when something simple like finding work boots took too much energy, and we’d take it out on each other. Now that our things are organized, our marriage runs more smoothly.”
Through compromise their house and their relationship has finally become the organized haven they both desired.
“It was contagious,” Kelly says. “Once we got one closet in order we were anxious to try another one.” Within a few months every closet in the house had undergone a transformation and thorough cleaning.
Sometimes the temptation to haphazardly throw things into a closet is great, and like any habit it can be hard to break. Yet, with each other’s help they work to keep one another in check.
“The house looks so great that I hate to be the one to mess it up again,” Bob says.
Kelly and Bob Butterbaugh have been married ten years and live in Pennsylvania.
