Stuck at home. You’ve had your morning coffee, read the gloomy newspaper or scanned your social media apps. You have something pressing to do but avoid it and mindlessly start shuffling papers on your desk.

You wander around aimlessly, straightening pictures, moving a pile of books from one surface to another,  throwing out an obvious piece of trash. You know you’re barely making a dent but somehow it seems important in the moment.

You look around your home and feel the familiar pang of shame that comes from knowing your house is more than a “bit of a mess.” Books and knick-knacks piled two-deep on shelves. Your cabinets and drawers packed full with a lifetime of items that meant something to you once but now you can’t even remember where half of them came from.

Almost every surface covered with the residue of the week.

Don’t Go It Alone!

You look around at the 20 or 30 years of accumulated stuff. You wonder if you have the resources to hire a professional organizer who would somehow magically transform your home into a picture straight out of Real Simple Magazine. You know this is impossible now. Money is tight and you’ve just paid your property taxes or your son’s tuition or an unexpected medical bill from a procedure you had last year before something called Covid-19 stole your “normal” life.

Momentarily the thought disappears as your alarm reminds you it’s time for your weekly Zoom call.

During the meeting you happen to mention your desire to get decluttered and curiously ask if anyone else is feeling the same. All at once, hands shoot up in the air.  You let out a sigh of relief and recognition. You are not alone in this struggle and that’s when it hits you.  “Why not start a clutter support group?”

This is exactly what happened to C.J. Hayden, a business coach, trainer and author of six books including, the bestselling, Get Clients Now! A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches.

The idea came to C.J. during a recent Zoom meeting she was conducting with her clients – mostly other self-employed people.  C.J. casually mentioned she’d like to be more organized and asked if anyone else was experiencing the same thing.

“Half the hands in the room shot up” C.J. told me recently by phone. She then posed the question to the group, “Maybe we should form a pod? That’s how it started. It was totally spontaneous.”

Within a few days C.J. had come up with a group structure — action oriented, not just a support group – a name, The Decluttering Divas and a schedule. They meet virtually once a week on Monday mornings and keep their computer’s microphones and cameras turned on so everyone else in the group can “get the visceral sounds of decluttering.”  C.J. gets the group going but it is strictly peer-support that keeps everyone on task.

Tame Your Inner Critic

Perhaps the biggest value of the group has been the way it helps silence everyone’s inner critic, including C.J’s.

“She tells me this is too big a job and I’ll never be able to complete it. But I keep telling her that as long as I break it down into manageable chunks, and have support, I really can.”

The group shares another bond – that of facing the many challenges of life as baby-boomers.  Several of the group’s members juggle their lives and their businesses, often with competing responsibilities for aging parents, adult children and the self-imposed pressure of changing attitudes towards the things they own. For some, decluttering runs into direct conflict with their parent’s depression-era views of save everything

In C.J.’s case, that meant, among other things, coming across a collection of old hair accessories and incredulously wondering why she had kept them. “The last time I had hair long enough to wear hair ornaments was probably in the mid-90s!”

Join A Worldwide Movement

It turns out Decluttering Divas is not alone. A search of other decluttering groups on the popular Meetup.com website found 71 groups consisting of nearly 18,000 members in 62 cities across 16 countries around the world.

While it’s unlikely the Covid-19 pandemic, with more and more people being sequestered at home, lead to the phenomena of worldwide clutter groups, as well as popular topics such as minimalism, online selling, tiny houses, and home editing, it’s probably one of it’s few silver linings.  Even C.J.s group has one participant from the United Kingdom.

The reasons people join a decluttering group are as varied as their stuff.  In “Decluttering Divas,” one member was dealing with the clutter left behind by her parents who lived with her for many years but who have since moved on to retirement communities or passed away.

Another is an artist who wanted more time for her art and hobbies and was getting too distracted by her clutter.

For C.J. herself it came down to being able to be more productive at work as a busy entrepreneur who travels extensively as well as to be able to relax at home.

Even her husband, without prompting, caught the decluttering bug.

“One day I came out of my meeting and found a bunch of cups and glasses on the counter. He decided it was time to clear out a kitchen cabinet.”  Together they got rid of most of them, offering them for free to neighbors through the popular site, Nextdoor.com

Applying what you already know to get organized

While not a professional organizer herself, C.J. had worked with a few in the past, and had read several books about organizing and several of her clients are professional organizers.  Along the way, she’s learned techniques and strategies for decluttering but it’s been her coaching and group facilitation experience that turned her casual question into a satisfying reality.

When the group first met, C.J. posed three “focusing questions” to ensure each member had a real action-oriented purpose for being there.

The focusing questions asked members to set and share a specific and attainable goal, explain why they had chosen that goal and set a deadline for completing the goal. Members who could not set a realistic deadline were asked to scale back their goals until they could.

To keep it “manageable,” there are a total of 8 people in the group though other peer-lead groups around the country, according to MeetUp.com show as many as 600 members.

During meetings, members of the group share their goals and even post before and after pics. Offline the group shares or exchanges resources such as where and how to get rid of things, especially useful during the current health restrictions when many charities are not accepting or limiting their donation services.

Members even share links to organizing products they see online such as containers and bins.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the group has been the fact each member understands what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by clutter and want to help each other.

“Having this group has meant I have support, camaraderie, and benevolent peer pressure from being surrounded by others on the same path.”

Lis McKinley is a Certified Professional Organizer®, Move Management Specialist and Owner of LET’S MAKE ROOM, LLC based in Oakland, California.

If pantries were so easy to keep organized, groceries and supermarkets wouldn’t have to tidy and restock their shelves every day!

When it comes to organizing your pantry, if you don’t have time to empty boxes of cereal, rice, or mixed nuts into their own individual glass jars and put a pretty label on it–and who does?–then this is the perfect pantry organizing solution for you.  Here’s how it works:

1. Start by emptying your pantry and group all like-items together such as:

candy, chips, snacks, crackers, cereal, dried fruit, nuts, rice, grains, pasta, lentils, canned items, dried spices, baking supplies, bread crumbs, broths, stocks, non-refrigerated milks (almond, coconut, soy), oils, vinegars, cooking sauces, nut butters, jams, jarred items, etc.

2. Use larger containers, like hard plastic food storage bins designed for cabinets, to segregate different categories of items in their original packages. This keeps them from migrating to other areas. Hard plastic bins can easily be washed and, best of all, you can pull them out easily to get what you need without having to go searching for the right item.
3. The bins should be deep enough to fit your shelves and wide enough to contain several like-items or several related categories, such as dried fruit and nuts. Check out mDesign bins available from their website, or iDesign bins available from The Container Store.
4. You may also have to readjust your shelf heights to accommodate taller items like cereal boxes. Check out this video to see how. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTBSpVWmVl0
5. Even if you have smaller quantities of items, like bulk spices, in re-closable bags or bags that don’t sit upright, they can still be contained in one of these bins so that they don’t fall over into another category.

Imagine sealing off an entire cabinet in your small kitchen to empty space!

That’s exactly what you do when you dedicate a cabinet to empty food storage containers. They are space-thieves! You know you need some but how many?

Here’s how to make more room in your kitchen and still have a supply of food storage containers for when you need them:

1. Start by matching bottoms to tops and tops to bottoms. At most, keep only enough to hold a week’s worth of leftovers.
2. Keep no more than will fit neatly into one cabinet shelf or one medium sized drawer when they are assembled! TIP: Don’t nest lids or bottoms unless they are all the same size.
3. Keep a supply of disposable food storage containers (tops and bottoms) in a less frequently used storage area to send family home with leftovers on holidays, like Thanksgiving. Store them with your holiday dishes or supplies.
4. Recycle any clean, dry plastic food storage container that has the numbers 1, 2, or 3 embedded in the plastic. Toss containers that are warped, stained, smelly, or broken.

If you still are uncomfortable tossing them there may be options for donating to your local community schools, churches, or shelters, but more restrictions are in place during COVID-19.

It’s called the reverse hanger technique. Here’s how it works:

Turn all your hanging clothing around so each hanger faces towards the back of your closet. As you wear items, return them to face the front of the closet. Now mark your calendar for 6 months from the date you did this. On that day, notice which clothing items are still facing towards the back.  These are the ones you haven’t worn!

I recently did this after emptying all my hanging clothes from my closet so my husband could paint it. As I put things back, I noticed right away a few things I didn’t want so they went right into the donation bag. The rest were hung on my favorite space-saving hangers with the hook turned towards me. The last few days I have been putting items back with the hooks turned away from me.  I know there will be items that may not get turned around but this gives me confirmation and then I can decide in six months whether it still makes sense to keep them.

Still energized to do more?

1. Create a simple plan such as: Sell what I can sell. Give special items to special people I know. Donate the rest.
2. Sell high-quality, designer brand clothes online through sites like the RealReal.com or your local consignment shop. Since the pandemic, many have launched online buying and selling sites.
3. Donate usable quality clothing to a local thrift shop such as American Cancer Society Discovery Shops or Goodwill. Call to check before you go as some have limited hours during the pandemic.
4. Never donate anything that is torn or stained. This is costly for charities to get rid of. These items should be tossed or recycled if possible. Check out the website Earth911.com for fabric recyclers in your area.

Lis Golden McKinley, M.A.
Certified Professional Organizer
Owner, LET’S MAKE ROOM, LLC

It’s time. You’ve set aside the day, taken off work, brought in the garbage bags and the packing boxes. No more excuses. It’s you versus the clutter. This time you intend to win because you’ve decided to put your house up for sale.

The late comedian George Carlin used to say,

“Your house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn’t have so much G-D stuff, you wouldn’t need a house!?”

But what happens when your stuff is too connected to memories? Carlin joked no one wants that stuff either but guess what they do!

When I say stuff, I don’t only mean furniture and household items. I mean the sentimental stuff you’ve buried in your closet or shoved into the back of an attic or basement. Stuff like your son’s grade school artwork, even though he’s in college now. Grandpa’s set of World War II history books. The two crocheted baby blankets grandma made for your kids.

“Keep them for the grandkids!” You protest and back into the closet it goes. Except you have way too much in your closet already. So instead you pay hundreds of dollars a month to store stuff you can’t bear to part with at the local public storage.

That’s when it hits you. It’s not only your house you have to downsize, but your storage unit too.

Exasperated, you slump down in your arm chair and wonder, “how am I going to do this?” and pour yourself another glass of wine.

As Baby Boomers get older – and by the way, I’m one of them — they start thinking about their health and the desire to simplify their lives.

75% of people who want to downsize their lives say they can’t. The reason? They have too much stuff, according to research conducted by Kansas University.

The number one reason baby boomers can’t declutter is they are often sentimentally attached to what they own. There are just too many painful decisions that have to be made about what to keep or go. “No thanks,” they utter, “I’d rather have a root canal.”

The good news is you don’t have to throw the baby-doll out with the bathwater. Instead, you can actually feel good about letting go. Less regret, guilt or incurring the wrath of your family.

It is important to remember that not everything you are sentimental about has to go. Instead, the key is taking the time to curate your collection of sentimental items and giving away what you don’t want to the right people (or places).

Curating is about deciding what is going to be part of your permanent collection and what isn’t and where it can go. It also includes saying goodbye, with gratitude, to the things that have served out their purpose and forgiving yourself for doing the best you can to dispose of them responsibly.

As a Certified Professional Organizer and Move Manager based in Oakland, California, I have helped hundreds of clients achieve their own vision of a more simple and organized life for retirement.

Part of this process always involves making decisions about the items we most commonly get attached to: Books, clothing, photographs, sentimental cards and letters, memories – both ours and our kids.

When it’s time to curate these items, I find it useful to think about them in three ways:

• Say goodbye with gratitude
• Keep for my new life
• Give to others

Say goodbye with gratitude

This collection contains items that are damaged beyond repair or are not worth your time or money to repair.

You can appreciate what they were in their original form and know that their time has come to an end. Anything that still makes you sad to let go of, you can take a picture of. That way you will still have the memory of the item.

Keep for my new life

This collection contains your favorites. Items you love so much you would use or display again. The ones that you would remember and miss if they disappeared. Better yet, they are the ones that fit into your new, simplified lifestyle. These are the best of the best!

Give to others (or giving items new life elsewhere)

This collection contains both high quality and useable quality items you don’t want. They could be of a high enough quality you could sell or consign them, or special enough that you would prefer to give them to a particular person or organization. In other words your decision to let them go is contingent on them getting to the right recipient or organization. This collection also includes useable quality items that could be donated to charities such as Goodwill, Salvation Army or Out of the Closet

If they are not sellable but the recipient is important to you, do an online search by type in your area. For example “Senior center thrift shop near me.”  There’s a wonderful place in San Francisco called SCRAP that accepts donations of all types of craft and teaching materials (though they are closed temporarily due to Covid-19). Here are a few other examples of unique places to donate your higher quality items. (Due to Covid-19 some of these will be temporarily closed. Check before going.)

• Senior center thrift shop
• Church, school or charity auction
• Thrift shop for a charity you support such as cancer research
• Local animal shelter
• Children’s thrift shop for low income moms
• Re-use/repurpose non-profits

There are also online websites such as Nextdoor.com where you can post your unwanted items. Be careful not to post your personal information. Instead ask people to direct message you if they want your item.

Use “Say goodbye with gratitude,” “Keep for my new life” and “Give to others” with other types of sentimental items you have. Here are few tips for downsizing other sentimental household items:

Books
(If you are downsizing and you have an excess and need space)

First decide on the greatest number of bookshelves you will keep so you will know how much you need to downsize.

Keep books you still refer to or hold special memories or can’t find online.

Donate duplicate books, books you’ve never read, are not likely to read or don’t hold interest for you. Also donate books from a previous chapter of your life.  Someone is bound to appreciate them.  Take them to your local library or college. Most Goodwill stores will also accept books for donation but not text books.

Recycle any that have mold. Mold travels and will contaminate other books.

Sentimental Cards and Letters
(If you have more than will fit into a banker box or small suitcase)

These are often the hardest to let go. Keep the ones that express a personal sentiment to you, not a generic greeting. You can also photograph these and let the physical card go.

Toys and Childhood Memorabilia
(Yours or your adult children)

This is the stuff you’ve tossed in a “keep” box but never looked at except when you’ve moved. It could be anything from rocks you collected, to tickets stubs, to small medals you received as a kid to souvenirs from family trips.

They best represent the “memories” of your childhood. It’s likely none of it is valuable, unless it’s in its original packaging and in pristine condition. If you’re not sure, you can always check sites like Etsy or Ebay.

First sort those into two piles – usable quality and higher quality. As you come across anything that that you don’t want but are afraid of forgetting, take a picture of it! That way you will always have the memory.

If the items are small, you can display them in a large fishbowl, brandy snifter or inside a shadow box. I’ve seen these for just about out every imaginable collectible: medals, matchboxes, toy cars, record albums, sports memorabilia even old postcards.

Check out some “memorabilia storage” ideas on Pinterest or Etsy If you’re not up to this, ask someone in your family who has a talent for crafts or art to do it for you. What a perfect birthday or Christmas present!

If you wouldn’t pay to have the items repurposed into something new, chances are you don’t love it enough to keep it. You can always take a picture of it if you’re scared of losing the memory. If it’s a small quantity of items you are keeping, give them a home in a small treasure box. I always think of a the little cigar box the character Scout kept under her bed from the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Giving away sentimental items to the right place or person is what makes it possible for you to let them go

Don’t use your kids as a reason to keep stuff that you don’t have room for in your new home. If possible, ask them to come and get it by a certain date. If they live far away or don’t care, let them know your plan to donate whatever is usable. Keep your favorites, the ones you consider “heirlooms” and limit them to no more than will fit into a small bin or box. Your kids won’t miss the rest and neither will you.

A final note about trash, landfill and forgiveness

It’s likely you will have to throw out more than you intended. Recycle as much as you can but accept the limitations of what is and is not recyclable in your community.

When you bought it 30 or 40 years ago, you weren’t thinking about whether it was recyclable. You needed it and it served its purpose. Again, dispose of it with gratitude. If it has to go to landfill, forgive yourself. Know that you have learned to be a more responsible citizen and consumer. Now you can enjoy and maintain your simple and spacious new life with the things you love the most.

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Editor’s Note:

Nanette is a home organizer who works with me as an associate of LET’S MAKE ROOM. We haven’t worked or seen each other in more than two months.  She and her husband, two adult children and their dog are sheltering-in-place during the Covid-19 health emergency.

Yesterday she shared a personal story with me of using this time to attend to her own home organizing projects. She is looking ahead to a time after her kids have moved on, when she may be ready to sell her home. Having worked with me for years, Nanette knows how the task of downsizing for a move can be daunting so she recently decided to take on a couple of her own projects.

Nanette’s story illustrates just how personally satisfying it can be to embark on a home organizing project, any time, but especially now, when families have the benefit of being home together more than usual. Here is her story:

The “shelter-in-place” order was the perfect opportunity to organize our cluttered storage closet. My 24-year-old daughter and 20-year old-son have been here with us and my husband is working from home.

The closet held toys, keepsakes, books, table linens, photos and homeless items.

With everyone home I could get their input on what they wanted to keep and what could I could donate.

I began by emptying the closet and sorting items by owner – me, my husband, daughter and son. I asked each to sort their items into two piles; “keep” or “donate.”  Each accomplished the task in their own unique way.

Our daughter sorted through her items alone and needed no help in her decision making. She donated all her collectible dolls, which she never liked, even though I had saved them for her. She kept the toys and keepsakes she felt connected to and that were usable or could be displayed.

At first, our 20-year old son said, “Mom you decide because I don’t know what I should keep.”

I got him started by sorting his bins and asked him first to decide on the big items. I am glad I did as I didn’t expect him to keep the miniature baseball bats. I then took the smaller items and sorted ‘like with like’ and asked him to keep what he wanted.

He grabbed toys he said he remembered playing with and he combed through looking for all the extra parts.

When done, my son told me sorting items into smaller categories helped him make decisions.

After dinner that evening, while we all still were at the table, our son picked up a box of his medals and sorted them. He selected the medals he wanted to keep and shared the rationale for keeping each medal.

After completing the task our daughter said she had kept all her medals and she later sorted hers as well.

The stack of beautiful table linens that I have never used, got donated. While beautiful and given to me by family members, they are not something I ever used. The matching napkins I kept as I do use linen napkins.

The silver items, all blackened from sitting in storage, unused, got sorted. My husband’s silver baby cup got cleaned and moved into the cabinet. The tarnished candelabra went into the Halloween bin. The utensils got polished and moved into the kitchen. Everything we kept now had a home.Everything else we donated. (Actually stored until the donation sites can open).

My husband did not want to make decisions right away so I put the items he had not made decisions about on his desk. He will make a decision at some point but I decided not to store the items until he committed.

My husband painted the closet and installed movable-shelves, replacing our fixed wood shelves.

I reused the smaller bins and stored the frequently-used items on the upper shelves.

I rolled my table runners and put them into a basket on the floor which opened up shelving.

I ordered a wrapping station to mount on a side wall.

I have more space to use for new items that come into our home and I love being able to find what I need.

Now I have a great functioning storage closet.