Peace of Mind Organizing

Worth repeating: Closet issues

21 August 2013

If you have trouble parting with clothes, you’re not alone. Even Oprah Winfrey has a tough time, as I explained in this 2010 blog post. Incidentally, I still adore the fact that the clothes in my closet are organized by color!

Cleaning out the clothes closet is difficult for many people. Clothes can represent so much — like music, they can do a great job of capturing a feeling about an occasion or part of life. They also can represent hopes. You hope to wear that size again. Or you hope to have an occasion to wear that evening gown.

The trouble with hanging on to clothes that you don’t or can’t wear is that an overcrowded closet makes it so difficult to care for the clothes you do wear. It’s hard to put clothes away if they’re packed in too tight. They also get wrinkled. And it’s much harder to see what you have.

I was just perusing the March 2010 issue of O Magazine, whose theme is “De-Clutter Your Life!” In one of the articles, Oprah Winfrey goes through her closet trying to decide what to keep and what to let go of, with the help of the magazine’s creative director, Adam Glassman. What struck me about the article was that even Oprah, who has an almost unimaginable about of money, had difficult letting go of stuff. At one point in her life she had a very limited wardrobe because of budget. “Even now, wasting money on clothes makes me crazy,” she admits in the article.

After insisting on saving some beautiful items (she calls a pair of boots she’s never worn “closet jewelry”), Oprah agrees to let go of trendy items she doesn’t wear. It appears that Adam’s suggestion that the discarded clothing be auctioned off on Ebay to raise funds for OWLA, Oprah’s leadership academy for South African girls, makes it easier for her to let go.

I see this in my clients; if they know the article of clothing will be loved by someone else, they’re more able to let it go. They’d like to give stuff to me, but my policy is not to accept items that my clients are letting go of. (It prevents the appearance of conflict of interest and helps keep my home clutter-free.)

So next time you’re trying to weed out your closet, remember that Oprah found it difficult. You can imagine how beautiful the clothes she was discarding were, but she did it.

As an aside, my friend, the organizer extraordinaire Geralin Thomas helped me weed and organize my closet on a visit in 2009. She convinced me to arrange my clothes by color, something I resisted. I felt it was hyper-organized and would be too complicated for me. Boy, was I wrong. I love having my clothes sorted by color. (I organize them by category first, then by color. All blouses are together, in color order, all jackets, pants, etc.) Not only is it beautiful, but it makes it very easy to find what I need and to put individual items away.

And the less densely populated the rods, the more I enjoy my color-coded closet.

Friday Fun: Ella Mae sings along to Elvis

16 August 2013

I originally saw this video on Facebook and have watched all five minutes and forty seconds of the video at least a half dozen times. It makes me smile and laugh each time. In case you have seen it, I thought I’d share it here so you can smile and laugh with Ella Mae too.

Little Ella, who according to ABC News is 21 months old, clearly loves her Elvis and her daddy. Be sure and watch it through to the soulful finale!

Worth repeating: Standards of clutter

14 August 2013

I wrote this blog post four years ago and it remains relevant. Clutter is truly in the eye of the beholder, which can become a problem when people in the same household have different standards!

Since I specialize in working with chronically disorganized people, I’ve seen a lot of clutter. I’ve worked in homes so full of stuff they were uninhabitable (literally).

But I’ve also been hired to do consultations for people for whom there was no visible clutter, at least at first glance. Yet those folks made the effort to schedule an appointment and paid me to advise them on how to deal with stuff that was bothering them. To my eye, it was small, easily addressable stuff. But to them it was a problem. (I always have to remind myself never to trivialize someone’s problem.)

It just goes to show you that clutter is in the eye of a beholder. I’m fond of saying that clutter isn’t a problem unless it’s a problem. Some people like having a little clutter around. Personally, I feel a little itchy when I walk into homes where literally everything’s in place. To me, that’s sterile, not comfortable. But if I were someone who desired such a home, then a pile of papers on the desk that won’t go away is clutter. Heck, a single sheet of paper that didn’t have a home would feel like clutter.

If you live alone, then your standard of clutter is your business. If you’re functioning well and the clutter doesn’t bother you, then it’s not a problem. (I define being cluttered as having more stuff than will fit in the storage spaces available.)

When you live with others, particularly with people with differing standards of clutter, it gets difficult. And that’s when compromise has to come into play. Sometimes the solution is to have private spaces within a home that don’t get messed with. So a neat person can have a pristine space without it being cluttered up by the spouse. And a messy person can mess up a room all he or she wants without being nagged about it.

My own standards of clutter are fairly relaxed. Compared to some of my chronically disorganized clients, my home is quite pristine. But I don’t mind if a few things don’t get put away, when it’s just my husband and me at home. When I’m expecting guests, however, I up the ante. Back in August I hosted a social event for members of the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers. In anticipating that event, I had a little melt down as I worried how the other organizers might judge me for my less-than-perfect home. (I was being irrational, since of course I know that these great POs are not judgmental…but my being the president of the chapter made me feel like perhaps my standards should be higher.) Right after that event, I blogged about the experience at the fabulous website, Unclutterer.

In your own organizing journey, if you can get your home to the point where your own standard of clutter is met, and then create routines so that you keep your house at that comfortable level, then you’re a success, in my opinion. It doesn’t matter if that standard is different from what your mother (or mother-in-law) might approve of. As long as everyone in your home is comfortable and you’re functioning well, then you’re in good shape. Try not to impose other people’s standards of clutter on your home.

Got a storage unit? An organizer can help

13 August 2013

I was recently interviewed for an article on the Sparefoot.com blog. (Sparefoot is a website that helps people find storage units.)

The article, Seven Reasons You Might Need a Professional Organizer, outlines under what circumstances a PO might be helpful to folks who have storage units.

I have to admit I’m not a big fan of storage units in general. They can be an expensive way to delay decisions. But they can also be very useful as a temporary solution to a problem.

This article does a nice job of reminding folks how a professional organizer can be helpful—both in a storage unit and in a home or office. I was pleased to be included!

Do you resist routines?

9 August 2013

I know that for a certain number of people, the word “routine” conjures up bad feelings. Used as an adjective, it can mean non-special, ordinary, even boring.

Think about it as a noun, though. Does the idea of having a routines—a group of habits you do one right after the other—seem boring or constraining? I hear that from people sometimes. But in my view, routines are the opposite. They’re almost magical because they make my life so much easier.

We all have routines, whether we know it or not. The example I always like to use is the shower. When you take a shower, you probably do the same things every time, in the same order. (Wash hair, wash body, was face, whatever.) I bet you’ve had the experience where you weren’t sure if you washed your hair, because you weren’t even conscious of doing it.

Wouldn’t it be great if other aspects of your life, those things you struggle with accomplishing on a daily basis, were that automatic? That is the power of a great routine.

Recently I blogged about my evening work routine, which keeps me on top of things and helps me jump right into my work in the morning. But I have lots of personal routines that help make my life run smoothly and help keep my house from looking like a disaster. If you’re new here, you may not realize that I’m a naturally messy person. My habits and routines keep me productive and they help me keep my house in order.

If you resist routines, I want to invite you to try to open up to them. And if you want help doing so, please consider signing up for my online workshop, Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines which starts next week. It’s being offered by Simplify 101 and provides great guidance in the form of the written (and recorded) lessons and in personal interaction with me and other class members through the workshop’s online forums.

If you’d like your life to be a little easier, habits and routines can help. And if you’d like some help creating great habits and routines (and letting go of some less-than-great ones), this workshop might be just the ticket!

Worth repeating: Clear space, clear head

7 August 2013

I’m always amazed at what a big difference a little focused effort at decluttering, tidying, and organizing can make. I blogged about that last October.

Over the past week, I let my office get a little out of control. Getting ready to travel for a long weekend, I had stopped clearing my desk off each night. My early-morning pre-flight preparations made things worse. And when I got home from the trip on Monday afternoon, I worried about catching up with email, not cleaning things up.

By yesterday, I was actively avoiding my office. After a day away from home, I chose to work at my dining room table rather than take my laptop to my desk.

So this morning, the first thing I did when I took my computer down to my office was to set a timer and start cleaning it up. (Well, the first thing I did was take a couple of damning before pictures, see below.)

I spent 30 minutes on my desk and even got it dusted. I put stuff away, threw stuff away, looked things up that were written on random pieces of paper and really got things straight. I felt much, much better.

Then I focused on the floor of my office. After only 15 minutes of effort (and a couple of minutes vacuuming), things were back in shape.

The psychological benefit of that 45 minutes of work is amazing. Suddenly, I was eager to create a to-do list for the day and tackle it, rather than just feeling overwhelmed. I was even eager to go a little deeper into the straightening-process and do some filing and rethink some storage.

Yesterday, I had trouble thinking of a blog post. Today, I have three, because I found two written on the notepads I went through as I cleaned my desk. (So for once in my life, I may have a backlog!)

Since everybody loves before and after photos, I offer a couple of pairs.

Here’s my desk before I started cleaning it up.

And here it is after only 30 minutes of effort.

Here’s the floor of my office, looking ugly.

And here it is after 15 minutes of picking up, plus a couple of minutes of vacuuming.

If your desk is a mess and your mind feels cluttered, I strongly recommend taking just a few minutes to create some order. I think you’ll find it reaps huge dividends and will make you more productive.

A program for getting a handle on your email

5 August 2013

Several weeks ago, I subscribed to Revive Your Inbox a free, 21-day program to help you get a handle on your email.

I subscribed out of curiosity. I’m happy with the email system I use to get my inbox to zero every weekday. I found that the principles behind Revive Your Inbox are really sound. They boil down to:

• Move items you want to keep out of your inbox into a single folder and rely on the search mechanism to find what you want
• Take action to minimize the email you receive

Here’s how it works. Each day for 21 days you receive an email from Revive Your Inbox with a tip or an action to take to tame your inbox forever. The email itself captures just a taste of the info. Click a button for further information.

Each day has a focus. Everything’s clearly written with specific examples and actions to take for various types of email clients.

If you use gmail or Outlook, Revive Your Inbox will be very helpful. I use Apple’s Mail program which has fewer tools available.

Revive Your Inbox comes from Baydin, the people who created Boomerang and also The Email Game. There’s no advertising, though those products are recommended.

If you want help getting a handle on your inbox, this is definitely worth checking out!