clutterfreenc

The One New Year’s Resolution That Will Help You Accomplish All The Rest.

clutterfreenc — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:24:38 +0000

Albrecht Powell in an About.com Pittsburgh article gives the top 1o New Year’s resolutions:

Spend more time with family and friends
Fit in fitness
Tame the bulge
Quit smoking
Enjoy life more
Quit drinking
Get out of debt
Learn something new
Help others
Get organzied

These are all great resolutions which can be accomplished if you do #10 first! Getting organized will help you to find the time, space and energy to accomplish the rest of the list! If getting organized feels overwhelming or you have made attempts in the past and failed, be brave this year and get help! De-cluttering /organizing coaches can get you started and keep you motivated.

Getting organized is a learnable skill but it is important to know your organizing style before you start. One of the most common reasons for organization failure is choosing an organizing style that doesn’t work for you. There is not a ”one size fits all system,” but if you find the one that works for you, organizing will become easy.

Another key to organizing is to spend a little time anaylizing your needs and instead of struggling to decide what to get rid of, figure out what you need in each space to accomplish the tasks that you do there. For example make a list of what you do in the livingroom and make sure that you give “prime real estate” to the tools or items you need there. Once you have those items in place it is easier to make decisions on what is left in the space and either take them to the room that they are needed in or let them go.

If you still feel overwhelmed, consider hiring a professional organizer for a consultation and ideas to get you started and maybe an organizing session to learn the basic de-cluttering and organizing techniques.

Choose one small area today to conquer. Don’t expect to get organized all in one week or month. Divide your organizing projects into bite sized pieces and work on one at a time. If you get stuck or overwhelmed, reach out for help. You don’t have to do it alone! Let an organizing coach keep you motivated with ideas that will work for you!

7 Holiday Organizing Tips to Keep the Thanks in Thanksgiving and the Merry in Christmas!

clutterfreenc — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:03:26 +0000

The holidays can be fun, relaxing times together with family and friends that is if you control them by doing a little pre-organizing. Juggling your normal work and school schedule can get tricky when you add holiday activities. Here is a list of tips to keep you Thankful for Thanksgiving and Merry that it’s Christmas time!

1. Make a holiday calendar including all of the extra holiday activities and travel so the whole family is aware of the schedule. You might have to say “no” to some of your normal activities to make room for the holiday activities or be careful not to add too many holiday activities. More is not always better!

2. Plan your holiday menus early, then clean out the pantry, fridge and freezer and make your shopping list. If you need brown sugar for a favorite recipe, you don’t want to find out in the middle of baking that you are out of that staple or that it is old and hard as a rock. Nor do you want to buy yet another bag when you have two already in the pantry. Purging the kitchen will keep those things from happening. Shop early for all non-perishables and buy perishables a day or two ahead of the meal. Cook or bake ahead as many recipes as you can and delegate food items or paper goods to holiday guests.

3. Plan a day, or afternoon to go through the house and collect as many items as possible for charity. Get the kids to sort through their toys for donations and trash to make room for the new toys and gifts they will be receiving. ( This works great the month before their birthday as well!)

4. Don’t try to marry holiday decorations with all the rest of your décor! It’s ok to pack away some of the non holiday décor during the holidays and return it after you pack away the decorations. The house will feel less cluttered and you will enjoy the holiday décor so much more.

5. When putting up holiday decorations be realistic about old decorations that you haven’t put up in years or that are looking “sad.” Go ahead and donate the old decorations and let them be someone else’s “new” holiday décor.

6. Purchase clear or holiday colored bins to containerize the decorations you do want to keep. If they are worth keeping then they are worth keeping well! You can purchase Christmas light organizers or use a piece of cardboard to wrap the lights around to keep them from tangling in storage.

7. For tight holiday budgets gift giving can take the Merry out of Christmas quick. Consider drawing names in your family or circle of friends, give service gifts like babysitting or house cleaning or a coupon for a dinner night at your house. For grandparents that give too much ask for quality time gifts like museum or movie passes. Plan a fun activity for Christmas day to look forward to like a game marathon, a scavenger hunt to friends homes, turkey bowling or anything you and your family would look forward to doing together. Instead of gifts last year, I planned a Christmas Amazing Race with fun activities like turkey bowling and eggnog drinking as well as other activities at local friends homes and we ended at the local nursing home to sing carols. Memory making is a great gift!

I hope these tips help you to be thankful for the holidays and merry that you were more prepared this season!

Functionality is the key!

clutterfreenc — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:27:04 +0000

To the creative, fun-loving personalities “Organizing” is a dirty word! They immediately think “type A”, boring, alphabetized and too much work! That is why I like to use the word “functional” so perfection is not an expectation. Even professional organizers don’t have magazine ready, perfectly organized homes because they live in them with families that include personality types that don’t like to be “type A” organized.

I am married to a visionary man who doesn’t have time to organize because he is always working on the next idea. When he gets really cluttered he will ask me to come help him get caught up but we never get as far as I would like to because he is too busy. We have five wonderful children most of which care very little about being organized. Unfortunately for them, I am the home manager so there has to be a certain amount of functionality and order for my sanity (and reputation) ! I have found that helping them keep their stuff culled and pared down helps tremendously to keep functionality a reality.

What do I mean by functionality? Knowing the purpose of your home, rooms and space is the foundation for functionality. None of us want to live in a storage unit but many of us do because we don’t stop to think about the purpose of our home and we begin to give priority to “things” instead of life. A home is a place to live, love, play, create and sometimes work. To make this a reality, focus on what kind of “living” you and your family or roommates do or want to do in your home. Once you figure that out then decide which rooms you want to do what in and what items you need in each room to accomplish the purpose of that room.

For example, you have a nice dining room but you are not the entertaining kind of family. However, you do work from home and love the light in the dining room and the proximity to the heart of the home and gravitate there to work. Allow that room to become your home office and use pieces of furniture that function in that space for the purpose it needs to be instead of a fancy dinning room table that might get used once in 10 years! Stop storing furniture for someone else’s life style and use your home for what you need it for. You can set up a home office in the attic or basement but unless you want to be alone and away from the family you will tend to gravitate to the dining room.

Once you have decided what items you need in each space, it is easier to see the clutter that you are storing unnecessarily. Unless you love and need an item it begins to reduce the functionality of your space. Share your extras with someone who needs them or if you can’t bring yourself to part with them just yet, find the most unused space in your home to clutter or consider a short-term storage unit to give yourself time to detach emotionally from the items.

Once you give yourself a little time to enjoy your newly “functional” space, you won’t want to clutter it again! Enjoy your space and the ability you have to function efficiently without the storage unit feel! Make sure to re-asses each space once a year to make sure the “clutter” has not crept back in and don’t bring anything into the space unless you need it to be more functional or it is replacing something ( meaning one item in, one item out).

So get out some paper and a pencil and start jotting down the purpose of your home and space today!