photo credit: Mike Sun

Have you ever had a project so overwhelming that just thinking about getting started made you cringe? If you have a ton of clutter this may be you. The clutter didn’t get there overnight and now, just the thought of cleaning it up makes you run screaming from the room.

Okay, maybe it isn’t that dramatic but one thing I hear over and over again is “I know I have too much stuff but I don’t know where to begin”. My suggestion is start with the room you spend the most time in or feel the most stressful in. For some people that room may be the family room and for others it may be the bedroom but whatever room makes you the most uncomfortable is the room you should start in.

Now, you’ve chosen a room but how do you begin. Get 3 big boxes or and a garbage can if you can get it in the house and put them outside the room you are going to tackle. Label the boxes:

The Keep box is for items that you want to keep and that belong in this room. The Donate or Sell box is for items you want to give to charity, friends or family or sell at a garage sale, on Craigslist or eBay. The Goes Somewhere Else box is for items that may have ended up in this room but go in another room in the house (like dishes in the living room).

You need to take baby steps to get organize. Don’t try to do it all at once or you really will be overwhelmed. Get a timer and set it for 15 minutes. Pick up each item and quickly decide what to do with it. Be brutal. You should only keep the items you really need.

If you pick up an item with a price tag still on it that has been laying around for months and months, chances are you don’t NEED it. Sell it, give it away or return it to the store for a refund if it is still within the time frame for refunds.

Touch each object only once, decide what to do with it and move on. You have 15 minutes to get this part done. At the end of 15 minutes STOP. In the worst case scenario 15 minutes allowed you to make enough room in the doorway of your cluttered room to be able to step in and best case is you now have a path started. Great! Congratulate yourself because you just completed the first step to getting your room clutter free. Now, go do something else. Tomorrow you will spend another 15 minutes repeating this process.

Repeat these simple steps EVERYDAY on one room. Don’t attempt to clean every room in the house at once. You need to take baby steps and even just spending 15 minutes a day organizing you will see real progress in no time. You didn’t get disorganized overnight and you are not going to become clutter free overnight either.

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photo credit: schnaars

Do you find yourself dreaming about the day your house is organized? You’re not alone. Everyone can’t have a team of people come in and do it for them (unless you are one of the lucky people who aren’t embarrassed to show the world their mess on TV). Quite frankly, if you let someone else get your house organized there is a high probability that the house won’t stay organized. Getting rid of the clutter is only part of the problem. Once the clutter is gone, you need a process to stay organized. This is why I advise the 15 minutes a day strategy.

You may or may not have kids but chances are that once your home is organized 15 minutes is all it takes to get it tidy daily. The key is to do it daily, every single day, whether you feel like it or not. If you and your family get into the habit of putting things away right after they use them then 15 minutes a day will be simple.

But what if your house isn’t organized now? Then you need to make the same 15 minute a day commitment to put everything you took out during the day plus take time to declutter the stuff you already have.

I just got laid off from my job and now I am working from home. I brought home everything from my job office and put it in my home office. What a mess. My goal for the first week was to take everything out of my office and sort it into keep, toss, donate or move to the right location. I sell a lot of items online and I tend to end up with tons of inventory in my office. I also love technology and never throw away the old stuff when I get new stuff. Don’t even get me started on how much paperwork I accumulate.

I got up last Thursday morning and decided it was time to get the office tidied up. I waited for my husband to leave for work (this is a must since I didn’t want him rolling his eyes or making comments while I was organizing MY stuff). Deciding to throw something you own away should be your decision, not anybody else’s. You don’t want to start a fight because your spouse doesn’t see why you keep the doll your grandmother gave you when you were five even though you never look at it. Tell them to go find something to do for the day so you can make your space beautiful.

After the house was clear I took everything out of the office and put it into piles in the living room according to what it was. Paperwork, old electronics, office supplies, books, photos, etc. were all sorted by type. I didn’t spend any time really looking at them; I just moved them out and sorted them by type. When the office was empty I quickly dusted and vacuumed. I was able to accomplish this in four hours. Now my office was empty but my living room was filled with stuff.

The next step was to get things put away. I started with the books since that was the easiest. My bookshelves were completely empty and I only put the books back on them that I wanted to keep. The rest of the books went out to my eBay / Amazon selling area in the garage. I even ended up with two empty shelves that I promptly made into filing areas. I put two stacks of in/out boxes on them; one for me and one for my husband.

I ventured back to the living room and sorted the electronics according to what I need to keep and what could be sold, tossed or donated. Most of the items were in great shape so I think I will sell them online. Now the pile of stuff in the living room was down to half the size it was originally.

The next pile to tackle was paperwork. I sorted the papers into three piles. One pile was things I needed to do, one pile was for things to keep and one pile was for thing to shred. I am not going to file anything right now since the goal is to just get the office organized and the living room back to normal before my husband gets home from work.

I grabbed a box and put all of the paperwork to keep in it. I put it in my office right next to my desk. Over the next week I will go through the receipts, scan them and shred them. I find it is easier for me to keep all of my files electronically rather than filling up file cabinets with paper. I put the items I need to follow up on in my new inbox on the bookshelf. Tomorrow I will tackle the inbox papers but right now organizing has to be finished. I took all of the papers to shred out to the garage and put them through the shredder. My shredder is a monster (three feet tall and will shred CDs and credit cards) and I found a place in the garage that it fit better than in my office.

Now all that was left in the living room were inventory to sell online and office supplies. I promptly put all of the office supplies away. The inventory items were taken back out to the garage and put away.

The total time it took me to get the office back into working order was eight hours. I find it is easier with a big task like organizing a room to devote an entire day to getting it straightened rather than do it in little chunks. I could have never left my living room a mess for more than a day so this was really my only option. Also, when you focus on one task rather than multi-tasking, you get more done in less time. Now my office is organized and fun to work in.

I spend 15 minutes a day, first thing in the morning, scanning my receipts and have them almost done. Another day or two and the scanning box will be empty.

Getting organized is a chore but the results that come from it are so much more rewarding. The stress is gone because everything is in its place and I am able to focus on working rather than worrying about the fact things need to be put away.

Let me know what works and what doesn’t work for you in the comments.

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photo credit: bethography – melting mama

I have one, my Mom has one, my co-workers have one and I bet you have too.  I’m talking about junk drawers.  You know, that one drawer in the kitchen or laundry room that you put everything in that doesn’t have a home or where you put stuff when suddenly company is at the door.

I haven’t opened my junk drawer in months but today I was looking for a little rubber foot that goes on my espresso knock box.  My junk drawer had old broken birthday candles, a lighter, shoe laces, keys to who knows what, and two dozen miscellaneous items that I don’t think I have looked at in the past year and a half.  I did however find some velcro that I needed for a project so that was a good thing and I found the little rubber foot I was looking for.

I dumped out the entire drawer and threw most of the stuff away.  I put the shoe laces in my dresser which is near my shoes in the closet.  I put the velcro with my sewing stuff and the lighter didn’t work so I tossed it.  By the end of my little clean up I didn’t have anything to put in my “junk drawer” so since it is in the laundry room, I put my dish towels away in it.  It’s nice to have that little mess cleaned up.

Your Daily 15 – Take a few minutes and go through your junk drawer.  Throw away all of the pens, lighters and batteries that don’t work anymore.  Put as much stuff as you can away where they should really should go.   Although you may still  have stuff in the drawer, once you’ve cleaned it out  it will have usable stuff instead pens without ink, broken crayons and used up note pads.  Now rename it “Utility Drawer” and remember that it isn’t for junk anymore.

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photo credit: Valerie Reneé

Have you ever know anyone who had so much stuff in their purse that you wondered if they were actually carrying a small child in there? With the sizes of purses resembling small suitcases it’s easy to forget to take stuff out and put it away. Do you really need 25 used tissues, 5 binky’s or all those gas and ATM receipts with you?  There are women out there with back and shoulder problems who would all benefit from a lighter load.

We have a friend whose wallet is so full that he has to take it out of his back pocket to sit. He keeps it from exploding into a paper fireworks show by wrapping several rubber bands around it. It is ridiculous to carry so much stuff. It is so embarrassing to go anywhere with him since he has to take this monstrosity out and have a conversation about it with every one who sees it.

Well the new year is almost here and it’s time to clean up.

Your daily 15 – Get you purse or wallet and dump everything out of it on a large table or bed.  Then start sorting – papers and receipts in one pile, makeup, food, garbage in their own piles.  Keep going until everything is sorted then put all of the receipts in your office or filing area.   Take all of the business cards out you’ve collected with people’s phone numbers and put them in an address book.

Look at all of the makeup or personal care items you have – are they still usable or even in style?  Ask yourself “Have I used it in the past month?”  If not, don’t put it back in your purse.  Put it in the bathroom or toss it.

Do you carry medication with you like EpiPens or asthma inhalers?  Check the expiration date on them and if they are expired, get them refilled.  If they are out of date, chances are they won’t help you much in an emergency.

Getting your personal belongings in order will help you start the new year right!

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photo credit: Calc-tufa

Yesterday I got a call from a close friend who said she and her family were going to be passing through our area on their way to Las Vegas and they wanted to stop by. I love my friend but my house was a mess and wasn’t intending on getting it organized for a couple of days. I had clothes in the living room because I was ironing and my kitchen was a mess from breakfast. She said they were about 45 miles away which gave me only about an hour to work some magic. Here are some ways you can bluff your way to organized.

• Put all of the dirty dishes either in the dishwasher – don’t rinse or organize, just put them in OR
• My personal favorite is to hide them in the oven. This one can back fire on you if you are not careful and don’t take them out before you turn on the oven.
• All laundry can be hidden either in a non-guest bathroom, spare closet or laundry room as long as you can close the door.  The same goes for “stuff”.  Put everything in a box and hide it away.
• Vacuum only the areas your guests will see.  It’s a lot quicker to just vacuum the living room than worrying about doing the whole house.
• The bathrooms and kitchen always seem need the most attention so I keep a bottle of bleach and water around to spray on rags and wipe everything down (I don’t use products with ammonia in them because it can cause illness in some dogs and cats and we have dogs).  Even if it isn’t perfectly clean, it will smell clean.
• Lint roller is the next item to come out because my dogs do get on the couch so I don’t want my guests to leave all furry.  I lint roll the couch as quickly as I can.
• Yesterday we had an abundance of stuff from the holidays sitting around so all of it went in a big plastic tub and out in the garage.
• All of the doors in the house to rooms we are embarrassed to let anyone see get closed.
• I light a couple of vanilla scented candles and wait for the doorbell to ring.

Remember, your friends and family come over to see you not to inspect your house.  Clean up as much as you can then relax and enjoy the company.

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photo credit: jeffschuler

I was working on my January goals and realized that being organized isn’t as hard if you don’t have a lot of stuff.  I have to admit I have a lot of stuff.   I always thought that if my stuff was organized and neat and I had room to put things away that I really didn’t have too much stuff.  Well, we’ve past that point of too much so now my goal is to get rid of some of the items we just don’t use.

I’ve made it my goal to reduce my stuff by one item a day in 2009.  It shouldn’t be hard since I love to sell items online and get a little cash back in my pocket (no doubt, to buy more stuff).  I also will give stuff away to my favorite thrift store that helps the homeless with its sales revenue.

My plan is to start with the coat closet because it is full of coats we don’t wear.  After the coat closet, I will be working on the bookshelves.  I have hundreds of books that I have read that could be passed on to others.  After the books I think I will move on to music CD’s that I don’t listen to.  It may seem like getting rid on one item a day is a large undertaking but the 365 items that I can re-home will give me back a lot of room for more stuff of course.

Your Daily 15 – So, do you have a lot of stuff you don’t use?  How about your kids stuff?  Why not make it a family project to try to reduce your stuff by just a few items a week in 2009.  You’d be surprised how much stuff you just don’t need.

Start today and take just 15 minutes and see if you can find a few items that you don’t use or need.  If you don’t have a thrift store nearby and don’t want to sell online, try listing your item on your local Craigslist or Freecycle.  There are families who could use your stuff.  If you have something that would be better thrown away then just toss it.  Reducing your stuff will definately help you be more organized.

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iPhone and Franklin Covey Planner

It doesn’t matter who you are, we all need to have some way to organize our lives. I have used a Franklin Planner for more than 14 years and I don’t go anywhere without it but I have to admit my new favorite organizer has to be my iPhone. That is a great invention and it works really well for my needs. I take attend quite a few seminars, have appointments for the doctor and a husband I need to keep track of. I write all of my appointments down in my Planner then I enter them in my iPhone. I know it seems like twice the amount of work but I always have one or the other with me.

PDAs or personal digital assistants have come a long way since the first Palm Pilot. I have upgraded my electronic organizers every couple of years but I always fell back to my paper planner. The paper planner allows me to have history at my fingertips. Last week my husband and I were talking about our next vacation and a really neat little motel near Hearst Castle that we wanted to stay at. I went to the bookshelf where my old Planner pages are stored and was able to look up the name and address of the motel since I had written it down while passing by last year. This really works for me but I know not everyone feels comfortable using a Planner or has a PDA.

The next best thing is a calendar but if you throw it away every year you haven’t got any history. Maybe that isn’t important to you so a calendar works fine. My husband works as a equipment repair technician and he writes down the jobs he has to do every day in his paper based planner. This has saved him on more than one occasion when a customer will insist that the service call should be covered by warranty since he was there less than a year ago. Even if the customer can’t produce an invoice, my husband is able to look back through his stored Planner pages and find out the last date he went to his customer’s location.

Whatever you choose to keep track of the kids sporting events, your best friends wedding or the doctor appointment you made two months ago needs to work for you. If you try one planning system and it doesn’t seem natural, find another. There are lots of great organizer and calender software programs out there too but I find that I am not usually at a computer every day.

Your Daily 15 – If you don’t have a planning system, take 15 minutes today and research what is out there that might help you stay more organized and stay neat. Visit the office supply store or go online to see the alternatives. There are so many ways to get organized that you are sure to find a system that fits your needs.

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photo credit: RobotSkirts

As our society gets more and more stuff, storage units become a viable option to keep stuff we aren’t using right now but aren’t ready to get rid of.  What do you do when you have too much stuff to keep at home?  You rent a storage unit, right?  This may be a great idea to immediately help clear the clutter but most likely it won’t change the way you collect and save stuff.  A better solution may be to downsize.

A good friend called me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I could come over with my camera and take some photos of his stuff so he could sell it.  I met him at a storage place near his house where he rents a storage unit for $75 a month.  I expected that he would have a huge unit for that price but it only measured about 8′ by 10′.  Inside he had an older couch, a hand-me-down dining room set, two dressers, a nightstand and about twenty boxes of miscellaneous stuff.  I photographed everything for him and we got it all listed on Craigslist.  The total asking price for all of his stuff came to $450 but there was no telling if he would get his asking price.  I couldn’t believe it but he had been paying rent to store his stuff for almost two years.  That’s $1,800 out of his pocket to store about $400 bucks worth of stuff.  Ridiculous if you ask me.  He would have been better off donating these items and getting a tax deductible receipt than storing them for two years.

Do you have items in storage that you never use?  Maybe you have stuff at home that you could get rid of to make room for the stuff in storage.  Why would you pay your hard earned money to keep stuff you don’t use?  Sell it, donate it, give it to a relative or just throw it away.  You can almost always find a replacement for whatever it is you are storing at a later date if you decide you need it.

Your Daily 15 -Take some time this weekend and go to your storage unit.  Write down everything in there (if you can get to it) or just the items you can actually see.  Bring a camera and photograph any items you might want to sell and put them online on Craigslist or eBay or list them in the local paper or Penny Saver.   The goal is to clear out that storage unit as quickly as possible and start saving the money you used to spend on storage.  If you have large items you might want to have a storage unit sale if your facility allows it then you let the buyers come to you.

Start saving hundreds of dollars a year instead of storing the items you will never use again or can easily be replaced.  An exercise machine you just had to have may have cost you $1,000 but if you look in the paper it could possibly be replaced for pennies on the dollar.  Sell it now and get something for it instead of spending even more money each year to have it sit unused.  Sure, it will sting a bit when you only get a few bucks for something you spent a lot of money.  Think about the future and the fact you will have more money in your pocket to get the things you really need.

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photo credit: Kai Hendry

I hope have you been able to take 15 minutes a day for yourself to be organized. I thought I would put together a list of the items in my office that I couldn’t do without. Office equipment don’t have to cost a fortune and one of the best ways to save money on office equipment and supplies is to sign up at online for free coupons. I get coupons several times a year that I can use in the store or on line that save me lots of money. Go to the Office Depot, Office Max and Staples websites and sign up for email notifications. Here are ten items I couldn’t be without.

1. File Cabinet – Everyone needs a place to keep important papers so they don’t get lost. I have two small two drawer file cabinets in my office that every piece of paper I must keep is in. You need a place to keep all of those appliance instructions, tax returns, children’s vaccination records, current receipts, etc.

2. Fireproof Safe – You need to keep items such as birth and marriage certificates, passports, social security number cards safe and inaccessible to those who don’t need the information. If you have space, a fireproof safe is an easy and convenient item to keep you important and hard to replace documents. Most banks offer safe deposit boxes for minimal rent so if you don’t mind going to the bank to retrieve your items, a safe deposit box is a space saving alternative to a safe.

3. Inbox – You need a place to put all of the incoming paperwork in to keep it all together. My desk has a pretty box on it that a birthday gift came in. You just need a central place to set the mail and receipts in so it doesn’t have to be fancy. You can get plastic and metal ones at most office supply stores for a couple of dollars.

4. Label Maker – I label everything and a label maker makes it look nice, plus it is fast. Whenever I get a new gadget like an mp3 player, a camera or cell phone I make a label for each accessory that comes with it. I put a label on the charger cord, recharging cradle and the computer cord that has the model or make of the item it goes with. This way I can store all of my electrical and computer cords in one place and the labels identify the item it is used with. I have a drawer in my office labeled gadgets and there must be ten different power cords in there. The labels make it really simple to match them up with their device.

5. Scanner – I use my scanner every day and couldn’t be without it. The scanner interfaces with the computer so you can scan documents to a digital file on your computer or to a file to be printed (thus eliminating the need for a copier). I recommend you purchase a scanner that comes with software that allows the scan to be saved as a pdf document or as a jpeg. The software is less expensive when it comes bundled with a scanner than if purchased alone.

6. Office Chair – You don’t want to skimp here if you spend more than an hour a week in your office. Office chairs have come a long way in comfort and you should be able to find one that fits your budget. Go to a large office supply and sit in all of the chairs to find one that fits you. Keep an eye on your local classified ads to find companies that are closing to get the best deal on a used chair.

7. Shredder – There is always something on the news about identity theft but there is something you can do to lessen your chances of it happening to you. Shred all of the incoming credit card applications, and anything with your signature or personal information on it.

This short list is that items I find the most important in my office.

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I

used to have the amazing ability to walk in the door after work and instantly lose my keys. The next morning I was known to waste anywhere from 10 minutes to a half hour looking for my missing keys. Sometimes they were in the couch other times they were on the bookshelf. It was like magic and I was Houdini. *Poof* gone. This turned into such an issue that there were days I would have to wake up my husband to help me look and he was never amused. My punishment for losing my keys is I now have a dog named Makese, when pronounced correctly is My Keys. I guess I deserve it but she was never much help finding them either.

Those days are behind me and I can proudly say, that eight years later, I always know where my keys are. I no longer put them down in random places and can leave the house in my car anytime I want. Pathetic isn’t it.

The other issue I had to tackle was my inefficiency at keeping my office clean and usable. I had huge piles of papers that would avalanche from the desk onto the floor making walking a serious OSHA violation. We had more paperwork coming in daily than I could process and I had no system to get it all put somewhere. I finally got a laptop so I didn’t have to work in the office.
Then I started selling online and found that my inventory was suffering the same fate as the papers in my office. I was misplacing items almost as fast as I listed them. I knew it was time to stop and get a handle on it when I got negative feedback from a customer because, not only could I not find the item he bought, I lost the money order he sent me to pay for it so I couldn’t return it.

Fast forward eight years – everything has a place and life couldn’t be neater. I stop working 15 minutes before the end of each workday and put everything away that is sitting out. I come into the office each morning to be greeted by a clean desk and a feeling of control. It’s not hard to do but it does take discipline. You’ll be amazed by how much you can do in 15 minutes (more if you have the time).

My goal with this site is to give you real life examples and simple tasks that will help you put it all away. My office is 90% paperless and I can teach you to make yours the same. I would love to hear from you and learn how you make life neat.

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