Do you and your sweetheart have wildly different ideas about what clutter is? Are you fed-up and frustrated by their organizing “style”? Do you feel like they’re trying to take over the world one surface at a time or leave things out just to piss you off? Or do you feel like they are trying to strip your identity one treasure at a time?

Stress between couples over clutter is very common. Here are a few Valentine’s Day tips to manage the stress with your loved one.

What doesn’t work:

• Purging behind their back
• Nagging
• Mininimizing the others’ underlying needs
• Surprising them with a gift certificate from Crime Scene Cleaners
• Deciding that if they can be cluttered, you do them one better and be messy yourself
• Refusing to engage in a conversation
• Assuming it’s always the other person’s problem

What does work:

• Realize that it’s not about right vs. wrong… it’s about compromising BOTH your styles because you’ve chosen to share space together
• Agree to de-clutter together – set a shared goal that you both agree will improve the quality of your home
• Make a game plan and work together to implement it
• Give each person a dedicated space (a room or a portion of a room) that they can control completely
• Take responsibility for managing your own clutter before trying to “fix” your partner
• Get objective outside help: use an organizing book, online resources, a couples therapist or a professional organizer

What easy-to-tackle project could you and your Valentine take on that would create a little more harmony at home?