This is a short interview/trailer featuring Ramit Sethi and professional organizer Andrew Mellen (author of Unstuff Your Life). They discuss Mellen's origin story, the psychology of clutter, and practical principles for simplifying a home — including the ideas that "when everything is precious, nothing is precious" and that "clutter is deferred decision." The conversation mixes personal anecdotes with actionable framing for organizing spaces.
Chapters
Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. I think all of us have a little too much stuff in our lives. I know that I did. And one day I came home and I just realized I want this organized. I want to figure out how to do this. And so I called up Andrew Mellon. He's the author of Unstuff your Life, and he's been an organizational expert for over 18 years. I'm very, very pleased to have him here today. We're going to talk about all the stuff that we have in our apartments and our houses and our lives. We're going to talk about the psychology of organizing them. We're going to give you some specific examples of how you can clean up your life and live your values in your apartment and your house. Stay tuned.
Hi, I'm professional organizer Andrew Mellon. I've written a book called Unstuff youf Life, and I help people and businesses get organized and simplify their lives in any number of ways.
Andrew, thanks for being here.
Sure, it's my pleasure.
All right. You and I got to know each other a little while ago because I gave you a call and I said, andrew, can you come help me organize my life? And I want to talk about what you do. And a lot of people don't know what a personal organizer is and what that involves. What I was surprised at was how much you helped to improve my life in the place that I live and work every day, my apartment. And I was very surprised at how emotional it was and how much psychology there was in the process. So everyone watching this has stuff in their lives. It's probably not as organized as it could be. Some people lose their keys every day. I want to hear how you got into this and what is personal organizing?
Well, the way that I got into it was completely roundabout. I used to work in the theater. I was a director. I had done some acting and ran several theaters. When I stopped doing that work, I was hired to co produce an award ceremony at the Kennedy Center. And one of our awardees was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I went to his home to get some photographs. They were a mess. They asked me if I wanted to organize them for them. So it was a great transition job for me. As I left the theater, did this award ceremony at the Kennedy center, and then rolled into this assignment, which actually never happened. So they rescheduled with me three or four times. And the last time they said, when we're ready to proceed, we'll get back in touch with you. Which also is one of those Things that I've now discovered in doing this work that people. It's like cleaning before the housekeeper comes. It's that thing of we're just not ready yet, but you're always ready and you'll never be ready enough. But anyway, in those four months, I told everybody, oh, I've got this amazing gig. I'm going to create a comprehensive photographic archive for a Nobel Peace Prize winner. So then a friend referred me to an accountant. I built a filing system for her. She started referring me to clients of hers. People would show up with, literally, duffel bags full of receipts, letters from the IRS saying, I haven't filed my taxes in five years. I'm totally freaked out. Make sense out of this for me. So through word of mouth, I was still doing freelance work in the theater. But this work just kept coming and coming. And I could see right away the impact that this work was having on people's lives. That the reason that I was telling stories in a dark room, to prompt some sort of epiphany and reaction in somebody, I was actually having that in a one to one relationship. So even though the scale was different, I was getting the result that I wanted in just without a metaphor and in a very interpersonal way. And so after I had been doing the work for a while, I just. I was at a pivot point and I said to myself, I'm just going to put the theater on a shelf. I'm gonna see how far I can take this because I am getting the results that I want. And you can see when the light bulb goes on in somebody's eyes and they get it, and they're like, oh, wow, I could be living this way. I could have access to the things that are important to me. And this stuff that I've been dancing around with could get out of the way. This is totally liberating, and that is infectious.
So let's talk about a couple of quotes that I wanted to talk about from your book because I think they're very revealing. You have a quote that says, when everything is precious, nothing is precious. What does that mean?
Well, it means that if everything is valuable, then nothing has any value because we are constantly evaluating things and scaling things, judging things based on more important, less important. If we don't bring that same degree of thoughtfulness of mindfulness to our belongings. I had a client, and when we were cleaning out her grandmother's home, we came across a ball of aluminum foil under her kitchen sink because she had lived through the Depression. We also came across a sterling Silver tea set. They're both silver. They both came from Grandma. You could stop there if you were just vague and fuzzy and say, they're both. We need to keep them both because they're both Grandma, and Grandma's gone now, so we'll never have Grandma again. The ball of aluminum foil, though, goes in the recycle bin. The sterling silver tea set we sold at auction for $22,000. So clearly they're not the same thing. If everything is precious, you're living in a museum, which nobody does. And if everything is not precious, then you're living in a dump and nothing. Nobody lives like that, really. I mean, even people with severe disorders like hoarders, there are some things that are more important than others. They just live in a place of vagueness where they won't force themselves to be specific.
Right. That seems very common. Like, I don't want to get specific. I don't want to dig in. There's something in that drawer, but I'd rather just think about it another day.
Right. It's a deferred decision. That is the definition of clutter. Clutter is deferred decision.
Yes. And it's interesting. Just like putting on weight or any. Or not managing your finances. The costs don't really show up today or tomorrow. It's many years down the line. When you walk in, you start saying stuff like, where is that? I lost my keys again? Or my phone. Or you're just jumping around because you have to leave, but you can't find something, or. Or it's just unpleasant. Like, you look in your living room and you're just like, ugh. The time, I think you realize it more than anything, is when somebody else comes over and you can see your apartment through their eyes.
Or you scramble to clean up in preparation of them, and suddenly you grab everything that's on a surface, throw it in a shopping bag, and throw it in your closet. And it's just the randomness. But I was also thinking of the idea that when people are in that place of vagueness, when they are not making those decisions, they're. I call it nickel and diming yourself out of a year of your life. Because there's a statistic that says the average person will waste one year of their life looking for lost and misplaced things. But it's not going to be. You're not going to spend a year looking for a mobile phone. It'll be five minutes here.
It'll.
It'll be 10 minutes there, and then you'll tell yourself a story. I'll make up that lost time. But you can't make up lost time. Once it's spent, it's gone.
