Peace of Mind Organizing

No excuses series (part 3): "It was a gift"

1 April 2024

This is the third in a three-part series of posts debunking the three excuses we hear most frequently from clients for wanting to keep items they no longer use or love. The series originally ran in January and February 2017 and I rerun it periodically. Part 1 (I might need it some day ) was published on March 18 and Part 2 (I paid a lot for that) appeared March 25.

The third common excuse we hear for keeping an unloved or unused item is that it was a gift. This is a tough one. People tend to have a difficult time parting with items that were given to them. (As an aside, this has completely changed how I give gifts, knowing that my gift may some day become clutter for the recipient.)

What do I say to clients who tell me they can’t let go of something because it was a gift? The first question I ask is:

• Do you think the gift giver would really want you to keep something you don’t use, just because they gave it to you? If they knew you were investing time and money in paring down your belongings and getting organized, would they care if you let it go?

Usually that’s enough to help the client release it. If that doesn’t do the trick, I might ask:

• Is there another family member you can pass this on to who would love it?

That can be very helpful, especially when the gift giver has passed away. (I’m the thrilled recipient of some paintings that my grandmother painted, given to me by her nieces when they were decluttering.)

Really, what I find is that often the client just needs permission to let gifts go. So let me do that for you right now: You are not obligated to keep an item you don’t use or love just because it was a gift. I give you permission to re-gift it or donate it. Don’t stash it in a closet. And try not to worry that the giver will ever ask about it. Chances are they won’t.

No excuses series (part 2): "I paid a lot for that"

25 March 2024

This is the second in a three-part series of posts debunking the three excuses we hear most frequently from clients for wanting to keep items they no longer use or love. The series originally ran in January and February 2017 and I periodically run it again. Part 1 (I might need it some day) appeared last week. Stay tuned for part 3 next week.

The second most common excuse we hear from clients who want to keep something they don’t use of love is that they paid a lot for that item. I get it. It feels terrible to let go of an expensive item that turned out to be a foolhardy purchase. But you know what? Keeping it doesn’t make you feel any better. In fact, when you see the item, it just makes you feel worse.

There are two important things to remember when you’re tempted to keep an item you don’t use or love just because you paid a lot for it:

1. The money is spent. Keeping it won’t bring it back. Selling it will get you some of the money. And donating might get you a tax deduction. Keeping it doesn’t help.
2. There’s a cost associated with keeping items that you don’t use or love, especially if clutter is an issue in your life. There’s an emotional cost (that reminder of your bad purchasing decision); there can be a physical cost if the item contributes to clutter that poses a tripping hazard or you’re unable to clean because there’s so much clutter; and there can be a financial cost if there’s so much clutter that you have to rent a storage unit or you can’t make repairs or do maintenance in your home.

For those expensive items you don’t use or love, I suggest pulling off the Band-aid. Take a deep breath and decide to let it go. If it’s easy to sell it, do so. Otherwise, donate it or make yourself feel better by giving it to someone you love. I’m pretty sure it will be a relief to get that thing out of your home!

No excuses series (part 1): "I might need it some day"

18 March 2024

This is the first in a three-part series of posts debunking the three excuses we hear most frequently from clients for wanting to keep items they no longer use or love. The series originally ran in January and February 2017 and I rerun it periodically. Stay tuned for parts 2 & 3 in the coming weeks.

When we work with clients on decluttering, we discuss their goals and motivations for letting go of excess. They understand that it makes most sense to hang on to meaningful items, not those that are sitting idle. Yet it’s not unusual for a client to want to keep an unused item that’s perfectly good because “I might need it some day.”

We usually push back, particularly if we’re dealing with severe space constraints and the need to let go of a lot of stuff.

Here’s what we say to those clients when we hear, “But I might need it some day.”:

• How likely is it that you’ll need it?
• If you decide to let it go and you do find you need it, are you able to get another one?
• If you keep it, will you be able to find it when you need it?

That last question is important, because if a client is keeping a lot of those “some day” items it may be difficult to organize the stuff they keep in a way that will allow them to find everything.

Here’s the thing about perfectly good items that aren’t being used. If they’re perfectly good, somebody else can use them. Rather than having them sit idle, taking up space, it’s better to contribute to the greater good by donating them and letting them be used. If you hang on to them until a future decluttering session and then decide to let them go, they may be less valuable or useful to others.

Basically it comes down to a couple of things:

1. Your goals for decluttering and getting organized. If you’re trying to create space in your home and life so that you can find what you want when you want it and live with ease (my definition of organized), then storing a lot of unused stuff might well get in the way of that.
2. A fear of regret. I think a lot of us live in fear of regretting our decisions. If you do find that you let go of an item that at a future date you could have used, you may feel a twinge of regret. But you’ll get past it. Crowding your space with unneeded items is a pretty high price to pay to ward off future regret, in my opinion.

I have seen over and over how living with less makes one’s life easier (and I’ve experienced it in my own life). A great first step toward living with less is letting go of the perfectly good stuff you don’t use.

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of the No Excuses series: “I paid a lot for it” and “It was a gift.” I’ll post them on the next two Mondays.

My perfect Bullet Journal pen

13 March 2024

I have been using a Bullet Journal to keep track of everything in my life since December 2021. I’m on my 13th handwritten journal. (I love B5 size dot grid journals. My current favorite is from Scribbles That Matter 120 GSM Dotted Journal – Pro.)

I like making my Bullet Journals pretty without going overboard. I tend to write with a black pen but use a lot of Zebra Mildliner highlighters (I use both brush and chisel points) and Sharpie S-Note Duo for color when I need it. (Check out this October 2022 post about my bullet journals for more details on how I journal.)

After careful trial and error, I have found what for me is the perfect black pen for bullet journaling. It is the Pilot Frixion Synergy 05 clicker erasable pen with black gel ink. There’s so much to love: It’s an extra-fine point pen that writes smoothly. It’s completely erasable—it uses a special thermosensitive ink that disappears when rubbed with the pen’s “eraser” because of the heat generated by the friction. (There’s no eraser dust!) This pen comes in colors, though I primarily use black. And it’s refillable.

I go through a lot of these pens and on Amazon I buy this set, which comes with refills

Pilot has a variety of Frixion pens, including erasable highlighters. I have some, but I find they don’t erase completely and seem to leave a little bit of a residue. I’ve also enjoyed this set of Pilot Frixion Waai retractable pens from Japan that come in pretty, soft colors. I bought them at JetPens, my favorite purveyor of Japanese stationery supplies.

One thing worthy of note is that since the Frixion ink is thermosensitive it could disappear if exposed to high heat (like in a hot car). The JetPens website says that putting the paper in a freezer will magically bring back the ink. I’m glad to say I have no personal experience with this. I do avoid using this pen to address envelopes.

My quest for the perfect pen for bullet journaling ended when I found this particular Frixion pen (the Synergy 05 clicker), which glides nicely over the page and erases without any dust. I just had to share with other pen-and-paper enthusiasts!

Congratulations to my employee, Beth, on her CPO® credential

29 February 2024

I’m tickled pink to congratulate my employee of four years, Beth Hunyar, on becoming a Certified Professional Organizer®. She passed the rigorous exam yesterday.

This is a big achievement. In order to qualify to sit for the exam, an organizer must have 1500 paid client hours or 1250 paid client hours + 250 substitute education hours in the past five years. This is a solid credential that recognizes knowledge and experience.

The CPO® credential was established in 2007. At that time I didn’t have the hours to qualify for the exam, but I took it the following year and became St. Louis’s first CPO®. There are currently nine CPOs in Missouri (counting Beth). Nationwide, there are 332 CPOs, and seven from other parts of the world. And there are 16 emeritus CPOs. (You can read the list of CPOs here.) It’s an elite group.

Being a CPO is not a requisite for being an amazing organizer. Both Beth and my other employee, Lydia, have natural organizing ability, coupled with a deep understanding and compassion for our clients. They’re very skilled. One of the things I love, though, about the CPO credential is that it requires study and preparation and continuing education. Clients know that when they hire a CPO they hire an organizer with knowledge, experience and professionalism. (CPOs must adhere to a strict code of ethics.)

Those of you who have worked with Beth know that she fits that description to a T. I’m so glad she has achieved this milestone. She has worked hard gaining the experience and preparing for the exam.

If you’re interested in reading take on on the value of hiring a CPO, check out my blog post Why hire a Certified Professional Organizer.

If you’d like to read more about Beth and Lydia, check out our Meet the Team page. It will be updated soon with Beth’s new credential!

Organizing my charging cables

22 February 2024

I just got a new iPhone 15 Pro (I love it!). It uses a USB-C cord to charge rather than a Lightning cable. My MacBook Pro also charges with a USB-C cord. Each of those devices also has an optional MagSafe charging cable (iPhone; MacBook). I also have AirPods that use a Lightning cable. And a Kindle that uses a mini-USB. And an external hard drive that uses a micro-USB. And any of them might connect to a power source with either a USB-A or USB-C cable depending on what it’s plugging into. That’s a whole lot of cables to wrangle.

Earlier this year I did a cable clean out, letting go of cables that I no longer need. It was a huge improvement, but it didn’t feel easy enough for me to access what I needed. Then I came home to one day to find that my husband had bought an HDMI cable despite the fact we had several. He looked where he expected to see them and found none. They were big, so I’d moved to another location known only to me. A very bad idea. I wanted to rectify the situation

Here’s a photo of my first attempt, organized into an Elfa drawer:

When I decided I could do better, I took the suggestion of my brilliant employee, Beth, and bought a Short Medium All-In Modular Divided Box with 15 compartments from The Container Store. She had sent me a picture of how she used that bin to organize her charging cords in her house and I wanted to give it a try.

I went through my bins of charging cables again and separated out the ones I use most often for my devices, which are the USB-C and Lightning. I put them in a bin like Beth’s and then used the Elfa drawer I’d been using all along to store just the mini-USB and HDMI and printer cables.

Here’s how the divided bin looks. I’m particularly pleased with the labels!

And here’s how the other cords look, stored in the Elfa drawer. (The HDMI cables are back where Barry would look for them.)

I also keep a packing cube with my travel cables so they’re at the ready when I travel. That still feels a bit like a moving target as devices change so I went through it to make sure it contained up-to-date cables. And I updated my travel cord checklist. I’m writing this from North Carolina and it looks like I brought the right cables, so that’s good.

Here’s a photo of the travel cables.

So I have cords in three places, plus a few connected to the wall in a couple of places in the house. That’s a lot. But at least I can pretty easily find out what I have and put my hands on what I need. The labels in the divided bin will help me keep those cords organized. At this moment in time I’m feeling good about my charging cables!

What are you waiting for?

12 February 2024

If you’re like me, you have plenty of little organizing projects around your house. You look at them and say to yourself, “I have to organize that [fill in the blank].” I do this regularly and sometimes I’ll let the same little project go undone for months on end. And then when I complete it, it ends up taking very little time.

That happened this weekend when I finally reorganized my underwear-and-sock drawer. The sock situation in my drawer had gotten out of hand and it had become a bit of a struggle to grab a pair of socks in the morning. All my socks were stored together, which worked together when I had two types of socks and colors of socks. But now I have wool socks in five different lengths and they weren’t separated enough.

So on Saturday, I finally emptied the drawer, donated a couple of items, relocated a couple more (like a seldom-used swimsuit and coverup) and sorted what was left. I knew I wanted smaller sock categories. I use inexpensive IKEA drawer organizers (Skubb) and was going to buy another set to get the granularity I needed. But I found I actually had an unopened set stored with my other organizing products! So that was an easy organizing solution to implement.

So in about a half hour, a drawer that was a literal source of stress became an easy-to-use source of peace. Why didn’t I do it sooner?

What about you? What are you waiting for to complete a life-enhancing organizing project?