How do you get started organizing when you feel completely overwhelmed? One step at a time sounds logical, but it doesn’t answer the question, “Which step do I take first—and why?” Truly, when the task is big, any step is the right one. A start is what’s needed. So let’s talk about some quick and dirty ways to get unstuck and to begin the task of digging your way out of your project. Pretty soon, you’ll be sweeping up after the project is done.

1. Pick a five-minute task first—organize your sock drawer, or one kitchen cabinet, maybe the spice shelves, or the pots and pans.
2. Organize your purse—it’s a microcosm of your house! Empty it completely, throw out the trash, reduce the number of items you carry. Use zipper bags to collect similar items such as makeup or coupons.
3. Use a ticking timer as a way to keep you focused. Set it for short amounts of time (15 or 30 minutes), work until the timer goes off, then do the happy dance. Repeat as often as you’re willing, even if it’s only once a day.
4. Start by moving things back to the right rooms. Call it the first pass. Things are already messy, so moving things from room to room won’t hurt anything. Just pick up anything that’s not in the room where it belongs, and move it to the right one. Don’t worry if you have to make a space! There are sure to be things in that room that need to come out anyway, and that next move will free up space.
5. Pick a room, any room. Now pick a drawer, or shelf, or table top. Focus on clearing that one space. Don’t forget your timer! Throw out trash, relocate things to their appropriate places, straighten up and contain what needs to stay.
6. Here’s an easy one! Clean out the medicine cabinet. Get rid of all the expired drugs. Mix them into coffee grounds or cat litter and bag them tightly for the trash. (Don’t flush them down the toilet!) You can also drop them off at some pharmacies that will dispose of them properly.
7. Pick the worst closet—the one you can’t walk into. Set your timer, and just clear the floor. Throw out trash, make decisions about what to keep and what can be donated. Make your goal to clear the floor completely. If it means you have to pull something off the shelves to make room for something on the floor, then go ahead and make room. Either way, you’ll be pulling out donations and making it easier to walk into the closet next time without tripping.
8. Try the 27-pieces game! Take two bags and walk around the house. Pick up pieces of trash for one bag, pick up things to donate for the other bag. Keep going until you add 27 things to each bag. You don’t have to clean anything this way, you’re just hunting. Eventually you’ll get to 27, and you’re done. It’s a great way to start when you can’t decide on a place to sort yet.
9. Linen closets are easy! There are many big items and lots to donate. Sort the sheets and towels and take the leftovers to a veterinarian—they can use them, and you need the space. 

PROGRAM NOTES

Your bathroom is a very private place. Besides using it for the obvious reasons, you start every day there, getting showered, shaved, and coifed for the day. Later, you go back to get ready for bed. You spend a lot of time there, but most visitors to your home don’t. They use the other bathroom—the public one, or the one the kids use. That means your bathroom is your very own place to treat as you wish.

Here’s the problem: if a space in your house isn’t seen by the public, then it tends to get neglected. I’m always surprised that we’re motivated to clean a room when others will see it, but we have no energy for the spaces we use the most often. And we’re the ones who have to live with the mess every day, not our guests!

Bathrooms collect a certain kind of junk. More than any other room in the house, there’s a class of products that belong uniquely to this space. Body washes and hair gels, medications and first‑aid products—they collect under the sink and in the cabinets, and before you know it you’re drowning in bottles and jars. We buy way more products than we need because they smell good, and what’s one more bottle under the sink? But we can only use those products so fast, and if you’re buying faster than you’re using, you end up with exploding cabinets in the bathroom.

Bath products lure you to buy with the promise of peace and tranquility in a relaxing bath. But all those bottles and jars falling out of the cabinet certainly don’t deliver that experience. Instead, let’s thin out the contents and clean up the bathroom. Then you can really have a peaceful sanctuary each day.

Here are some ideas for reclaiming your bathroom:

Organize the bathroom as quickly as you can say, “Calgon, take me away!”

1. Acknowledge your product habit! Bath products are a cheap and easy indulgence. But it would take years to use the products you have right now! So stop buying bath products just because they’re a good deal. See how long it takes you to use up what you have. I bought eight Bath & Body Works products on sale 2½ years ago. I’m down to three now. That’s a bottle every six months. How many years’ worth of products are in your cabinet right now?
2. Time to thin the herd. You’ve tried tons of products that you didn’t like, but they’re still in the cabinet. Time to pass those on to someone else or throw them out. If the product is very old, it may no longer be safe to use.
3. All medicine cabinets need help. First, you’ve kept those meds way too long. Anything expired needs to go. Second, those little shelves can barely hold anything. Trying to stand everything up on those shelves guarantees it will all fall on your head. Find some narrow open containers to sit on the shelf to hold all the little doodads and tiny bottles that belong there.
4. Linen cabinets hold more than linens. Use the same container strategies in the linen cabinet that you use elsewhere in the house. Stacking boxes and slide-out drawers and trays will help control the contents you decide to keep. This is a great place for a lazy susan product, too. A two-tier lazy susan holds a lot of aspirin and cold medicine bottles.

PROGRAM NOTES

Our bedroom is our sanctuary. It’s where we go to sleep and get restorative rest. It’s where we go for naps—when we can spare the time for one! It’s where we share intimate moments with our partners.

Clutter can put a damper on everything that takes place in your house, especially in your inner sanctum. It creates a bunch of negative noise in your mind, and all that racket prevents restful sleep.

I once worked for a tall young man who piled all his clothes—clean and dirty—on the bed. When he was ready for bed, he slept crosswise on the bed with his legs hanging off the end and his feet on the floor. And he wondered why he was getting such terrible sleep! I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t move stuff even to sleep! But it was a perfect example of what people are willing to accept when they are overwhelmed.

What to do in the bedroom to create your perfect sanctuary? Here are some ideas:

1. Clear the floor so there’s a clean path to the bed. And not just by piling the stuff from the floor on the bed or other furniture!
2. More than any other room in the house, this is the room where you must minimize distractions.
   1. Keep only the furniture that you really need in there—don’t add spare items to this room. The less there is, the less junky it will feel, and the less furniture there is to pile up with stuff.
   2. If you can manage it, leave the TV outside the bedroom. It may help you fall asleep, but it’s also going to wake you up again later.
   3. Spend the three minutes it’ll take to hang up or put away the clothes you wore today. We all want to come home and quickly change to at-home attire, and the nice day clothes tend to end up in a pile somewhere. If you spend a moment hanging up just those clothes, at least there will be less to trip over on the floor.

Your bedroom should be a sanctuary.
3. Don’t use your bedroom as a storage or junk room. Your sanctuary is not the place for hiding stuff from public view.
   1. If you’ve run out of space elsewhere, it’s time to start sorting and purging those spaces. It’s not time to expand storage into the bedroom.
   2. Don’t let yourself hide stuff in the bedroom “just for the party.” It’ll never come out again!
4. Spend a weekend cleaning up the master bedroom closet. Most of the clutter I find in a bedroom is the direct result of the closet being unusable. The minute it gets hard putting things away, that process stops, and the piles on the floor start to grow. Sure enough, soon after the closet get out of control, you can’t get near it to use it at all.
   1. That means sorting and purging the clothes! If you have more clothes than will fit in the closet, you will never have a functional closet. You need to be able to hang up your clothes with some wiggle room to spare, or the closet doesn’t work.
   2. If you have the cash to spend, this is a good home upgrade that directly improves your life. From custom-built closets to Elfa shelves from the Container Store, it’s money well spent if you can improve the functioning of the closet every day.

Kim Jordan, host of The Ask Kim Jordan Show, interviews Gayle Goddard about organizing products for the closet and home office. Check out the Pods from Neat Containers, a great way to store shoes, purses, and accessories in the closet. We also look at an expanding file container that’s perfect for storing your tax paperwork.

Gayle Goddard facilitates the monthly meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group. The topic for February’s meetup will be “Clearing Out the Closet: Unpacking the Problem of Clothing Storage.” The dead of winter is a perfect time to dig through your closets. Gayle will offer strategies to sort and thin your wardrobe and put things back in a more organized way.

Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research
(Carriage House—Note: If the Carriage House is still under repair, we’ll meet in the main house. Look for a sign on the door if the lights aren’t on in the Carriage House.)
5300 Caroline
Houston, TX 77030
832-393-2600

FREE and open to the public.

RSVP by visiting the Meetup page or by sending us e‑mail.

The Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group is a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room in their lives for the things they love. Come learn tools and tips from an expert, and share your success stories and “ah‑hah!” moments…[READ MORE]

This program is not sponsored or endorsed by Houston Public Library.

If you have a special physical or communications need that may impact your participation in this activity, please contact Gayle Goddard at 713‑816‑9505 at least 72 hours prior to the event to discuss accommodations. We cannot ensure the availability of appropriate accommodations without prior notification of need.

This introductory classroom session will give you the tips and tricks you need to move past being overwhelmed and start clearing out your “stuff.” You will learn the secrets of sorting mail, clearing and organizing your desk, cleaning out your closets, and divesting yourself of unused, unneeded items. You’ll leave the workshop with loads of organizing ideas to transform any space into a productive, pleasant, clutter-free zone.

NiaMoves Studio 1
508 Pecore St.
Houston, Texas 77009
713-864-4260
Price: $45 early registration (by January 31).
$55 late registration or at the door.

Register online now.

We encourage you to register in advance so we can plan materials and refreshments for you. For more information, send e-mail to The Clutter Fairy or call 713‑816‑9505.

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.

This introductory classroom session will give you the tips and tricks you need to move past being overwhelmed and start clearing out your “stuff.” You will learn the secrets of sorting mail, clearing and organizing your desk, cleaning out your closets, and divesting yourself of unused, unneeded items. You’ll leave the workshop with loads of organizing ideas to transform any space into a productive, pleasant, clutter-free zone.

NiaMoves Studio 1
508 Pecore St.
Houston, Texas 77009
713-864-4260

You come home from the mall with two bags of new clothes—your latest score! You open the closet, and you have to jump back to avoid being buried under the avalanche. If you shop as if your closet is a black hole, chances are you have a big clutter problem on your hands. This class covers the basics for organizing the finite space that is your closet!

Spectrum Center
4100 Westheimer, Suite 233
Houston, Texas 77027
713-840-8957