Entries by Janine Cavanaugh, CPO®

Lost & Found Box

Establish a lost and found box for small items that you come across while organizing and cleaning up.  This way you’ll have a home for found parts to a game, pieces to a toy, buttons, screws, pens, lose change, etc.  Once a month empty out the lost and found box and put items where they […]

10 Points on Which I Agree With Marie Kondo

The popular book by Marie Kondo, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tiding Up” has been a topic of many discussions between my Professional Organizer colleagues and myself. I found that I agree with many of Marie Kondo’s points, as long as you substitute the word organizing in place of the word tidying. Here is a list […]

Attack Clutter

Organizing is action and clutter is unfinished action. To prompt yourself to take action and attack clutter, use bright colored sticky notes to tag the clutter with the action that is needed to make it go away. Then give yourself time to follow through with the action step that’s written on the sticky note.

How to Decide When It’s Time to Organize

How often do we organize? Do we let the mess and clutter build and build before you reclaim order? How do we decide when it’s time to organize? The answers to these questions vary for each individual, based on tolerance and desire. Every individual has their own personal level of tolerance for disorder, meaning how […]

De-clutter in 5 Minutes

Have one empty container in each room of the house.  At the end of each day, go room by room, and put any clutter that has accumulated into the empty container.  At the end of each week, remove the contents of each container by putting items where they belong and tossing what you don’t need.