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. Sometimes we do it because Christmas shopping is a great excuse to throw caution to the wind and give our inner compulsive shopper permission to come out and play. But “everything in moderation” can serve as a guide for holiday traditions. A few changes might make your holiday more enjoyable and less stressful, with more time for getting together instead of getting things ready.

I have a friend whose husband died in October after three years of battling cancer. She’s 76 and the matriarch of her family. She’s always hosted the big family gathering for Christmas, but this year she’s not up for it. She’s not feeling jolly, and it’s too much effort at her age to plan and prepare to host a party for 40 people. She sent an e‑mail to the family to say that it was time to pass the torch to the next generation—it was someone else’s turn to handle the huge affair.

Her announcement created an uproar! The whole family is freaking out. I believe that their panic arises from refusing to let their family tradition adapt to changing times. And they’ve never thought about the burden they were placing on my friend. They assumed that she would be in charge until she died. They’d be better off now if they’d shared the burden, reduced the effort required of any one person, and let their celebratory tradition evolve into something cooperative and flexible.

Are your family holiday traditions a source of joy or an annual burden? Do they still fit your available time, your budget, and your space? Now is a good time to ask these questions and make some choices—and maybe some changes.

What could you do differently? Every aspect of the season can be trimmed to lighten your load. Look at all the things that you normally do by default, and consider whether they still resonate with everyone. Your traditions may include some old habits that no one would miss! Could you enhance the magic of the season by reducing your workload and your seasonal clutter? What if you spent the holidays in a spirit of family and celebration, instead of overwhelmed by the stuff that doesn’t matter?

In the spirit of a clutter-free season, here are a few ideas for simplifying and streamlining the holidays for you and your loved ones:

For decorating:

• Thin down your collection of decorations to include only your favorites.
• Make a plan for the smallest acceptable amount of decorating.
• Don’t add anything new to the holiday decorating collection this year.
• Take time to experience other people’s holiday spreads in lieu of doing so much work yourself.

For gift-giving:

• Give experiences instead of objects.
• Give consumables, such as food and drinks.
• Focus on a few special and carefully chosen items instead of going for volume.
• Choose gifts that are portable and easily wrapped or bagged.

For activities:

• Choose activities that include as many people as possible.
• Everyone experiences the holidays in their own way, so be okay with those who opt out of an activity.
• Don’t overbook! Even though it’s the holidays, there are still only 24 hours in a day.
• Make an effort to try one thing that’s new and different. Maybe you’ll start a new tradition!

From The Clutter Fairy family to yours, have a peaceful and joyous holiday season and a happy—and less cluttered—new year! 

The article was also featured in our December 2011 e-mail newsletter. To subscribe to our newsletter, please use the “Subscribe” form, above right.

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. A great treat for me was her artwork from college, much of which I’d never seen before.

Mom’s beautiful art, no longer a buried treasure

To me, this experience was familiar—I work with many clients to sort through the contents of their parents’ homes. Not knowing why their parents kept what they did makes this tough process even harder. It magnifies the sense of loss to know that there must be untold stories attached to the objects that I carry off to Goodwill.

But working with Mom made the routine process highly personal. I had to admire her for doing the work of sorting and purging her life’s collections now, while she could give the gift of her memories to me. I hope she’ll share more history and tell me why her treasures are special. I’ll cherish those stories when she’s no longer here to tell them. 

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 with where you want to move something.”

What Jan said made me think about how people seem to be afraid that I’m going to show up and throw all their stuff away. They act as if giving me permission to work on their projects signs over an irrevocable, non-negotiable right to pitch anything I want, no matter what they might wish.

I guess that idea comes from watching too much Style network. When you sign up for a “reality” television show like Clean House or Clean Sweep, you get a lot, but you also give up a lot. The producers bring loads of free furniture and free decorating, but you don’t have much input, and you can be sure they’re coming for your collections to put in the yard sale. But the process that makes for a successful and entertaining show is not much like the organizing process in real life.

I tell my clients all the time: I don’t care what you keep, it really doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to point out what you already know—you own more than can fit in your space. I’ll help you make tough decisions about what to keep and what to divest, but I’ll do it based on what’s important to you, not what’s important to me. First I have to figure out your goals for the space, and then we can begin the work of deciding what you’ll keep and what you no longer want or need.

In other words, you invite me in, and I behave like a house guest. Throughout the process, everything I do is with your permission. I may push you or challenge you, but I’m doing it to find out what you value. I encourage you to justify keeping something by making your case to me first. I’ll call you on your lame excuses for keeping things that are no longer useful. But don’t misunderstand my goal. It’s not to steal away as much of your stuff as I can, it’s to make sure you’re keeping only what you really want. It’s helping you fit in your house again.

So when I show up, you’re not on HGTV. I won’t redecorate your whole house over the weekend. I’ll help you get clear about what you want in your life, and we’ll use that as a guide for choosing the stuff that deserves to share your space. With your permission. 

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 until the day of the sale arrives. You’ve made progress! And maybe you can fill another box tomorrow, or the day after that.

Here’s another trick for those of you who find organizing work intimidating: use a kitchen timer to limit the scope of your organizing task. This tip comes from a friend whose motto is, “I can stand to do anything for 25 minutes!” Set the timer—preferably one that makes an audible tick to remind you that you’re working against a deadline—and then get to work on the task. You can gather the mail into one place for sorting, pick up all the toys off the floor of the kids’ room, or work on whatever job is demanding your attention. You’ll be surprised how quickly the time goes by. When you hear the chime that sets you free, stop and be proud of what you’ve accomplished!

If 25 minutes is more than you can handle, pick a threshold that works for you. Try 10 minutes, or five, or two. If you get through that time okay today, try adding a few more minutes tomorrow. You’ll be astonished by how much you can get done in those few minutes each day. You’ll be even more surprised to find yourself cultivating an organizing habit along the way. And your reward for sticking to it? Your space will be a lot less cluttered than it was when you started out. 

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 when I’m trying to help a client answer that question:

• Clutter has taken over your space. Do you have a few piles of paper, or is the top of your desk buried? Are there two or three extra appliances on the kitchen counter, or are the counter tops unusable? Can you fit a car in your garage, or have the cars been parked in the driveway for the last 10 years? Do you need a park ranger to map the footpaths that wind through the rooms of your home?
• You’re overwhelmed. The clutter bothers you, and you often think to yourself, “I’ve got to get this under control, so I’m going to start today.” But then you face the area to be organized and freeze like a deer in the headlights. You have no clue how to start, so you decide it’s time for lunch. Or maybe you start again and again, but find that you’re moving the same stuff around over and over. Does it feel like you’ve done this work many times before, but you’re getting nowhere?
• You’re ready to make a commitment. You want different results, and you want them so bad that you’re ready to spend time and money to get them. One of my clever clients put it this way: “I had to do a cost–benefit analysis on my clutter and realize that the cost of standing still was greater than what I’d have to invest to move forward.” He’s right: it takes an investment of time, effort, and money to get organized. You’re ready for a professional organizer when you’ve come to understand the higher cost of standing still.

But the reward for your investment will be huge. The time and money you commit will give you back peace of mind, lift the emotional weight of clutter off your shoulders, and make you master of your domain again, instead of a slave to the contents thereof. When you’re ready to do whatever it takes to make your space a livable, beautiful, restful environment again, when you’re ready to invest in your quality of life, you’re ready for a professional organizer.

Are you there yet? 

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.”

The movie was a fascinating commentary on how tightly we cling to our stuff. Once we’ve claimed something as ours, we have a hard time surrendering it, even if it’s no longer useful. Our desire to maintain ownership is so strong that we’re even willing to pay for it—we’ll rent a truck, spend a Saturday afternoon loading and unloading, and sign a rental contract with a hefty monthly fee that goes on to infinity. Isn’t that an awful lot to invest just to keep “anything with eyes”—or whatever it is that you can’t let go?

Storage may seem like a convenient way to defer the decision to let go, but do you want to keep things so much that you’re willing to pay for them again? Would you go back to Macy’s and make monthly payments to keep a dress that you already bought? Of course not! So why pay for a storage unit? Why not spend your time, energy, and money on the finite task of letting go of some things?

You can watch a trailer for Store on the movie’s web site. We’ll keep you posted when the documentary shows up in general release or becomes available for download.

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:

• The NAPO Houston chapter is sponsoring a cool GO Month event this Friday, January 22, from 7:30 to 11:00 a.m. at the University of Houston Small Business Development Center. NAPO members will be at SBDC’s Fusion Friday networking event and will present two workshops: “Using Your Mobile Device to Get Organized,” and “18 Tips for Getting Organized in 2010.” The event is FREE, but you must register. Get more information, or register online now at the SBDC site.
• Ready to get rid of some stuff? A friend of ours has launched a new nonprofit organization called Re:Distribute. Its mission is to supply teachers with recycled supplies that can be used in the classroom. If you have office, school, or art supplies, furniture, or children’s books to donate, Re:Distribute will be delighted to put them to good use! Visit Re:Distribute’s Facebook group to find out more or to arrange a donation.
• Need ongoing support in your organizing efforts? Come to the free monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group. We convene at the Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research on the fourth Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. Join us for a brief presentation on a specific organizing topic, followed by Q&A with group members about their organizing challenges and goals. Our topic for January 28: “Getting Organized in the New Year: Rethinking Resolutions.” For event notices by e‑mail, sign up for Meetup.com and join our group.
• Want to arm yourself for the battle against clutter with some basic organizing skills? We’ve got you covered. We’re offering Conquering Clutter 101 at Studio NiaMoves in the Heights on Sunday, February 7, at 1 p.m. We’ll share basic organizing principles. You’ll go home inspired and ready to get started! Find out more, or register online now.

Finally, we’re starting the New Year by relaunching our web site with a new look—and lots of new content on the way. Our resolution? To help you get more organized in 2010! Keep an eye on the site for more events, new articles, and more organizing resources than ever before to help you GO!

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 what to keep and what to give away, but the truth is that she’s lost most of the ability to make those decisions. That makes the work I do an exercise in balancing respect for the mother and the needs of the daughter in organizing what remains of her mother’s life.

Normally, when I work with clients, I help them make decisions about their personal belongings. I encourage them to keep what’s important to them in their present lives and to let go of what no longer serves them. The work we do together is an active partnership. But my friend’s mom isn’t able to work with me in making those decisions. She can’t actively participate in this aspect of her life, and I can tell that she feels as if she’s giving up more than she’d like.

As an act of defiance against her circumstances, she hides things from me. Before my last visit, she told someone, “Gayle’s coming, I’ve got to start hiding things.” It’s her last stand against losing control of her life, and that makes me sad. It makes me wish I could have helped her earlier, when she could still make decisions about what to keep and what to surrender.

So here’s the lesson for all of us: Make your own choices about your stuff while you can still consciously choose. Don’t wait until those choices are taken away by declining health. Ask for help now, so you can make decisions with your dignity intact. That’s what it’s all about, really. Respect yourself enough to make your own choices. I want to help you with that.

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. This Sunday, I’ll address the Houston Women’s Group at the First Unitarian Universalist Church. The Houston Women’s Group is a feminist organization with a 35-year history of gathering to share information and to enjoy each other’s company. Next Wednesday, I’m delighted to be the guest speaker for the Lunch and Learn Series at The Path of Tea, Houston’s only all-organic teahouse. Join us for a soothing break for tea, lunch, and conversation in the middle of the busy workday. The following week, I’ll be at the Clayton Library Center for the inaugural meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group, a new kind of community we’re forming around the shared desire to get free of clutter.

Three very different events, but I know there’s one thing I’ll find at all of them—people struggling to make sense of their relationships to their things.

All three events are free to the public. They’re my opportunity to plant the seeds of change in the minds of those who come, listen, and share. The audiences will vary, and so will my presentations, but the underlying message remains the same: If you can improve the relationship you have with your stuff, you’ll get more joy out of your life.

Is clutter standing in the way of your enjoyment of life? Let’s talk! Please join me for one (or all) of these fun, free events!

Visit our speaking engagements page for information about bringing The Clutter Fairy to speak to your organization or group.

Many people now use computer database applications to track the results of their genealogical research. But the hobby still generates vast amounts of paper to physically organize. Here are a couple of strategies to build a system that can expand as your collection grows.

Three-ring Binders

Many people new to genealogical research begin organizing their material with a binder for each of their grandparents. Here’s the basic idea:

• Set up a three-ring binder for the surname of each grandparent.
• In each surname binder, sort materials by first name.
• Within each first name, arrange your materials as you like; for example, chronologically or following some other established order.
• Use archival-safe sheet protectors for your materials.
• Oversized or three-dimensional records (diaries, bibles, framed certificates) should be stored in archival-safe, acid-free boxes or file folders.
• For easy reference, place family group sheets at the front of the binder.
• Set up a “Miscellaneous Surnames” binder for new names you discover in the course of your research. Once the volume of material warrants it, designate a separate binder for that surname.

Keep these points in mind when using binders:

• Never take a surname binder to the library. Losing a binder and its contents would be devastating. (Note: Some libraries and genealogical research sites also place restrictions on what you may bring with you into the facility. We recommend that you check the rules before your research trip.)
• Instead, make a separate binder for research trips, with photocopies of pedigree charts and family group sheets.
• If you want specific records to go on a research trip, make copies. Originals stay home!
• Oversized records don’t work well in binders. If you decide to use on a binder system, you’ll need a place for these larger items, such as a dedicated storage box or file drawer.

Color-coded Hanging File Folders

Although many researchers start with binders, you may find that a color-coded file folder system works better once the volume of information outgrows your binder space. Here’s an outline of such a system:

• Start with 16 hanging file folders—four each in four different colors.
• The folders themselves and/or the label tabs may be colored.
• Each color represents one grandparent’s surname. For example, information about your paternal grandfather and his ancestors might go in a set of blue folders—one for each of his grandparents’ surnames. The four surnames of your paternal grandmother’s grandparents might go in red folders, and so on.
• In each surname folder, sort materials by first name.
• Within each first name, sort materials according to your system of choice.

Keep these points in mind when using color-coded hanging file folders:

• Hanging file folders come in a variety of expandable types, including one- to four-inch box-bottom folders that can accommodate most materials, including oversized and three-dimensional items.
• Some maps or very large materials require too much folding to fit in hanging files. Look for supplemental storage containers, such as archival-safe boxes or map tubes.

Resources

Books

Organizing Your Family History Search: Efficient & Effective Ways to Gather and Protect Your Genealogical Research

Sharon Carmack

Managing a Genealogical Project (Updated Edition)

William Dollarhide

Organizing and Preserving Your Heirloom Documents

Katherine Scott Sturdevant

Beyond Pedigrees: Organizing and Enhancing Your Work

Beverly Delong Whitaker

30 Seconds: A Guide to Organizing Your Genealogy Files

Robert Langman and Jimmy B. Parker

Software applications for organizing your research

Family Tree Maker

RootsMagic

Clooz

Support and networking

Houston Genealogical Forum

Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, Houston, Texas

Clayton Library Friends

RootsMagic user groups

Useful products

Acid-free Sheet Protectors

The Scrap Rack

Does tax season sneak up on you every year? One day you’re toasting the New Year and thinking you have all the time in the world to get ready for April 15. Before you know it, you’re scrambling to get your papers together because you’ve almost missed the filing deadline. It’s never fun, is it? I speak from experience, by the way. I’m a CPA, but I hate doing taxes as much as anyone else!

My theory about why people put off tax preparation year after year is simple. You realize that tax-related papers are scattered throughout your home office—and maybe in piles on the coffee table, on the kitchen counter, or in the entryway. Gathering and sorting those papers seems unpleasant in every way, so you put off the ugly task until “later.” After all, on January 1, you still have 3-1/2 months until the deadline to file your return. Time flies until right about now, when you suddenly realize that you and your tax preparer only have two weeks to get your return together!

Turning tax preparation into a fire drill only makes the inevitable task more unpleasant. It’s too late to avoid that part of the problem for this year, I’m sorry to say, but even this late in the game, there are things you can do to streamline the work that’s facing you. I offer the following quick sorting process to find the paperwork you need, ignore the stuff you don’t, and assemble your vital tax paperwork in time for the IRS deadline.

The Clutter Fairy’s Last-Minute Tax Season Fire Drill

First, get out last year’s tax return, and look at the types of income and deductions that actually ended up on the tax return. Most people’s returns look similar from year to year, so your last return is a good guide in preparing for this year.

Your tax preparer only cares about paperwork that supports numbers that are going to be on the tax return. If a document isn’t related to income you earned or deductions you can claim, it doesn’t matter to the tax preparer.

For example, many people believe they need to consider all their medical receipts. But do you really? Although medical expenses are deductible, very few taxpayers meet the conditions to take a deduction. Unreimbursed medical expenses are only deductible if they exceed 7-1/2 percent of your Adjusted Gross Income. So if your AGI is $50,000, the first $3,750 of your medical expenses ($50,000 x 0.075) effectively doesn’t count. Before you spend time gathering your doctors’ bills and prescription receipts, make a comparison using ballpark figures for income and medical expenses. If you determine that you didn’t spend anywhere near that much out of pocket, you don’t need to worry about medical receipts.

Simpler yet, if you take the standard deduction every year, there isn’t much paper at all that needs to go to the tax preparer, only documents related to money you earned—bank statements, investment statements, W-2s, any type of 1099s—and not much else.

If you have a business that gets reported on a Schedule C, then everything related to the business income and expenses needs to be gathered up. But it should be easy to separate business and personal expenses. Keep the business ones, skip the personal ones.

So, are you ready to start sorting? It’s easy!

1. Collect the materials you’ll need to get started: a few sorting boxes, plus a trash can—and a recycling bin and a shredder, if you want. Mark the sorting boxes as follows:
   1. Personal Income and Bank Stmts—For any earnings statements, W-2s, 1099s, etc. Include all your bank statements in here as well.
   2. Personal Deductions—For any paperwork that supports deductions on your return. If you use the standard deduction each year, you don’t even need this box!
   3. Business Income and Bank Stmts—If you have a business, this is for anything that supports income earned by the business. Include business bank statements here.
   4. Business Deductions—For any expenses related to your business.
   5. Non-Tax Keep—Put anything in here that you want to keep that doesn’t have anything to do with taxes. This stuff becomes an organizing project for another day.
2. Get one big box or bin and gather all the paper you have lying around everywhere. Pick up every pile you suspect might have tax support paperwork buried in it, and put it in the bin. Clear off all the places you have been stashing paper, and put the piles in the bin.
3. Time to sort! Work your way through the contents of the gathering bin and decide how to handle each item:
   1. If you’re ready to discard it, it goes in the trash, recycling bin, or shredder.
   2. If it’s not tax-related but you want to keep it, into the Non-Tax Keep box it goes.
   3. Does it support your tax return? Then sort it into the correct tax-related box.
4. Once you’ve emptied the gathering bin, you are ready to submit your info to the tax preparer. If you want to save some money, consider summarizing the data before you turn it over to your tax professional. It should be a breeze to add up the numbers on a spreadsheet now that you’ve got all the pieces sorted. Anything you do yourself is one less thing the tax preparer will have to charge you to do.

If you still haven’t learned your lesson to get ready for tax season earlier, then save this e-mail so at least you’ll be better prepared for the fire drill next year!

Mistake #5: Products first

What does every American do when she wants to start a project? She goes shopping! Everyone wants to start getting organized by purchasing organizing products first. The result: several hundred dollars added to the credit card balance and a stack of not-quite-right containers in the house, piled on top of the clutter.

The Clutter Fairy alternative: Sort through the entire contents of one room first, sorting to determine what you will keep and what can be trashed, recycled, put in another room, or given away. When you get down to the real “keep” pile, then you can go shopping with a plan for exactly what and how much you need to contain, and you’ll only buy the products you actually need.

Mistake #4: Clear-time blindness

No one looks forward to clearing out a long-neglected space (except maybe professional organizers). There’s a common mental disconnect between the time it took to create the chaos and the time it’s likely to take to clear it out. So people tend to make a mental adjustment, reducing cleaning time from how long it will actually take to the amount of time they’re willing to put in. If you’ve neglected organization for six months, it’s going to take more than a Saturday afternoon to get your space under control.

The Clutter Fairy alternative: Be realistic about the time a project will take. Don’t underestimate the scope of what you’re trying to accomplish, or you’ll set yourself up to be disappointed when the project isn’t complete at the end of the afternoon. Take delight in incremental progress, and stick with the plan until it’s complete. Think how proud you’ll be when you’re truly done!

Mistake #3: Premature “keep” decisions

Once you begin sorting, you’ll find yourself touching everything in the room. Each object grabs your attention, and they’re all saying, “Keep me!” It’s easy to get bogged down in trying to decide what to keep as you touch each object. It may seem efficient to make your keep decisions at this stage, but it’s not—for two reasons. First, you’ll tend to get fatigued by continuous decision-making, and you’ll want to shut down. Second, you’ll keep too much because until you get through the initial sorting, you’re not choosing based on the whole picture of everything you own.

The Clutter Fairy alternative: Don’t confuse sorting with decision-making. Your first step is to sort the whole room, gathering like with like, pulling out items you can readily identify as trash or recycling. Stay focused on the task of sorting the entire contents of the room before you make keep decisions. Then process each pile and make keep decisions, also adding to your trash, recycle, and relocate piles. This sort-first, decide-second process will yield sensible, informed keep decisions, and the volume of what you keep will almost certainly be smaller.

Mistake #2: Keeping things for the wrong reasons

What’s even worse than making keep decisions prematurely? Keeping things for the wrong reason. For example, you throw something on the keep pile “because it was a gift.” Are you sure you want to make space for something not because you like it, or use it, or even want it, but for no other reason than that it was a gift? That’s not a good enough reason for it to take up your valuable space and attention. Another bad reason for keep decisions is cost. You don’t have to compound an expensive buying mistake with a bad keep decision.

The Clutter Fairy alternative: Your goal is to “thin the herd.” Don’t manufacture reasons to keep things, or you might as well not be trying to organize. Be truthful about what you like, what you will use—not just might use—and what genuinely suits your lifestyle. If something doesn’t make the cut, get rid of it in favor of things that do. Don’t waste your valuable time storing, living with, and working around a bunch of stuff you don’t really love.

Mistake #1: Deciding not to decide

If all you’re doing is putting the same stuff in new places, you’re wasting time and effort. Sometimes you find that you can’t decide whether to keep an item, so you put it back on the pile. All you’ve really done is made an unjustified keep decision, postponing your pain to another day. Do you want to go through this whole process again later? I doubt it!

The Clutter Fairy alternative: Put aside the item that trips you up for the moment, and move on to something else that you can decide about. Don’t let one problematic item stop the great progress you’re making. Tackle some easy decisions first, and your success will give you strength to make harder choices. At the very least, you’ll reduce the pile that needs your attention from what it would have been if you’d let that one hard decision stop you in your tracks. It’s okay if you have to spread out the tough decisions over a few days. Your ultimate goal is to make good keep decisions based on what’s truly part of your lifestyle—then let the rest go.

How are you doing so far on the New Year’s resolutions? I get the impression that at this time of year, we’re all trying to become better, more-together versions of ourselves. We believe somehow that all we have to do is draw a line in the sand—“starting January 1”—and a better person will emerge all of a sudden. I think that one reason people don’t accomplish their resolutions is that expecting monumental, fundamental changes in yourself just because you’ve started using a new calendar is not a recipe for success.

“Get organized” is a popular New Year’s resolution. Having let their spaces dissolve into disaster areas over the holidays, people wake up with a hangover on January 1, walk around with coffee in hand, and say, “I have GOT to get this place organized!” It’s certainly a laudable goal, but it’s too broad a mandate to be useful as a resolution. The objective doesn’t contain the steps you’ll need to get there.

The best way to accomplish any job is to take it step by step. So if “get organized” is on your list for 2009, I propose that you apply a step-by-step approach. Instead of a New Year’s resolution, how about creating “new month resolutions” this year instead? Break out the steps it’ll take to get your space organized, and set each step as a monthly goal. A month’s worth of organizing is manageable, and more likely to actually get accomplished! Stick to all—or even just most—of your new month resolutions, and by the end of the year, your place will be in great shape. Your resolution to get organized will be achieved.

Want some help breaking it down? Here’s a template you can modify to your specific situation.

The Clutter Fairy’s 2009 New Month Resolutions

• January: Handle the mail. The most basic headache that afflicts all households is incoming mail. Ignoring it creates piles that multiply every day as the new mail comes. Without systems to handle mail, you’re guaranteed to find yourself buried under piles in short order. Spend January creating and refining your customized process for handling the mail and preventing piles instead of creating them. Then you’ll have no piles to deal with in 2009!
• February: Clear out the closets. The dead of winter is a perfect time to dig through your closets. You’re looking for those coats, hats and gloves anyway, so why not sort through everything now? Get rid of the clothes that don’t fit or that you haven’t worn during the year, throw out shoes that look the worse for wear, and put things back in an organized way.
• March: Tackle those paper piles. The tax-filing deadline is six weeks away, so why not spend March sorting out all the paper in your home office (and elsewhere!) so you’ll be ready to prepare your tax return. Go through any neglected stacks of mail and paper around the house, sorting and throwing out as you go. File away what you need to keep, including the items that support your tax return.
• April: Organize the home office. Since you just finished clearing all the paper piles, the majority of which were probably in your office, wrapping up your home office should be a breeze! Now’s the time to go through the existing files and throw out outdated material, rearrange the desktop and its contents, maybe try a new arrangement of the furniture. Perhaps you need to create a filing system because you don’t have one! Whatever it’ll take to make the office more functional and efficient, that’s your resolution for this month.
• May: Deal with the garage. Just in time for garage sale season! If you can’t park at least one car in the garage, you have too much stuff in there, and you’re probably just postponing giving it away. Empty out the garage and have a garage sale at the end of the month. This project has the bonus of generating some vacation cash for you.
• June: Clean up the master bedroom. Where do you spend one third of your life? In your bedroom, of course. You cleaned the closet in February, so now you can tackle the room itself. Consider the amount and size of the furniture compared to the size of the room, and get rid of things that don’t fit the space well. Create a floor plan with space to move around in and a way to contain all the objects that need to be in your inner sanctum.
• July: Sort out the bathrooms. Tried 42 different hair products during the year? Bathrooms usually have a small amount of storage that’s quickly filled up. Go through all the storage in the bathrooms, sort, purge, and reorganize what you really need to keep. Toiletries are a great donation to homeless shelters and other similar facilities.
• August: Dive into the kitchen next. You’ve tried another year’s worth of recipes, and it’s time to go through the fridge and pantry again. The only way to know what you have is to organize the cabinets and closets in the kitchen. Now you can finally try those recipes you forgot you bought ingredients for!
• September: Dump the storage unit. Now that the weather is not so steamy hot, you can get into your storage unit and clear it out! You cleaned up your garage, so maybe you don’t even need a storage unit anymore. Most of that stuff can go away—I promise—and what you want to keep might now fit in the garage. Do yourself a favor—get rid of that monthly fee.
• October: Organize the decorations. Fall is the season when all the decorating starts up. First Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas—each with its own set of decorations to put up and take down. Since you have to get them out anyway, why not sort, purge, and store them together? Then it will be easy to take down Halloween, store it, and pull out the stuff for Thanksgiving, and so on. Put the decorations in an out-of-the-way place, so when the season is over, they can hide away until next year.
• November: Prepare the guest/multipurpose room. Guests are coming any day now. This is the perfect time to get into that multipurpose room that’s part guest room and part craft room, or part office and part junk room. Clear out the year’s worth of accumulated stuff and create an inviting space for your guests, with room to hang up or put away clothes and a place to store the luggage.
• December: Stage the kids’ rooms. The kids are about to get a fresh crop of gifts, so why not make room by getting rid of some old ones? You’ll be just in time to donate items to a Toys-for-Tots campaign. Besides, the kids are out of school for three weeks, so it’s a great time to teach them about being organized, too. What they learn now about getting organized will serve them all their lives.

Image: Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Green” is everywhere these days—in the news, in the workplace, and on store shelves. So wherever I speak to audiences in this environmentally conscious climate, I get a lot of questions about recycling. I started collecting the questions that have stumped me, and then I went online to look for answers.

I live in Houston, as do many of my clients, so I started with the City of Houston recycling web site. What I found there was chaotic, inconsistent, full of confusing acronyms and ambiguities, and spread across a mind-numbing array of pages. I despaired of ever tracking down all the answers I needed. But the Clutter Fairy makes her living bringing order out of chaos, so I dug into the project of making sense of it all. My staff and I deconstructed a huge mass of information and rearranged it in what we hope you’ll find a user-friendly guide to recycling in Houston.

View the recycling guide here.

A special note to our readers elsewhere in Greater Houston: the City of Houston, Abitibi Consolidated, and H-E-B have created a partnership to offer recycling at 22 H‑E‑B grocery stores in the outlying areas. See the list of accepted materials and a map of participating locations (PDF).

In a previous newsletter, we promised a “comprehensive guide,” but I’ve since realized that the City of Houston is only the tip of the iceberg of recycling efforts in our region. The good news: There are more ways than ever to keep things out of our landfills and to safeguard the environment. We couldn’t cover them all here, but this is a solid start, and we plan to add more resources in the future.

I encourage you to think of recycling as one part of a larger strategy for eliminating clutter from your life, managing the waste you generate, and “greening” your lifestyle and the planet:

• Reduce: First and foremost, you can save time, storage space, and money by planning your purchases carefully. Don’t buy more than you need or more than you can store. Remember, it’s not a bargain if you have nowhere to put it when you get home. If you shop as a form of recreation, look all you want, try things on, handle them in the store, but don’t buy them!
• Reuse: Before you recycle or dispose of something that still has usefulness, consider giving it to a friend, family member, posting it on the Houston Freecycle™ Network Yahoo Group, or selling it on Craig’s List. Don’t fall into the cluttered recycler’s trap of thinking, “If it’s still useful, I have to keep it.” No, you don’t! If you want to be organized, find a way for someone else to benefit from whatever usefulness remains.
• Recycle: More materials than ever before are being accepted for recycling, and the increase in volume, along with improvements in technology, should continue to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of recycling processes. Check out our guide below for methods and facilities to recycle a wide variety of common materials.
• As a last resort, dispose of waste in a safe and appropriate fashion.

Editor’s note: We here at The Clutter Fairy are not infallible. If you discover any factual errors or important omissions, or if you find information that’s been updated since we prepared the guide, please let us know so we can update our data.

This year’s recession news is a surprising silent partner in my campaign against clutter. It’s a lot easier to sell the idea of clutter-conscious gift giving when so many of us are feeling the pinch of an economy in turmoil. But although I’m grateful for any help I can get in raising clutter consciousness, I don’t want to push people to change just because they feel panicky about money. Conscientious giving shouldn’t have to be a painful discipline to regain control—an unreasonable fiscal “diet.” (Some of us know too well that diets fail unless they’re sensible and sustainable.) Clutter-conscious giving needs to become a mindset, a philosophy, a way of looking at life that reprioritizes what’s most important, in the flush times and the lean years.

Every good organizer will tell you that life is not about stuff. The real substance of life is whatever you’re passionate about—your family, your career, your hobby, your sport, your recreation, your spirituality, your friends—in whatever form those passions take for you. Sure, some stuff is required to function and live, but it’s not the stuff that generates the joy in your life.

Yet much of our gift-giving tradition is focused on giving material, physical symbols of the emotional attachment you feel to people in your life. The purpose of the gift is to express a sentiment, to say “You’re an important part of my life,” or “You helped me during the year, and I’m grateful,” or “You’re a valuable customer, and we appreciate your business.”

In this year, when spending a lot of money seems imprudent, why not break with the stuff tradition and express your emotions in a different way? Toward that end, I want to take a look at some more creative non-stuff-generating ways of giving gifts this year.

Let’s start with effort. Consider giving away the fruits of your labor. As a perfect example, I’ll start by confessing that I’m a horrible cook—the kitchen is not my area of expertise. When I’m offered the opportunity to eat someone else’s home-cooked meals, I jump on it! I have many friends who take delight in cooking, and I’m often a happy beneficiary of their talents. For me, it would be a real treat to receive a homemade meal as a gift. How about some soup to put in the freezer, some homemade muffins, gazpacho, or meat sauce for pasta?

While my mother was here for a visit last year, I was sick for a few days, and she cooked up a great big pot roast with potatoes and carrots. I ate it for days after she went home, and every bite reminded me of the love and concern that went into its preparation.

Think about a talent you happily indulge, and give the results of your art or craft or other enjoyable work as a gift this year. Almost anything you enjoy doing can be turned into a wonderful gift to those who don’t enjoy doing it.

Next on our alternative gift idea list: time. You probably have at least a little to spare, especially if you’re cutting back on holiday shopping, right? One idea is to offer your time in support of someone else’s charitable project, or in their honor. You’ve probably given money to a charity in someone’s name, but this year, what about volunteering your time at someone’s favorite charity instead? Spend two hours furthering the charitable purpose, and send a card to tell the recipient about having given this gift of yourself. You don’t necessarily have to do the work during the holiday season—commit to helping out in January when charities face a tougher time recruiting volunteers.

For friends closer to home, offer your time directly as a gift. Promise to spend a day in the spring helping to clean out your friend’s garage, plant a garden, or clear clutter from the closet. Maybe you can babysit a few nights, or give away rides to and from the airport. For any way you can imagine providing help and support to a friend, offer them that for the holidays! A holiday gift for future delivery will be a great treat for any busy adult with a crazy schedule. And a prearranged promise of time makes it easier to ask for help when your loved one needs it. You can make your gift of time tangible by simply writing a personal note inside a holiday greeting card, or get creative and design your own “gift certificate” with your computer and printer.

You can also give the gift of your attention. We all have busy schedules these days, and we don’t always make as much time for our friends as we could. Call someone on your gift list, and if she’s not free to talk right then, make a firm “appointment” to call back at a time that’s good for both of you—and then listen with everything you’ve got! Make plans to see someone during the holidays and give him the gift of your attention. Think about people you’ve missed lately, and meet for dinner or drinks. The venue and the price tag aren’t nearly as important as the precious gift of your companionship. If you have the means, pick up the tab with a cheerful “happy holidays” (or another appropriate wish, of course) at the end of an evening of reminiscing and catching up, and your friend will feel gifted indeed!

The bonus of these gift-giving alternatives: the guarantee that you’re creating no future clutter for anyone! The recipients will think of you fondly instead of staring at the gift wondering, “Where am I going to keep this?” And you’ll enjoy the impact these ideas have on your holiday budget. Try them, and see if you can’t start a new holiday tradition this year that supports your pocketbook, aligns with a clutter-conquering philosophy, and keep you mindful of what’s most important in your life—the love you give and receive.