Confronting the Chaos

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The Morning

Confronting the Chaos

We offer some suggestions to help you get started on spring cleaning.

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Winnie Au for The New York Times

By

Tom Wright-Piersanti

I am an editor for The Morning.

March 29, 2026,

7:44 a.m. ET

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My house is never truly clean — I have an 8-year-old, plus three aging cats, and none of us are particularly neat. If you were to visit right now, though, you would probably think it’s fine. Because I have tricked you. The door to my office is closed for a reason.

Spring cleaning, for many of us here in the 21st century, does not mean deep-scrubbing soot from the fireplace after a season of heavy use. It mostly means decluttering those spaces that have been absorbing our chaos since Thanksgiving. These chaos spaces, like my office, help maintain an illusion of order. And that can be a fine substitute for the real thing in the short term. It helps keep us sane. But there’s a pang of guilt whenever that door cracks open.

Today I will open the windows and blast some music and force myself to confront those boxes of schoolwork and stray wires and already-forgotten Christmas presents that cause me to feel secret shame when guests come by. If you’re ready to tackle your own chaos room, the rest of this newsletter is for you.

Tips from a pro

We’ll start with some very practical advice from Christina Fallon, who owns Dream It Done Organizing:

Don’t use the dining room table as a storage unit.

Follow the 20/20 rule: If you can get an item in 20 minutes for under $20, and you’re thinking of getting rid of it, get rid of it.

If you haven’t worn or used something within six months, you’re probably not going to.

Fallon also has some insights about why we have such a hard time letting go of stuff — especially if it’s “attached to a good memory,” like a vacation or a concert or a kid’s milestone. “Most people are sentimental,” she noted. “They worry that if they give something away, that memory will fade.”

Her suggestion? “Take photos of these items and then let them go. We tend to make museums out of our lives.”

Read more of Fallon’s advice in

this Q&A with Alix Strauss, a Times contributor

.

Myths, busted

I admit that my decision to clean my office this weekend is arbitrary. It’s not as if I didn’t know the room was messy before the daffodils began to bloom. I simply had been finding excuses to spend my weekends doing other things.

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