Floor Clutter
Don’t let things touch the floor. Reserve floors for feet, furniture, and shoes. This helps reduce clutter buildup on the floor, especially in kids’ rooms.
Don’t let things touch the floor. Reserve floors for feet, furniture, and shoes. This helps reduce clutter buildup on the floor, especially in kids’ rooms.
Step 1 – Prepare
Get ready for the transition by taking a close look at your options and where you are headed. Psych yourself up to make decisions about your next home and material possessions. Share the news with everyone and ask for help from family and friends, or seek professional assistance.
Step 2 – Write it down
Plan to work 8 hours for every year you’ve lived in your current home. Schedule 2 or 3 hours at a time and work for 20 minutes followed by a 5 minute break.
Step 3 – Get started
If you have a far off deadline (more than 8 months), start by removing items that you don’t want, use, or need. These items will include things that have been stored for others, unfinished fix-it projects, old hobbies, duplicate items, surplus stuff, items of which there are excessive quantity, broken things, expired items, outdated stuff, and damaged goods.
If you have a near deadline, divide items into 6 different categories and tag them. (I use colored painter’s tape to tag items.) The 6 categories are keep, recycle, toss, donate, give or return, and sell.
Step 4 – Reduce
Set limits by taping off cabinets, closets, storage areas, and rooms in your current home that won’t be available in your new home. Work to empty those areas of their contents.
Ask “W” Questions to help you make decisions:
Who? Who will use and maintain this item? Who gave it to you and is that relevant?
What? What purpose does this item serve? What would the giver tell you to do?
Where? Where do you want to make room for this item?
When? When is this item used, appreciated, viewed, treasured? When is it maintained?
Why? Why would you need this item in our new home? Why are you holding onto it?
Step 5 – Address Sentimental Items
Consider the cost of clinging to sentimental items. It takes a lot of money to pack, move, ship, insure, store, and maintain our belongings. Concentrate on keeping the memories, but not the stuff, by preserving them with words and photos. Do this with digital scrapbooks, videos, and a gratitude journal. Instead of having them gather dust in the attic, treasure them by highlighting the best and letting go of the rest. Re-purposing them or use them in a different way so they sever a current need or look for a way that items can bring joy to others.
Step 6 – Establish Exit Strategy
An exit strategy is physically removing stuff by giving, donating, selling, or recycling what you no longer want, need, or use.
Give options: Ask people you know if they want what you’re discarding. Ask family, friends, neighbors, club members, church members, past co-workers, and others. Put items on the curb with a free sign. Use Freecycle or Buy Nothing.
Donation options: Give to charities, non-profits, religious organizations, Boy/Girl Scouts, senior centers, schools, camps, day-cares, shelters, libraries, theater groups, historical societies, and food banks.
Selling options: Look into antique dealers, auctions, estate sales, consignment shops, on-line sites, newspapers, garage sales, estate liquidation.
Removal Companies: Consider junk trucks, dumpsters, all-in-one clean out, complete house clean out companies.
Step 7 – Thrive in Smaller Space with Less Stuff
Here are a few tips for creating and maintaining order in smaller spaces. I hope they help you enjoy your new downsized, simplified lifestyle.
©April 2018 Janine Cavanaugh, Certified Professional Organizer All Rights Reserved
We hold onto things from the past, because they were significant and important to us in our past. They help us remember and honor a past event or memory. Some examples may be a bride’s maid dress that was worn at a friend’s wedding, paper products from a child’s birthday party, or Dad’s wood carving tools.
We hold onto things for the future, because we think they will be significant or important to us in our future or the future of someone close to us. Some examples may be furniture our children will use in college, papers that have resources we think we’ll need in the future, or dishes our children will use in their first apartment.
A combination of the two is when we hold onto things from the past for the future. For example I have two cool swivel chairs in my living room that were originally in my grandparent’s front parlor. They were saved and used by other family members before I inherited them, and I plan on passing them along to another family member in the future. Another example is my old photographs and scrapbooks. I enjoy sharing them and reminiscing about past events, holidays, and special occasions. It also makes me smile to think that they will bring joy when shared in the future.
As you may be able to tell, things that have an impact on both the past and the future, are usually the most sentimental items, and thus the one’s we cling to. If this is what my client and I discover in our conversation about an item, then it’s usually a keeper. Otherwise we discuss some qualifying questions to determine whether it’s worth holding onto.
Whether it’s a keeper or not, answering the above questions help establish some objectivity to the sentimental attachment we me feel about our things.
Want more help letting go? Here are three blogs that offer more assistance.
©February 2018 Janine Cavanaugh, Certified Professional Organizer All Rights Reserved
Reaching the finish line also means completing the organizing process and reclaiming order. Putting things away and picking up after ourselves are important parts of reaching the finish line. It is what helps us maintain order, and is best accomplished with practice. For example, upon returning home after being out, I spend time putting things away. My keys and coat go on their hooks, my shoes go on the mat, and my pocketbook goes on the desk. Practicing reaching the finish line with this daily organizing routine helps me maintain order. Other daily organizing routines that can benefit from practice are dressing for the day, processing the mail, undressing at night, project clean up, and picking up toys.
In your home, do you want to reduce clutter and maintain order? You can by reaching the finish line. What finish line is waiting for you to cross it? Will you know when you’ve crossed it? Also, take a closer look at your daily organizing routines. Can you improve them with practice? If you think you’d be more successful with a little help from me, please ask.
©December 2017 Janine Cavanaugh, Certified Professional Organizer® All Rights Reserved
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