31 Day Organizational Challenge

This month I have decided to do the 31 Day Organizational Challenge over at Organizing Junkie.

I have one room in my home that is so unorganized that it's embarrassing!  The rest of the house is actually pretty neat and organized but this room has been a dumping ground for years.  Each winter I say that I am going to get that room organized and each winter something else much more fun and exciting comes up (like getting a pap smear).  Yes, this room is that bad!

Okay, here goes........the room that I am going to have organized by the end of March is..........

My furnace room.

But wait, there's more!  This is to the right as you walk in the door.  It's all my Christmas decorations piled up to at least waist level.

And that's not all!  On the left of the door are bicycles, coats, wagons and chairs.

I certainly have my job cut out for me!

Now I am going to share with you my excuse for letting it get this bad; there are bats in this room.  Oh, and I am terrified of them!  They seem to get in through the attic and make their way down the walls and out into this room.  I have had one fly out of the corners while in there more than once and I have found more than my fair share of dead ones that got trapped in a box.  I leave those for Mr. P to take care of!

My plan is to sneak in there everyday and take items out to be sorted in the adjoining laundry room; much less stressful this way.  And maybe I'll get lucky and find the exact spot that those little suckers are getting through!  Although, I'm not holding out hope since we've been over every inch of that room, filling every crack and crevice that we find with spray foam or insulation and they are still getting in.

I'll leave you with a few close up photos of some of the junk that I am going to have to deal with this month.  And be sure to check out Organizing Junkie to see what others are doing to get their lives more organized!

There Are No U-Hauls Behind a Hearse

Welcome to my final post on getting rid of your clutter.

You've all heard the phrase, "you can't take it with you".  So what happens to all your stuff once you are gone?  As a professional organizer I can tell you that other people do not love your stuff as much as you do.

Right now I have a client whose aunt passed away eight months ago and left him everything.  He lives in another country.  He did a quick walk through the house when he was here and took what he wanted but everything else is being left for me to dispose of.  Whether it is garbage, or something to be donated or even something to be auctioned off, it will mostly be my decision.  I had never met this man's aunt and I have no idea if the ugly china that I deemed something to donate is something from this lady's grandmother or just some cheap china she picked up from a garage sale.  Maybe it was a gift from her in-laws and she hated it too!

That old top hat that I found, was it this lady's father's or was it just some Halloween costume that her children once wore?  I have no sentimental attachment to anything in her home.  All I know is that it all has to go somewhere because the house is being sold.


Who will look after your stuff if something should suddenly happen to you?  Will you be burdening your already grieving family with a monumental task of cleaning up your stuff?  Will they know what is truly important?

I have a small teacup collection.  There is only about a dozen teacups and none are worth much except one that was made in 1600's and even then it's certainly not worth a fortune.  However, nestled in among the other teacups is one that I received from my grandmother.  I can remember seeing Grandma's collection of cups and her saying that one of these days she was going to write down the names of each of her granddaughters on pieces of paper and drop one into each cup so that when she was gone we could each have one of her cups.  She never did get around to putting those pieces of paper in the cups but they were divided between her granddaughters anyway after she passed away.  Someone going through my teacup collection after I am gone may not know that this may be something worth passing along to my own grandchildren (should I have some someday in the great distant future!).

Family members that are already distraught over losing you can easily become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff that needs to be sorted through.  At those times they tend to just toss things out randomly because it's easier.  Later, many regret getting rid of certain items that, at the time, they did not even consider keeping.  There were just too many decisions to make.

Start sorting through your stuff now so that, should anything ever happen to you, your family will know that the only things left are treasures.  Consider placing small post-it notes under family heirlooms so that others will know where they came from.  They may still decide to get rid of it but at least they can make an informed decision.

Here is another idea that I love.  If you or a loved one has an unusual collection that you know no one else would want to take over, try placing that collection on a table at the funeral service asking guests to please take one as a remembrance of the dearly departed.  This could be teacups, salt and pepper shakers, those silver spoons that people buy when travelling, a Beanie baby collection or perhaps even a collection of elephant themed items.  I think that this is a great way to honour not only the person but also the love that this person had for whatever it was that they collected.  And no one ends up with 35 stuffed elephants at the end of it all!

As I said at the beginning of the post this is my final post in the series about getting rid of clutter.  My blog posts are going to be quite sporadic for the next few months as I deal with several work related items.  If you follow me on Facebook I will try to link some wonderful articles from some of the great organizing bloggers that I follow.  I will still post occasionally but I know that my free time is going to be quite limited until at least June.  I want to thank everyone who comes to read my blog.  I am always surprised at the number of page views each post gets!  I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you joining me here.  You guys are the greatest!

Commercial De-Cluttering

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Have you ever heard of the term "commercial cleaning"?  No it's not when you hire someone to come in and clean your whole house!  It's when you get up and clean during the commercials of your favourite television programs.

I have to tell you that I am not a big TV watcher but the one thing that truly helped me get my whole home de-cluttered was that I did a lot of it in front of the television set.  If the junk drawer needed to be cleared out, I would pull the whole drawer out and carry it to in front of the TV and start sorting.

Over 10 years ago Mr. P took over the family plumbing business.  With that came 20 bankers boxes filled with papers from the previous 20 years that company had been in business.  There were 3 filing cabinets filled with papers, 2 tall 5-drawer ones and a small 2-drawer one.  Slowly I began to go through all those papers.  While 99.9% of them could be shredded, I still had to make sure that I kept certain ones for tax purposes.

I would sit myself down in front of the television with a shredder and some recycling bags and I would start to sort.  While the TV show was on I would sort and I would shred during the commercials.  What worked nicely with this is that, by giving the shredder a rest while the program was on, I could continue to shred papers longer because it had time to cool down between uses.

I would do this until I had filled a rather good sized shredder 3 times or until it started to feel warm.  I have to admit that it took a long time to finally get rid of all those papers but it was rather painless since I did it all while watching TV.

There are so many things that can be done while watching TV.  I regularly sort my filing and even file a lot of if because I made sure that my files are portable.  I have emptied a drawer in the bedroom into a laundry basket and sorted through the clothes.  I have taken boxes of odds and ends in the basement and sorted them in front of the TV.  I organized all of our DVDs and other movies while watching some of them.  I've organized my photos and my online photos while watching movies and 3 weeks ago I organized my Pinterest boards while watching a Lord of the Rings marathon with my family.

Now this may not work if you are organizing sentimental items or things that are very difficult for you to let go of, but it works well for those mindless tasks that take a lot of time.

Start with organizing your coffee table so that you have room to work.  Dedicate the first half hour of a program to sorting something and then put things away where they belong during the commercials of the second half hour.

At this point I almost never watch TV without having some other task in front of me.  Being stuck somewhere else in the house organizing or cleaning something while the rest of my family was watching their favourite TV program was not fun.  By bringing my work in front of the TV I was able to spend time with my family and the job I was doing didn't seem so much like work any more.

Sorting Your Stuff

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Welcome back to my series on clearing out your clutter.  Today I am going to give you some questions to ask yourself as you deal with each item in your home.  But before I do that, you will need to have the proper supplies in front of you in order to make the process of de-cluttering easier.

You will need 3 containers in front of you - one for donations, one for trash and one for things that need to be put away somewhere else in the house.  If it's paper that you are de-cluttering then you will need a container for recycled paper, one for documents that need to be shredded, one for paper that needs to be filed and a spot for an Action File (those papers that require you to do something).

These containers can vary with whatever you have on hand.  Obviously a trash bag for trash and you could use a box or a clear plastic bag for donations.  One tip that I have is to never use a trash bag for anything but trash.  It is just too easy for donations to be mistaken for garbage and set out at the curb (trust me on this!).  Personally I use two pop-up leaf bags to hold a trash bag and a clear plastic bag for donations.  I bought them at Lee Valley.  Laundry baskets are great for your put-away pile.  They are easy to carry from room to room as you put items away.

You will notice that there is no container for items you are not sure about.  I don't believe in a "maybe pile".  Think of the term OHIO (Only Handle It Once).  It's too easy to make a maybe pile that you never get to later.  You are wasting your valuable time going over things again and again.  Make a firm decision, even if it takes you a little longer.

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Another thing that I am not a big fan of is yard sales.  I find that they are a lot of work for the amount of money that you actually make.  However, if you insist on having a yard sale then the best time to price your items is while you are sorting them.  Nothing will make you put that yard sale off more than a garage full of items waiting to be priced by you.  By having a pen and some stickers in front of you you can save some time and sanity.

Now here is a list of questions that you can ask yourself as you decide whether or not an item is worth keeping.

I love these questions, especially the last one.  Here are a couple more questions you could ask yourself.
Does it have a home? - Everything in your house should have a home.  If it doesn't then you either need to make a home for it if it is important or it needs to go.
Would this mean anything to my children if I died tomorrow? - This question was suggested by a reader and I love it.  Especially for those whose children are older and may be faced with handling all of your stuff some day.

Next week I am going to share with you the number one tip that I have for finding the time to de-clutter your home.  It made a huge difference for me and I hope that it helps you too.

Time To Dream

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Welcome to my series about how to get rid of your clutter.

For today's task I want you to dream.  I want you to really think about how you want to use the spaces in   your home.  For instance, if you are planning on de-cluttering the living room, stop and think about what activities you see you and your family doing in this room.  Will you entertain friends and family in here?  Is this where your children play most of the time?  Will the kids do homework in here?  Is this room mostly for watching TV?

By knowing how you intend to use the room it will help you decide what stays in that room and what has to go.  You may find that it just doesn't work having the kids do their homework in there because the TV is too big of a distraction.  Perhaps moving the desk elsewhere will open up a spot for more seating for when you entertain.

How about the dining room?  When you were shopping for your dining room table (or kitchen table if you don't have a dining room) did you purchase this table with the idea of it holding old bills, junk mail, craft supplies, 3 dead batteries and a couple of broken candles?  Or did you envision warm gatherings of friends and family all enjoying fabulous food that you cooked from scratch?

Figuring out how you want to use the space is the first step in de-cluttering.  It is also one of the most crucial.  It's surprising how many people miss this step completely but if you don't know what your goal is, how do you know when you reach it?

Don't Buy Stuff.

This is the first post in my series on getting rid of your clutter.  My first rule is to don't buy more stuff!

There is actually two parts to this.  The first one is quite simple; don't spend all week purging items from your home if you are only going to spend all weekend shopping and filling it up again.

Now I understand that this rule is not as easy as it sounds.  When my boys were young I was a stay-at-home mom and I couldn't wait to get out of my cluttered house on the weekends with Mr. P and the boys.  Many a weekend was spent wandering around a shopping mall buying things we really didn't need.  Those things only exacerbated the clutter problem in my home.  It became a vicious circle where the more my home was cluttered the more I wanted to go shopping to escape.  The more I shopped the more cluttered my home became.  I realized I needed to find other things to do with the family and I needed to make my home a place that I wanted to spend time in.

By de-cluttering your home you can actually make that circle work in reverse.  When you start getting rid of all those things that you spent your time buying you begin to realize how much money you were actually wasting.  It makes you be more particular about what you bring into your home.

Your home also becomes more inviting.  You will actually want to spend time there when you don't have to look around at all the work that you still have to do.

And for all you bargain hunters out there, it's not a bargain if you don't really need it.  I know people who, when they find a $75 sweater on sale for $25, they will buy 4 of them in different colours.  They will proudly tell me that they saved $200.   They don't see it the other way around, that they actually wasted $100 on sweaters that won't even fit into their already overcrowded closet and in a couple of colours that don't even look good on them.

The second part of this Don't Buy Stuff post is about containers.  Don't run out to buy a bunch of organizing containers because you are planning on de-cluttering your home.  Buying containers is part of the process but it actually comes next to last on the de-cluttering how-to list.  You need to know how much stuff you have to house and where it needs to be stored before you should buy any containers.  Otherwise the containers themselves will end up as clutter.  And many times you will find that you have perfectly good containers already in your home.

Too Much Stuff!

Yesterday I held an informal poll on my Facebook page asking my followers to click "like" if they thought they had too much stuff.  It was one of the most liked posts on my page ever!

Clearly too many of us are living with clutter.  We have bigger homes than ever before and yet we have less space for our things.  Expensive cars are left parked in the laneway to make room to store inexpensive junk in the garage.  To say the self-storage industry is booming would be an understatement.

The United States alone now has over 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space.  That's more than 7 square feet for every man, woman and child.  There are 7 times more storage facilities than there are Starbucks in the country.  "Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators", says Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions.  "Because once they're in, nobody likes to spend all day moving stuff out of storage.  As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they leave that stuff in there forever."

And it's not just the stuff that's hidden away in storage facilities.  Many people could be considered tidy packrats.  Mr. P's grandparents emigrated from Holland in the late 1940's.  They were in Holland during the war and learned to "waste not, want not".  Every little thing was kept "just in case" and yet, Oma kept an immaculate home.  It wasn't until we went through the closets, basement, garage and various out-buildings that we became aware of just how much stuff was saved.  Their clutter was hidden away where no one could see it.

Even if your stuff is out in the open or hidden away, you can get rid of it.  It's not going to be easy and it's not going to happen overnight but it will be so worth it!  It has been scientifically proven that people living in clutter and disarray also have increased stress.  My next few blog posts will geared to showing you how you can get rid of the clutter for good.  Our homes should be a place of refuge from the outside world not yet another thing that causes you more stress.

"Cockroaches may or may not last through a nuclear winter, but that old crib will survive forever hidden behind your furnace." - Thane Burnett, writer for the Toronto Sun