Last year you spent a week, month or a lot of money, to organize your home, or one area of it, and now it’s back where you started.

During Covid, you coped last year by shopping. You got into a new hobby.  You inherited items from your family.  Either way, you got some new stuff.  It may even be better than the old stuff but the old stuff is still there.  The stuff you had and the new stuff didn’t get put away or it piled above other stuff you already have.

In addition, all those great storage systems for containing your stuff stopped working for you or your family.  You started to fall back into old habits. Now you’ve got more stuff than before.

My advice to you: Don’t be discouraged. It may be time to examine your thinking, perspectives and habits when it comes to obtaining and organizing. Remember, sometimes life gets in the way and your priorities change.

First and foremost, consider it a learning, not an opportunity to shame yourself!

How often do you say to yourself…?

I’ll get to it later

I’m keeping it just in case

I’ll just put it here, for now

My family isn’t cooperating!

I couldn’t find it so I bought another

I’ll go through it tomorrow

I may need it some day

It belonged to my parents. I just couldn’t toss it!

Everything in life is an experiment

Remember that great feeling you had when everything had a “home” and it was so neat and tidy?

It didn’t happen by accident and whether you did it yourself or had help from friends or professionals, chances are you learned something you’ve just forgotten.  When you forget, your old habits return.

It’s like other things we try to change in our lives. (Believe me. I know this firsthand!)

For example, imagine you need to get to a healthy weight. It’s going to take action and consistency. Not just once, not just for a week, but every day or at least more days than not.  You’ll also need a plan based on your strengths, needs and goals.

The same is true when you want to develop an organizing habit. 

Know your strengths

Are you visual? Consider “envisioning’ what an organized space looks like for you. Draw or design it or find a picture online or in a magazine that inspires you. Look around and start to notice what you like about your space, not just what bothers you.

Are you tactile? Go around the space, from right to left, and mark all the items you want to get rid of with some painters tape. Touch the items and decide if they still hold meaning for you or not.

Are you a great listener? Consider watching organizing videos online, listen to podcasts or attend a free organizing talk in your area. Organizers often speak for free at retirement communities, real estate groups, community centers or libraries as a way to promote their services.  Better yet, get some free advice

Are you physically agile or strong? You may be able to work alone and declutter yourself. Perhaps you can build yourself new storage systems or shelves. This type of strength is called kinesthetic.

Are you intuitive and pretty self-aware? This will help you to edit what you have. Ask yourself key questions that make it a whole lot easier to feel in control and less overwhelmed by your clutter.

• Do I love this?
• Does it bring in negative emotions or bad memories?
• If I saw it in a store, would I buy it again?
• Has it been more than a year since I used it?
• If it should disappear would I miss it?
• Do I know someone who would enjoy it more than I do?
• Would it give me pleasure to give it away?
• Am I truly honoring the person or their memory by keeping this?

Consider your needs

Sometimes we just don’t want to do something. We “don’t feel like it.” Other times it’s the thing that gets us out of bed in the morning. Your needs are the basics of what makes life possible for you. For some it may be survival needs for others, they may be linked to your highest values.  In general needs are the pre-requisites for functioning at your best.  Consider your needs and how they fit into these four questions:

1. Is this something that’s important to me now?
2. Will having this space more organized help me get up in the morning or improve my day to day life?
3. Would learning a new organizing habit make me feel better about myself or change the way I perceive myself now?
4. What would happen if I left things as is? What would be the consequence? 

Reflect on your WHY

Take a moment to identify what you want, how you’ll know you got there and why it’s important to you right now. This could be a short-term goal or a long-term goal. The short-term goal can tie into the long term goal but it should be satisfying in and of itself. For example, if you want to get your garage organized again, start with organizing one cabinet or the tool box.  If your guest room has been overrun with stuff and is now a storage area, start with just the things on the floor and leave the surfaces, closets and closet organizing to later.

Achieving small successes will have a big impact on your ability to meet your larger goal.  Along the way, you will also want to clarify why this is important to you so you can feel and be motivated to take actions that move you closer to your goal. Try asking yourself these four questions:

1. If everything were organized just the way I imagine, what would that bring me?
2. What would I be able to do that I can’t do now?
3. How would it feel to know that I have reached my goal and am maintaining it?
4. Besides me, who in my life would be most impacted if I did or did not develop this habit?

Change is certain when you know who you are

The process of change and developing any habit is not impossible. As a professional organizer, move manager and personal advocate for those who want to make change in their lives, I can tell you I wasn’t a “born organizer.” My home is tidy but not a magazine showpiece. I learned to be more organized as I discovered my strengths, needs and what was important to me (and what wasn’t).

It works for me and my husband. We each have our shared and separate responsibilities to keep up with it and I don’t take for granted that I can share those tasks with someone else.  If I lived alone, I know it would be harder but not impossible. I also know I would need to make choices about what I could accept and live with.

Even if you live alone, are a single parent, have learned to cope with a physical or cognitive challenge or are recently retired, know that you already have certain strengths that can help you to develop and maintain an organizing habit, enjoy your life and get more done.

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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My friend and Yogini extraordinaire, Deborah Saliby, called me on Sunday asking for my advice.

Deborah Saliby, Yoga for Health

Deborah has been teaching Yoga for more than thirty years.  There are a lot of Yoga teachers out there but relatively few hold the special certification that she does in Iyengar training. The certification signifies that she has undergone extensive training as an instructor in a particular method of Hatha Yoga called Iyengar, named for B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the foremost Yoga teachers in the world.

Whenever I have a question about Yoga, I call Deborah.  The moment I feel like my body, mind and spirit are crying out for a little restoration, Deborah is the first person I think of.  On Sunday, however, after her class, Deborah’s mind and spirit were crying out for a different kind of restoration, in her home.  I am grateful she called me.

“I want to organize three closets in my house,” she told me,
“but I’m not sure where to start.” She asked if I would mind sharing some of my professional organizing tips.  “Of course,” I told her. I enjoy it when anyone calls me with a specific organizing question. To me if you are willing to ask the question, you are definitely in the mindset to get organized.

As a professional organizer,  the most common questions I get involve the how and where of organizing, as in “how do I do this?” or “where do I start?”  Typically this follows an extended period of gradual awareness which eventually transforms into “I really wish my (fill in the blank) was more organized. But it’s not until the defining moment when the thought, “today is the day I’m going to do something about it,” that change can occur.

For my friend Deborah that moment came after she got home from teaching one of the many Yoga classes she leads in Berkeley, California.

“So where do you want to start?” I asked. “I don’t know, she said. So I probed a little more. “Which of your closets bugs you the most, that is, which has the most impact on your daily life? “My bedroom closet where I keep all my clothes,” she said, with a little giggle, “you know how much I love to shop?”

“Okay,” I said. “So why do you want to do this at all?” She explained to me that she wanted to hold a sidewalk sale. “Yes,” I said, “that’s good, but why do you want to get organized?” I asked again. “Because I can’t stand looking at the mess in my closet anymore. I know I have a lot of nice things in there that I don’t want anymore and half the time I can’t find what I’m looking for. I’m wasting time and I want to be able to wear what I love.”

Deborah understood what was bothering her about her closet but even more she knew what organizing it would mean to her (not to anyone else) and she was motivated. Plus she had the added incentive of making a little extra money. I told her, “Yeah, you could sell all the clothes you don’t want anymore and with the money you make go out and buy new ones.”  We both laughed.

I offered Deborah a step-by-step plan to get all three of her closets organized.  I shared some strategies for how to overcome some predictable obstacles such as what to do with items that had more “emotional value” than “wear-value.”  I took her through exactly what I would do with her if I were physically doing the work with her and then I asked her if she had any questions. “Nope, I’ve got it.”

Before we hung up I told her to feel free to call me when she was done with the first closet.  Even though Deborah was doing this for herself, I wanted her to know that I was interested in hearing about her progress.

The next day, Deborah did call. She sounded really happy.  She told me how she had followed my plan including emptying the entire closet first, sorting items by category, parting with what she no longer used, wore, or loved and got rid of things that brought in bad “mojo.”  She reorganized the items she kept by type and color and put aside those things she plans to include in her sidewalk sale.  In total it took her two hours. I was impressed.

“How do you feel now?” I asked her, “Great! Just walking past my closet makes me happy.”

I offered Deborah some final tips about items she was still undecided about and suggested some ways to contain items on the shelves using what she already had around her house, before saying goodbye.

After we hung up I went in to my living room and took a big breath and stretched.  Thank you for that, Deborah.

Have a question about organizing? Getting ready to move or start a home renovation project and need to get things packed, donated and organized? Call or email me. I promise you’ll come away with something you can use.

As I told Deborah, I love to be a catalyst for change.

I attended a workshop recently where I was asked to write down my three biggest accomplishments from 2011 and then later was asked to write down my top three goals for 2012.  I was surprised to discover that my biggest accomplishments were all related to my work life while my goals for 2012 were all related to my personal life.  It dawned on me that the bigger message in this was that it was time to start shifting some time and focus to my own well-being.

The top 10 resolutions people make, if they make them at all are, in no particular order:

1. Exercise
2. Quit smoking
3. Lose weight
4. Quit drinking
5. Enjoy life more
6. More time with family
7. Get out of debt
8. Learn something new
9. Help others
10. Get organized

Some resolutions are about stopping a behavior that is destructive to you and some are about starting a behavior that will contribute to your overall quality of life.

As an organizing specialist, I believe that getting organized does both of these things. Encourages you to end a behavior that no longer serves you and helps you develop new habits that will benefit you immediately and over time. That’s why our motto is “Make Room For Your Life; Not Just Your Stuff”

Here’s an example. Let’s say you decide 2012 is the year you are finally going to be prepared for tax time.  From the standpoint of ending a negative behavior this could mean anything from, “I will not wait until the last minute to prepare my taxes,” to “I will no longer just throw my receipts in a shoebox.”

From the standpoint of starting a positive behavior this could mean anything from  “I will make this year the year I organize and capture all my expenses, income and contributions electronically so that I will have everything ready when it’s time to complete my tax form or send it to my tax preparer,” to “This is the year I will actually get my taxes done on time.”

So this year, make a resolution that doubles it’s impact on your life. But be sure it’s something you really want and are ready to commit to.  Then track your progress by setting up mini goals that make it easier for you to move closer to your larger goal.

Here’s mine for example: I want to lose weight and feel better. Rather than put it in the form of pounds, I’ve decided to put it in the form of a percentage. Why? Because there are real and measurable benefits from losing even 5% of your body weight when you are overweight (as I am).

So here’s my goal with my three mini goals to follow

• Lose 30% of my current body weight by January 2013
• Lose 20% of my current body weight by September of 2012
• Lose 10% of my current body weight by May 2o12 (my birthday month – what better present to give yourself?)
• Lose 5% of my current body weight by March 2012

So if you are reading this, you can assume I am inviting you to encourage me as I will need to meet my goal.  I will keep you posted and if you like, send me your thoughts, encouragement, ideas and anything else you want to say that will keep me motivated.  Feel free to also send them to LET’S MAKE ROOM’s Facebook page  (http://www.facebook.com/Letsmakeroom) or my Twitter Feed @letsmakeroom or hashtag #letsmakeroom

Here’s to a healthier, happier and more caring 2012!