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.

I was walking my dog today thinking about how this so called “new normal ” is surfacing some of my old habits. Some of them not so great.

I’m eating more, working out less, and most of all feeling stuck in more than a few places.  For some reason when I’m feeling stuck I start thinking about The Roomba.

The Roomba is a self-governing, robotic vacuum cleaner that navigates the floor area of a home to clean it. When the Roomba hits an obstacle, it senses the obstacle and adjusts itself to go in a different direction to complete the task of cleaning.

It occurred to me today while walking my little Cherrier (Chihuahua-Terrier) in the park, I could be more like The Roomba.

Think about it. How many times have you set a goal for yourself or intended to do something only to be stopped by an obstacle? The obstacle in itself may not be inherently bad or good.  It is what it is. But then you start thinking, “what’s wrong with me?” “Why can’t I do this?” Why am I so ____?” fill in the blank. Lazy, stupid, fat, scared. Then I thought about The Roomba. The Roomba doesn’t tear itself down when it hits an obstacle. It doesn’t berate itself for things beyond its immediate control, it doesn’t judge itself. What does it do? It shifts direction.

Last week I kept thinking, “I need to record some video presentations and share them.”   This shouldn’t have been that difficult. Afterall I speak publicly quite often. I have grown quite comfortable with getting up in front of a room and sharing my expertise. So why then was it so hard for me to record what I already know I can do? The more I kept thinking about it, the more anxious I became. My inner critic starting shouting at me. I felt myself banging up against the same old obstacle.

So what did I do?  Just like The Roomba, I shifted direction, in this case to something I knew I could do without fear. Instead of recording my talk, I organized my office. (Yes, even organizers need to stay organized.) Then I reached out to some clients by email; I participated in a webinar with other small business owners; and I even took an online class which I could add to my CEU requirement. Then I went out and took a walk with my dog.

In other words I pivoted.  It’s a word I’m hearing a lot lately to describe how businesses are responding when they find they suddenly don’t have any business, but it’s also a great strategy for overcoming internal obstacles. Not to mention, it’s one of the cultural and behavioral outcomes of this pandemic  – a new lingo just like social-distancing and flatten the curve.

If like me, this horrible pandemic is keeping you from being your best self or scaring the living daylights out of you, or something in between, get out there, turn your switch on, pay attention to what your sensors tell you and if you hit an obstacle, shift directions. Just keep moving.  You will get through this. You will more than likely survive. Be like The Roomba.

The answer? It’s not because you are a collector. It’s because you don’t know why you are collecting.

Having collections in and of itself does not make you disorganized. If that were true every museum and gallery in the world would be a cluttered mess.

It’s more likely your collections need to be reviewed for their personal relevance to you the same way a museum, gallery or boutique will display and collect their collections to fit their particular vision, style or mission.

Are you collecting items that have meaning to you or are you attached to them for another reason? If your mother passed, and you have everything she ever owned, how is that honoring her memory? How does that enhance your life? Is that a collection or just a collection of stuff?

There is no such thing as the clutter-police.

No one is going to come to you and say, “you can’t get rid of that!” unless you let them. If an heirloom was given to you, you are the owner of that decision. Not the person who gave it to you. Not even your spouse or your children. Just you.  If you don’t like something you were given, someone else will. I was given a gift of a cookbook from a friend but I know I will never use it. Instead I am giving it to someone who I know will love it.

You probably have more collectibles than you have room to store them.  Prioritize which of those collectibles you want on display or to use yourself. The rest are just things taking up space. Consider giving them new life somewhere else as a gift or donation.

Your decision about what and how much to store, will depend on your available space and of course how much value they have to you.

Outside or external storage is like buying a house just for your things! Is that worth it to you?

You can be both “a collector” and still suffer from chronic hoarding disorder, a mental health disorder in which an individual excessively saves items that the consensus among the general public would be to view as worthless or to such excess as to render their living space uninhabitable or non-functioning.

Assuming you do not fit the criteria for hoarding disorder, (people aren’t hoarders, they have hoarding disorder) there are several possible causes of why you are disorganized.

Here are the most typical barriers to organizing your collections:

1. Time. You perceive or believe you don’t have the time to get organized. You may have other more pressing or important priorities. Any organizing task, no matter how small requires some time investment. Even a minute can make a difference in how much time you spend tidying up your home. Spend a minute now, save hours later.  Take a moment now and think of all the things you could do if you just had one minute to do them. For example: Hang up a coat. Toss the junk mail. Empty the dish drying rack. Empty a trash can. Can you think of more? Getting organized is a habit not an event.
2. Space. You have more things than you have space for. It’s a simple equation to fix.   Less stuff = more space for what you love, use and collect. There’s no getting around it. If you moved from a three-bedroom home with a cluttered garage into a two bedroom condo with no garage, you will have more stuff than you have room for. Even if you have the same amount of square footage, you will still need storage. This would include both built in storage such as closets and cabinets, as well as furniture that is built for storage. In short, you have to be willing to edit and purge what you no longer love, want or use.
3. Mindset. Getting organized requires a large degree of logic, attention to detail, system thinking,  creativity, physical endurance, mental focus and to put it bluntly, a willingness to do it. Inertia, whether physical or emotional (caused by depression, anxiety or attention deficits) can be a huge impediment to getting and staying organized. Untreated mental or emotional issues can lead to other more serious conditions or risks. Consult with a physician or mental health provider about whether your own mindset may be interfering with your organizing goals. If you consider yourself “chronically” disorganized, check out the public resources available from The Institute for Chronic Disorganization
4. Strategies. Even with plenty of time, space and readiness, you will need to have a plan for how to tackle different types of clutter. Is it things you are trying to organize or paper?  In my work with clients I approach these two types of clutter very differently. Organizing things tends to be easier for most people because their value is easier to assess, practical and emotional.  People struggle more with paper out of fear and a lack of clarity about what to keep and what can be safely tossed. Explore the web or your library for tips on organizing from others and see what’s worked for them.
5. Purpose. The old expression if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there is true for organizing as well. Sometimes the goal is easy, such as clearing out a house to sell or decluttering a garage enough to fit a car. Most of the time the purpose is more intangible such as a desire to feel more peace and wellbeing or a desire to feel more comfortable having people over.  Ask yourself, “why do I want to do this?”
6. Scope. No matter how motivated you are, sometimes an organizing task is just too big to do alone or the urgency too great. That’s when it may be time to call in ‘the troops.’  Put the word out to (nonjudgemental) friends. Reach out to local organizers in your area. Do a Google search for “professional home organizer near me.” Post a help wanted ad at your local community college for help or ask other trusted professionals in your life for a referral to a professional organizer. You can also check out the National Association of Organizing and Productivity Professionals or the National Association of Senior Move Managers. Just enter your zip-code and it will list credentialed or qualified organizing professionals near you.

Getting organizing requires a compelling purpose. What’s yours?

• Just a desire to get organized is not enough to overcome the physical and emotional barriers that may keep you stuck in clutter.
• Resolve to let go of things that no longer have value for you, even if they once did or if they were given to you by a loved one or friend.
• Explore whether your mindset or other inhibiting conditions may be keeping you from meeting your goals.
• Finally, gather your tools or more specifically your strategies. Have a plan to know what you will do in different circumstances or with different types of items. Struggle with downsizing books? Google tips on “how to organize your library.” Need help organizing your massive amount of clothing? Google “Wardrobe editing decision tree.”

Now that you know where, why, how and when,  decide whether you can do it alone or if you need help. Either way, congratulate yourself for making the decision to make more room in your life for what matters most.

Recently I learned about something called the Intention-Action Gap. The intention-action gap is a term used by people, mainly behavioral experts, who study the reasons why we do or don’t do things that are good for us.

In simple terms, the intention-action gap refers to the difference between what people say they would like / plan to do and what they actually do. For example, people say they want to get organized, or lose weight, or get more exercise or eat healthier but they don’t.

Behavioral experts explain this “gap” between our intentions and our actions in several ways but recently I came across an article written by Ozoda Muminova, a London-based researcher, business and organizational consultant who helped me understand this disconnect between what we want and what we actually do in a delightful and amusing way.

Basically she said that as humans there are certain barriers to changing our behaviors. Things like, habit, unknown impact, feeling isolated and overcoming difficulty.  Her answer, in short: make it fun, make it social, make it personal and make it immediately rewarding.

Ozoda created this simple model to explain how to meet every barrier to change, with an enabler of change:

5 steps for turning good intentions into good behaviours. Used by permission of The Good Insight/Ozoda Muminova

I got to thinking about this in the context of why so many of us, myself included, really want to achieve a certain goal like losing weight, exercising more and even getting organized, but can’t follow through.  You may start but within a moment you find yourself procrastinating or putting it off again.

Inspired by these ideas of challenging each barrier with a positive enabler, consider this simple 5 step approach to changing old habits that get in the way of your happiness.

For every barrier you have to your goal, whether it be losing weight, exercising more, getting more organized or something else, do what you can to make it fun, make it relevant to you personally, make it possible to see change immediately so you’ll keep going, make it social, that is, look for evidence that others are doing it too and make it rewarding!

Let’s say you want to organize your closet. Here’s an example of how you could apply this simple plan to get it done!

1. Make it fun

Play your favorite upbeat music or ask your best (most fun) friend to help you. Put on your most colorful and silly clothes to get you inspired or set up sturdy bins and practice your awesome basketball dunk or free throw for those items you are sending to donation. The point is, if you make it fun and easy you are more likely to get it done.

2. Make it personally relevant

Be clear about why you are getting organized, in other words ask yourself, what’s in it for me? Will you enjoy being able to see your newly organized closet? Will it make it easier for you to find what you need when you need it? Will it make you feel good about yourself and what you’ve accomplished? If you can equate the task to something meaningful to you – my discarded stuff could help others, getting dressed in the morning will be easy and fun, I will feel good about showing off my home to my friends – you are more likely to get it done.

3. Look for immediate change

Next consider a plan for how to see change immediately. I recommend breaking the task into smaller pieces . Instead of attacking the entire closet, start with just the top shelf or one side before tackling the rest. Psychologically, we are motivated to continue once we see small changes.  If you are tackling a larger space,  clear off a surface –  the floor or a table –  as you are more likely to continue when you see clear space versus something you can’t see such as a drawer. Remember you can only climb a flight of stairs, one or maybe two, steps at a time. The point is you’ll still get there.

4. Make it social

If you are unable to enlist the help of your family or friends (or if you don’t want to), consider that you are not alone in your desire to get organized. The popularity of people like Marie Kondo and The Container Store are evidence of the trend in organizing. Why not set up a challenge with an online friend or find a virtual room for other like-minded people to share your progress with on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or FlyLady.net. You could also arrange to have an “accountability” partner. This is someone you know who you can report your progress to with no judgement. I often do this for my clients.

5. Make it rewarding

Finishing an organizing project is its own reward. I know the satisfaction I feel when I complete a large organizing project for a client and sometimes I want to celebrate my accomplishment with my crew. We may go out for dinner or to a local tap room for a beer or I may just go home and take a luxurious hot, bubble bath.

The intention-action gap explains why we can’t overcome our resistance to change or existing habits. Understanding the 5 barriers to change and replacing them with these 5  “enablers” of change can turn bad habits into new behaviors that lead to a happier and more satisfied life.

I believe getting organized is about making room in your life for what you enjoy the most.  So now that you’re done, go do something just for you or do it with others so you can celebrate your success together!

1. If everything in your home was organized – easy to find, orderly, containing only what you love and use the most –  what would you do that you can’t do now?

2. In what ways would you feel different then you do now?

3. What impact would it have on you and those around you?

Your answers to these questions are the most important part of getting organized. Why? Because getting organized is not a goal, it’s a process, a method, a system for achieving something important to you.  It’s not enough to say, “I want to be more organized,” if you don’t know why.

Whenever I meet with clients for the first time I ask them these three questions. This is because getting organized is hard work! If you don’t have a compelling reason to tackle the physical, mental and emotional tasks often associated with organizing your home’s contents, you will lose focus, motivation and you’ll end up back where you started or worse.

Stop thinking and start doing

Here’s an easy way to get started and break the cycle of procrastination:

1. Decide about an area of your home you wish were more organized. Is it your office? Your garage? Your kitchen? Your bedroom?
2. Write down the one room that most interferes with your day to day life now and why!
   Are you feeling an overwhelming sense of stress because your office is a mess? Does your garage make you cringe every time you pass through it? Are you finding it more and more difficult to prepare a meal in your own kitchen?  Decide which area is bugging you the most and write it down.
3. The most disorganized room in my home that is making my day-to-day life more stressful is ________________.
4. Close your eyes and imagine that room completely organized. You know exactly where everything is and it’s easy to find. It contains only what you love and use the most. It is clean, tidy and orderly. What’s more, you have systems in place for keeping it that way.
5. Fill in the blanks to these three questions:
   1. If my ____________ was organized I would be able to ____________.
   2. This would make me feel _________________.
   3. As a result, I could  _______________ for myself and the people I care about.

How it might look to you

You thought about your home and the area you wish were more organized is your kitchen.

Maybe your kitchen has too much clutter on every surface. The floors, table, counters. You’ve lost control of it and now cooking a meal for yourself or your family is challenging if not impossible.

You’re spending too much on take-out meals as a result and you’re worried about your health and your family’s health, not to mention your finances.

You can never find what you need when you need it so you end up buying more of what you may already have.

You are feeling an unacceptable level of stress and you may even be fighting with your family or others you live with as a result.

You work full time or are taking care of others and are exhausted at the end of the day and the last thing you want to spend your time doing is cleaning.

Sound familiar?

Now imagine your kitchen has undergone a miraculous organizing makeover.

You know exactly what you have and everyone in your family knows where to find what they need and where to put it back when they are done.

Opening your cabinets, cupboards and pantry makes you happy because the things you use and love the most are organized and visible or labeled.

You can now cook and prepare food in your kitchen with pleasure. You enjoy relaxing in your kitchen with a hot cup of coffee or tea.

You can invite friends over or your family can sit around the kitchen table and have a meal together. This makes you feel happy, connected, free, light, and more available to yourself and others.

You spend less time in the kitchen so you are able to get to work on time, or spend more time enjoying what you love to do including spending more quality time with your friends or family.

Never make “get organized” or “be more organized” the goal in itself. It sounds nice but unless you have an overwhelming and compelling reason to do so, it probably won’t happen. Instead focus on what an organized space, room or house would give you that you don’t have now.

Recognize when you need help

Many home organizing projects can be as labor intensive as a home remodel. Unless you are a contractor, I doubt you would remodel your own kitchen!  Know when it’s time to hire a professional:

• When the project is too big to handle alone (hint: if you’ve procrastinated or attempted, only to turn away from it once again)
• If you have physical, emotional or mental limitations that would prevent you from managing the job alone
• If you just don’t have the time to do it alone but want to get it done.
• If you are on tight deadline from an impending move, remodel or you need to put your house on the market

Know your WIIFM – What’s In It For Me – your overwhelming and compelling reason for getting organized. It is the most important part of your plan. Make this, and not “get more organized” your resolution for next year, and you will probably be successful.

There is a voyeur in all of us when it comes to other people’s homes and the amount of “clutter” they keep. Think of shows like “Hoarder’s” and “Buried Alive.”  We look at other’s lives and ask, “are we as bad or better than that?”

Last week I started a house clear-out. It took six crew working five solid days to go through each individual item in every room, closet, cabinet, drawer, cupboard and shelf, to decide whether or not it could be sold, donated, recycled, trashed or hauled.

The items were then physically grouped into these categories with the marketable items going to an estate seller; The good quality, used items that wouldn’t sell, going to various charities; The paper, recyclable plastics and glass bottles going to the recycling facility, and; the trash getting hauled both privately and through a city sponsored bulk pick-up program. The project required many hours of planning, coordination and execution.

If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t clear the clutter from your home? This could be the reason. It takes a village!

You won’t see the “after” pictures. Not yet. But despite what it may seem, this is not a house belonging to a “hoarder.” This is not someone who secretly acquires items and has a compulsive need to save them, regardless of their value.

This is not the result of an individual who has a problem letting things go any more than the rest of us.

Instead this house, was once owned and inhabited by a family – a mother, father and child. Where friends and relatives came to visit, to celebrate, eat and grieve together. Where the parents grew up in an era where everything was saved since since there was a scarcity of practically everything when they were children. (Old habits die hard and often get passed down).

When that child grew up she got married and moved down the street and her parents got older and eventually needed care, and little by little things started to pile up. Little by little things couldn’t get done because there were much bigger things that needed doing and she was the only one doing them. Little by little the child, now an adult, had to take care of the family business, first with her mother, and finally alone. Then she lost her husband and she was completely alone.

She is older now, strong in mind but less so physically. Sometimes she sought solace in things, things to help her feel better, happier, pretty, less alone.  who amongst us hasn’t? And little by little it got worse.

This could happen to anyone, you, me, your neighbors down the street who’s house from the outside looks so tidy and neat.

So the next time you think, oh I’m not like that! Or how could she/he/they let that happen? You may want to count your blessings that life has been kinder to you.