Are you overwhelmed thinking about how to get your entire house in order? First, put away the notion that it will happen overnight, or even in a week. And keep in mind the goal isn't to end up with a sparkling space where everything is always in its place. The key to a more organized home isn't just about tossing most of your stuff and stashing the rest in cute containers (although they do help when the time is right) – it's more about recognizing and replacing bad practices with better habits that'll help you dig out from the mess on a daily basis.
The best part about the organizing process is that no matter what room you're wanting to straighten up, the rules are essentially the same — here's a four-step guide to get started, which also includes 13 strategies to prevent you from procrastinating along the way.
1. Define Your Space
For each room you want to organize, organizing expert Charlotte Steill says to take a notebook and sit down in each space, making notes on the following questions:
* How will the room be used by your family? A shared family space for games, toys and movies? An office for one or all? Be sure to account for all of the various activities because it will dictate what stays and what will get the boot when it comes time to sort the room's contents.
* What storage is available in the room? Built-in shelves, drawers, cabinets, a closet, baskets and bins? An ottoman with storage? A coffee table with drawers?
* What needs to be stored in the room to support its use? Toys, video games? Books, magazines? Computer equipment?
* What is your goal for the room?
* Does the furniture suit the room, or should it be rearranged or cleared out?
2. Sort Your Stuff
Once you have a plan, tackle only one room at a time and if you're still overwhelmed, narrow it down to one corner at a time. Then, says organizing expert Liz Witts, begin the organizing process by sorting the items into the following categories:
Keep: Items used on a regular basis.
Donate/Sell: Items that are no longer used or are duplicates — things that you can do without and would rather give it to someone else for them to benefit from.
Store: These are sentimental things that you want to hold on to but don't need to have cluttering up your daily living space.
Trash/Recyle: Things that are no longer usable. Worried about how to decide what gets tossed? Follow Liz's suggestion, "If you need to spend more than 15 seconds thinking about what something is, or when you last used it, or why you even have it, then you probably don't need it."
One caveat before you rid yourself of excess: Consider a secondary use for things you're thinking of pitching. Plastic ware can be turned into storage in drawers and cabinets and even old towels can be used for cushioning in a dog bed.
3. Set Up Storage Systems
Now that you're left with only the items you intend to keep, it's essential to set up "homes" or "zones" to maintain organization. "If you are forever misplacing your car keys, create a home for them," says organizing expert Pam Socolow. "Hang hooks near the door, or put an attractive box in a convenient place — whatever works for you. Try to establish a routine of always placing the keys in the designated spot."
Use well-labeled containers to create a storage system, and let your family know where things are located. If space is at a premium, add shelves inside closets to make use of the vertical wall space, says Liz Witts. If you have small children, attach hooks at lower heights so they can hang up their jackets and bags. Adjustable shelving, such as a closet system, is ideal because it can be moved to accommodate various storage needs. Use plastic shoeboxes — or again, even extra plastic ware normally used for food storage — to create kits for things such as sewing items, shoe repair and extension cords.
4. Stay Focused
Procrastination can have a snowball effect — the little things you put off each day can pile up to the point where you're at a loss as to how you'll ever whittle down your perpetually growing to-do list. To help you avoid the inevitable moment when your organizing efforts begin to slide, take note of these 13 strategies from organizing expert Monica Ricci:
Mental Strategies
1. Vividly imagine the way you'll feel inside after the task or project is complete.
2. Focus on your desired result, not your fear or inaction.
3. Imagine yourself completing the task or project easily, quickly and with no setbacks.
4. Tune into your procrastination language in your head and derail it with positive thoughts of "I want to," "I can," and "I enjoy" instead.
5. Let go of perfectionism. Many things aren't worth doing perfectly, so just start and do your best.
Physical Strategies
1. Get an accountability buddy to keep you on task along the way.
2. Work out the steps to the project on paper in advance to clarify your thoughts and eliminate all the emotional whirlwind around why you don't want to begin the task or project.
3. Master the art of starting. Over and over again.
4. Do the hard parts first. Or...
5. Do the easy parts first. Whichever motivates you more is the one you should choose.
6. Keep a progress log so you don't lose sight of how much you've accomplished.
7. Break your project into small, manageable chunks and create interim deadlines for yourself along the way.
8. Build in rewards for yourself as you finish each step or as you complete the project.
Source: HGTV.com
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Thursday, August 27, 2009
A list of 10 ways excessive clutter can affect you and control your life:
1. Emotionally
Excessive clutter often causes feelings of guilt, anger, shame and embarrassment that create an inner feeling of burden and heaviness.
Clutter can drain your energy - and you may not even notice it until the clutter is gone. Every item in your home has an energy to it. When items go a long time unused, unloved and uncared for, they become stuck, stagnant energy that actually physically drains you of your energy. Energetically too many items in a house can cause a sense of overwhelm or disturbance.
2. Mental Health
Clutter decreases your ability to enjoy life causing stress, confusion, inability to focus, and often leads to depression. Sometimes clutter is initially caused by depression, but clutter also makes it nearly impossible to recover from depression. Most often once people start releasing their clutter, their energy comes back and their depression gets better, sometimes it may go away for good. There are some people who are extremely sensitive to their environments and just never realized what a difference it could make.
Even in people who don't have ADD, clutter causes ADD like symptoms.
3. Relationships
Clutter and chaos causes conflicts in relationships often due to chronic lateness and disorganization.
Cutter can keep you from socializing because you don't have the energy or can't find clothes to go out. It can keep you from getting close to people because you don't entertain or want to have people visit you in your home. Again, bringing up shame or embarrassment.
4. Time
Every thing you own requires some amount of care and organization. Simply having too much stuff eats up your time like crazy. If you have too much stuff, it's much more difficult, time consuming, and expensive to get organized.
Having too much stuff often leads to procrastination and lateness which wastes yours and other people's time and causes a whole host of other problems.
Not being able to find things is a huge time cost of clutter. In extreme it can waste several hours every day.
5. Loss of Self-Esteem
Clutter can cause you to feel like you aren't capable or are missing some basic skill that everyone else "seems" to have so you feel bad about yourself - the truth is you are not alone, many people have issues dealing with clutter. It is actually way more common than one thinks.
6. Physical Health & Stress
The stress caused by clutter is enormous. Every time you can't find something, or an argument flares up with a loved one, or you can't relax because you worry about all the things you need to do, but can't till you get the clutter cleared, your stress levels increase. Stress will then lower your immunity and resistance and so you may have frequent, persistent colds or other physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, sinus problems and allergies and more. It also results in not eating healthy meals.
7. Family
Clutter causes irritability, resentment and stress that leads to temper tantrums, outbursts, and overall disharmony (especially, if people are having to deal with "other people's clutter". You may start to feel like you aren't a good parent or aren't a good example for your kids
Excessive clutter can cause depression, acting out, bad behavior in children due to their inability to focus caused by the clutter. Self-judgments are a source for many forms of separation and disturbance within a family. Then of course, judgments on others create the same.
8. Financial
All things need a place to be – a home. Whether that home is an extra room, a piece of furniture, or a container, you continue to pay for things long after you initially acquire them. Clutter directly costs money in the following ways:
o Credit card debt - often for unused stuff
o Late fees for bills paid late
o Renting storage facilities
o Duplicates purchased because you can't find things – this happens a lot!
o Some people move to larger home to accomodate the stuff
Clutter affects people's careers. Studies have shown that people with cluttered desks and offices are less likely to be promoted. This of course affects how much money you can make. And if you own your own business –then productivity directly affects your bottom-line.
9. Safety & Hygiene
In extreme clutter, people have a hard time walking without tripping or bumping into things. Often there are things hidden in the clutter that are very unsafe for children. There are cases where a young child is pretty much confined to a playpen all the time because it just isn't safe to be out of the playpen.
Inability to clean cluttered areas can lead to extreme dust and even mold and mildew that can create even more potential health problems in yourself and your children.
10. Your Future
Holding on to clutter often grounds you in the past at the cost of your present life and your future.
Clutter distracts you from being able to think about your goals, projects, hobbies and get things done.
Learning to let go of items is a way of learning to let go of the past so that you can move on. This is often seen after divorce, death of a loved one or even with inheritance of items people actually don’t want or have space for but feel obligated to keep.
Most of us experience some of these areas. Some of us may experience many of these. If you are, it may be too difficult to dig out alone. Please seriously consider getting help.
There are people and companies such as SIMPLY CHANGE in your community that specialize in helping people improve the quality of their life and the lives of their families.
There is no stigma about this - most everyone can use some help in these areas.
Please reach out if needed. Your life is just too precious and too short to live in a manner that doesn’t support all the areas of your life. Help is available and change can happen quickly!
Excessive clutter often causes feelings of guilt, anger, shame and embarrassment that create an inner feeling of burden and heaviness.
Clutter can drain your energy - and you may not even notice it until the clutter is gone. Every item in your home has an energy to it. When items go a long time unused, unloved and uncared for, they become stuck, stagnant energy that actually physically drains you of your energy. Energetically too many items in a house can cause a sense of overwhelm or disturbance.
2. Mental Health
Clutter decreases your ability to enjoy life causing stress, confusion, inability to focus, and often leads to depression. Sometimes clutter is initially caused by depression, but clutter also makes it nearly impossible to recover from depression. Most often once people start releasing their clutter, their energy comes back and their depression gets better, sometimes it may go away for good. There are some people who are extremely sensitive to their environments and just never realized what a difference it could make.
Even in people who don't have ADD, clutter causes ADD like symptoms.
3. Relationships
Clutter and chaos causes conflicts in relationships often due to chronic lateness and disorganization.
Cutter can keep you from socializing because you don't have the energy or can't find clothes to go out. It can keep you from getting close to people because you don't entertain or want to have people visit you in your home. Again, bringing up shame or embarrassment.
4. Time
Every thing you own requires some amount of care and organization. Simply having too much stuff eats up your time like crazy. If you have too much stuff, it's much more difficult, time consuming, and expensive to get organized.
Having too much stuff often leads to procrastination and lateness which wastes yours and other people's time and causes a whole host of other problems.
Not being able to find things is a huge time cost of clutter. In extreme it can waste several hours every day.
5. Loss of Self-Esteem
Clutter can cause you to feel like you aren't capable or are missing some basic skill that everyone else "seems" to have so you feel bad about yourself - the truth is you are not alone, many people have issues dealing with clutter. It is actually way more common than one thinks.
6. Physical Health & Stress
The stress caused by clutter is enormous. Every time you can't find something, or an argument flares up with a loved one, or you can't relax because you worry about all the things you need to do, but can't till you get the clutter cleared, your stress levels increase. Stress will then lower your immunity and resistance and so you may have frequent, persistent colds or other physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, sinus problems and allergies and more. It also results in not eating healthy meals.
7. Family
Clutter causes irritability, resentment and stress that leads to temper tantrums, outbursts, and overall disharmony (especially, if people are having to deal with "other people's clutter". You may start to feel like you aren't a good parent or aren't a good example for your kids
Excessive clutter can cause depression, acting out, bad behavior in children due to their inability to focus caused by the clutter. Self-judgments are a source for many forms of separation and disturbance within a family. Then of course, judgments on others create the same.
8. Financial
All things need a place to be – a home. Whether that home is an extra room, a piece of furniture, or a container, you continue to pay for things long after you initially acquire them. Clutter directly costs money in the following ways:
o Credit card debt - often for unused stuff
o Late fees for bills paid late
o Renting storage facilities
o Duplicates purchased because you can't find things – this happens a lot!
o Some people move to larger home to accomodate the stuff
Clutter affects people's careers. Studies have shown that people with cluttered desks and offices are less likely to be promoted. This of course affects how much money you can make. And if you own your own business –then productivity directly affects your bottom-line.
9. Safety & Hygiene
In extreme clutter, people have a hard time walking without tripping or bumping into things. Often there are things hidden in the clutter that are very unsafe for children. There are cases where a young child is pretty much confined to a playpen all the time because it just isn't safe to be out of the playpen.
Inability to clean cluttered areas can lead to extreme dust and even mold and mildew that can create even more potential health problems in yourself and your children.
10. Your Future
Holding on to clutter often grounds you in the past at the cost of your present life and your future.
Clutter distracts you from being able to think about your goals, projects, hobbies and get things done.
Learning to let go of items is a way of learning to let go of the past so that you can move on. This is often seen after divorce, death of a loved one or even with inheritance of items people actually don’t want or have space for but feel obligated to keep.
Most of us experience some of these areas. Some of us may experience many of these. If you are, it may be too difficult to dig out alone. Please seriously consider getting help.
There are people and companies such as SIMPLY CHANGE in your community that specialize in helping people improve the quality of their life and the lives of their families.
There is no stigma about this - most everyone can use some help in these areas.
Please reach out if needed. Your life is just too precious and too short to live in a manner that doesn’t support all the areas of your life. Help is available and change can happen quickly!
Friday, July 3, 2009
Making Money from Your Closet
Making money while cleaning out your closets.
Most people have hundreds of unclaimed dollars hanging in their closets just taking up space? How about you?
Do you have last year’s purchases that you may still have not worn yet?
Do you have expensive clothing that no longer fits your fit body?
How about clothes that no longer fit your ever-changing personality.
Clothes you wish you never would have bought but did.
Clothes you don’t even remember how they got in your closet!
Sound familiar? We all make shopping mistakes or out grow our style of clothing, but why live with them the rest of your life? Turn past year's bargains into cold hard cash right now by putting them on consignment or selling them in a garage sale. Or exchange them in a local clothing swap. (These are becoming very popular these days in many cities.)
Consignment stores are popping up everywhere because people know that they can find great bargains on quality used clothing for themselves and their families. Selling on consignment is a great way to clean out your closet, make a little money and create space for new clothes that would better suit who you are today – not who you were 5-10 years ago!
So how do you start? You do it by pulling each item from your closet (don't forget your dressers too) one at a time, and separate into piles based on the following criteria:
• You love it and wear it faithfully, and you like how you feel when you wear it.
• You like it and you wear it fairly often, or it works well with a few of your outfits.
• You hate it and never wear it. In fact you wonder what you were thinking when you bought it, it doesn't fit, or you bought it because it was a bargain.
• This pile is for undecided items--those that don't really fit into the other piles.
Many people like to have someone with them in this process to have another set of eyes. The same way you should never buy eyeglasses without someone you respect giving you their opinion. This is why our business of Professional Facilitators of Change is becoming so popular. People desire and need the help of another – it saves money, time and frustration.
Here are five easy steps to complete the job:
1. Once you closet is empty, put all the items from the "Love it" pile back into the closet. This is a great time to sort them by color and type of clothing. Shirts got here, pants go here, and scarves go here…..
2. Then put the items in the "fairly often" pile back into the closet. You should be left with two piles of clothing--the "hate it" pile and the "undecided" pile. (This is where the fun begins!)
3. Neatly fold everything in the "hate it" pile and wish it well, for it will be taking a little trip out of your home and your life.
4. Go through the "undecided" pile piece by piece, and ask yourself what value each piece currently gives you.
Warning: Avoid sentimentality - such as, “this was given to me by my mom or sister I can’t let it go.” “The last time I wore this I had such a great time in the Bahamas.” These are not reasons to keep your closet cluttered with items that do not suit you Now!
And do not get sucked in by the clothing trying to convince you of its value and reminding you how good you used to look wearing it. Clothing is sly and it will say anything to get you to keep it around. It will remind you of how expensive it was, or that it was a gift from your mother-in-law, but do not fall for these sneaky tricks! You must be strong and objective. Clothes that aren't serving you need to be purged to make room for valuable, well-suited clothing. Note that the fact that you are undecided on this pile indicates that you don't love it, which means you should be able to get rid of more than half of it if you're fierce in your decision-making process. Once you've culled the pile, you should have a whole bunch of clothes that didn't make the cut back into the closet. This is where your secret cash stash is hiding.
5. Call a local consignment store and find out what their guidelines are for consigning clothing. Determine if you need to make an appointment or if you can just drop in. Ask how the proceeds are split between you (the consignor) and the store, and you should be able to get at least 50 percent. Ask what happens to your clothes if they don't sell, most consignment stores will donate anything that doesn't sell within a certain period of time to a shelter or another nonprofit organization. You don’t want the clothes showing back up on our doorstep.
7. It’s clear with some clothes that they are not suited for consignment. They will either be boxed up to go to a shelter or non-profit or, if they are torn or in any other way in bad shape, through them away.
8. Last step is a trip to the consignment store of your choice. When back at home let yourself feel the difference of a cleaned out closet, what it represent to you in creating new space for a new you and generating money from what was just hanging around.
Simply Change
Professional Facilitators of Change.
Most people have hundreds of unclaimed dollars hanging in their closets just taking up space? How about you?
Do you have last year’s purchases that you may still have not worn yet?
Do you have expensive clothing that no longer fits your fit body?
How about clothes that no longer fit your ever-changing personality.
Clothes you wish you never would have bought but did.
Clothes you don’t even remember how they got in your closet!
Sound familiar? We all make shopping mistakes or out grow our style of clothing, but why live with them the rest of your life? Turn past year's bargains into cold hard cash right now by putting them on consignment or selling them in a garage sale. Or exchange them in a local clothing swap. (These are becoming very popular these days in many cities.)
Consignment stores are popping up everywhere because people know that they can find great bargains on quality used clothing for themselves and their families. Selling on consignment is a great way to clean out your closet, make a little money and create space for new clothes that would better suit who you are today – not who you were 5-10 years ago!
So how do you start? You do it by pulling each item from your closet (don't forget your dressers too) one at a time, and separate into piles based on the following criteria:
• You love it and wear it faithfully, and you like how you feel when you wear it.
• You like it and you wear it fairly often, or it works well with a few of your outfits.
• You hate it and never wear it. In fact you wonder what you were thinking when you bought it, it doesn't fit, or you bought it because it was a bargain.
• This pile is for undecided items--those that don't really fit into the other piles.
Many people like to have someone with them in this process to have another set of eyes. The same way you should never buy eyeglasses without someone you respect giving you their opinion. This is why our business of Professional Facilitators of Change is becoming so popular. People desire and need the help of another – it saves money, time and frustration.
Here are five easy steps to complete the job:
1. Once you closet is empty, put all the items from the "Love it" pile back into the closet. This is a great time to sort them by color and type of clothing. Shirts got here, pants go here, and scarves go here…..
2. Then put the items in the "fairly often" pile back into the closet. You should be left with two piles of clothing--the "hate it" pile and the "undecided" pile. (This is where the fun begins!)
3. Neatly fold everything in the "hate it" pile and wish it well, for it will be taking a little trip out of your home and your life.
4. Go through the "undecided" pile piece by piece, and ask yourself what value each piece currently gives you.
Warning: Avoid sentimentality - such as, “this was given to me by my mom or sister I can’t let it go.” “The last time I wore this I had such a great time in the Bahamas.” These are not reasons to keep your closet cluttered with items that do not suit you Now!
And do not get sucked in by the clothing trying to convince you of its value and reminding you how good you used to look wearing it. Clothing is sly and it will say anything to get you to keep it around. It will remind you of how expensive it was, or that it was a gift from your mother-in-law, but do not fall for these sneaky tricks! You must be strong and objective. Clothes that aren't serving you need to be purged to make room for valuable, well-suited clothing. Note that the fact that you are undecided on this pile indicates that you don't love it, which means you should be able to get rid of more than half of it if you're fierce in your decision-making process. Once you've culled the pile, you should have a whole bunch of clothes that didn't make the cut back into the closet. This is where your secret cash stash is hiding.
5. Call a local consignment store and find out what their guidelines are for consigning clothing. Determine if you need to make an appointment or if you can just drop in. Ask how the proceeds are split between you (the consignor) and the store, and you should be able to get at least 50 percent. Ask what happens to your clothes if they don't sell, most consignment stores will donate anything that doesn't sell within a certain period of time to a shelter or another nonprofit organization. You don’t want the clothes showing back up on our doorstep.
7. It’s clear with some clothes that they are not suited for consignment. They will either be boxed up to go to a shelter or non-profit or, if they are torn or in any other way in bad shape, through them away.
8. Last step is a trip to the consignment store of your choice. When back at home let yourself feel the difference of a cleaned out closet, what it represent to you in creating new space for a new you and generating money from what was just hanging around.
Simply Change
Professional Facilitators of Change.
Friday, June 5, 2009
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