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Free yourself from paper clutter in a few simple steps
Do you dream of a world without paper? The idea of a paperless lifestyle has been around for years, but many of us still struggle just to avoid drowning in paper. My clients often complain that there’s paper everywhere in their homes. They want to get control of it, but they’re frustrated about how to make that happen.
Unfortunately, there’s not a simple route to paperlessness. Paper comes from many sources, so it requires a multi-pronged solution. None of the steps are complicated, though, and each one can make a dent in the volume of paper you handle every day. Try some of these to reduce your paper load …[Read more]
Would You Rather Be Decorating or Celebrating?
As children, we all loved the holidays. All the presents and decorations and wonderful tasty treats—the stuff of everyone’s childhood memories! Conveniently for us, we didn’t realize what a tremendous amount of effort went into the beautiful memories our families created. Now we want to make the season magical for our own families and friends, but we often pay for the sense of wonder with a to‑do list that squashes our peace of mind and compounds our stress levels.
What if you spent the holidays in a spirit of family and celebration, instead of overwhelmed by stuff that doesn’t matter?
A big part of holiday labor is decorating. Given our predisposition to buy, buy, BUY, many of us have huge collections of holiday decorations already, and we add more every year. When it comes time to decorate, it can be like we’re opening a retail Christmas store in our homes. Tons of work, and then we’re drowning in decorations! Is it really necessary to go so overboard?
Maybe we overdo for the kids, or to conform to family tradition …[Read more]
Stories from the Garage
I spent half of October working on big out-of-town projects. First was a return visit to my client with Parkinson’s. She’s moved to assisted living, and I’m helping to clear out her former home. Disabilities make it difficult for her to participate in the work in a meaningful way, but we continue to include her in decision-making—even when the decisions are largely symbolic—to help her cope with the transition to a new living space.
Mom’s garage a month later—still clutter-free enough to park the car inside!
The second project was my mother’s garage. She’s in great health and still fully engaged in her life. But she hasn’t been able to park the car in the garage since she moved to North Carolina 10 years ago, so I went to help dig it out.
She stalled by any means possible—we had to shop, mulch the backyard, and clean her closet—but eventually she surrendered and we got to work. For three days, we sorted through boxes that belonged to her mother and files that had never made it into the house. We discarded broken furniture and old paint, repackaged Christmas decorations, and sorted a huge pile of books.
It was hard for Mom, but she participated all the way. At one point she quietly said, “This process really makes you face your own mortality.” She found herself clearing away old parts of her life, and it gave her pause. But I was glad to listen as she identified photos of herself as a child and pictures of my grandparents as young adults …[Read more]
I was visiting my friend Jan one night and helped her install Ikea legs on a board she wanted to turn into a craft table. While I drilled 20 little holes on the underside of the future table, we chatted.
She often recommends me to people who need help getting organized, and she shared with me how she describes the process. “I tell people that you’re very respectful of their stuff. You always ask if you may throw things away, or whether they’re okay …[Read more]
A complaint I hear all the time from my organizing clients and prospective clients is, “I don’t know where to start!” People look at the decluttering to be done and become immobilized by the magnitude of the tasks in front of them. Here are some ideas to help you get unstuck when the project seems too large and you don’t know where to start.
Use a kitchen timer to limit the scope of an intimidating organizing task.
Break down your organizing project into finite, measurable chunks. Let’s say you have a room that’s spilling over with junk. Instead of setting a goal of clearing out the whole space, break off a manageable piece. For example, take a garbage bag and wander through your space picking up 10 things that you’re willing to throw away. Put the bag in the garbage can. Pat yourself on the back for making a start!
Or grab an empty cardboard box, and gather 10 items that you’re ready to donate to a thrift store or put in a garage sale. If you’re making a donation, take the box straight to the car so you can drop it off the next time you run errands. If you’re planning a garage sale, place the box in the space you’ve set aside for storing items …[Read more]
Shopping faster than you manage what you already own is a formula for a cluttered home.
Americans love to shop—it’s practically the national pastime! We’re bargain-hunting, credit-card-maxing, no‑holds-barred shoppers. The thrill of the hunt and the joy of instant gratification make our economy run. But one of the threats of our consumer culture is that it’s created a huge problem of clutter in our homes. The more we buy, the more we have to maintain, clean, store, and retrieve. If you’re a typical American, you shop faster than you can manage what you already own, and that’s a formula for a cluttered home.
Clutter issues cover a broad spectrum, from a few stacks here and there to conditions so bad that you can’t walk through the house. As a professional organizer, the first part of my job is to figure out where you are on the spectrum. Can you handle the piles yourself, or do you need my help? Here are some of the clues I look for …[Read more]
At the February meeting of NAPO Houston, we watched a documentary called Store. It’s about self-storage units and how people use them. The filmmakers interviewed dozens of renters about their stuff and why they pay to keep it in storage. The interviewees offered all the common reasons: they moved to a smaller house, inherited stuff from a parent, or just accumulated too much to keep at home. But there were some less common reasons, too.
Your rental payments, like the storage units that clutter our landscape, go on and on forever.
One retired man had been collecting items from garage and estate sales, and he believed that his children’s inheritance was somewhere in his “collection.” Some day they would open his unit, pull out the junk, and find the treasures they’d inherited. Burglars had broken into the unit once, only to walk away empty-handed because the unit was too stuffed full of junk to bother robbing.
Another interview subject, a divorced mother, was storing a huge collection of stuffed animals. She said that she couldn’t throw away “anything with eyes.” …[Read more]
News and events to get you organized for 2010
 The National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) designates January as “Get Organized Month.” January is a logical choice: we wake from a holiday‑induced dream state to realize that we’ve let things go. We need to get our lives and spaces back in order!
In the spirit of GO Month, we want to offer you a few ways to get support toward achieving your goals. Here are some of the opportunities coming your way in the next few weeks …[Read more]
A Lesson from the Field
 I’ve been working with an older woman, the mother of a friend. She’s in her seventies and has Parkinson’s disease. The illness went undiagnosed for a while, and the condition has been hard on mother and daughter alike. I’d say that this doesn’t have much to do with me, except that I’ve been sorting through the mother’s things so the daughter can better manage her mom’s care. And I can’t help but notice and be touched by the special circumstances this situation creates.
As we go through the mother’s things, I’ve been struck by the indignity of the process for her. I try to let her decide …[Read more]
 All of us have a relationship to the things we own, and those relationships either work for us or they don’t. Think about it: If clutter is interfering with enjoying your life, the relationship isn’t working!
I love to help people understand and improve their relationship to their possessions. If I can encourage you to see what you own—or what owns you—differently, you can move toward making your life better. Watching that relationship change is a huge reward for me. It’s why I work as a professional organizer.
In the coming weeks, I’ll have the opportunity to speak to three diverse and exciting audiences. …[Read more]
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Gayle Goddard, CPO®, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers one-on-one organizing, workshops, and ongoing support to help clients conquer clutter and focus on what they really want. [MORE]
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