By Ann Springer

I doubt there is a person on the planet who enjoys being disorganized. It’s frustrating to misplace an important document or to pay late fees for bills that get tucked away and forgotten or to lose or damage a valuable item because it wasn’t stored properly.

Here are some tips for getting organized.

1. See your organizational fantasy. Imagine what your ideal bedroom, home office, or garage would look like if it were perfectly organized. How would you feel? What would it look like? What would you see? What would you not see? Keep that mental image with you and jot down a few notes about your organizational fantasy to give you a goal to shoot for when you’re down to the nitty gritty and you need motivation.
2. Pick a room, any room. Instead of overwhelming yourself with room after room of clutter, pick one room that needs the most attention and start there.
3. Set aside time to sort. You may not have an entire day to devote to organizing a room, but you likely can skip your evening sitcom and allocate 30 minutes to organizing one drawer, sorting through one stack of papers, or sifting through a mystery box in the garage. You’d be surprised how much you can do in a short amount of time.
4. Sort items into five piles, boxes, or bags by action needed: 1) throw it away, 2) give it away 3) fix it, 4) goes into another room, 5) stays in the room.
5. Ask yourself questions to evaluate the items as you sort. Is it something I’ve used in the last 12 months? Do I really need it? Do I love it? Can I live without it? Is this item in my mental picture of my fantasy room? If you answer “no” to one or more of these questions you should seriously consider pitching the item.
6. Getting organized is only worth the effort if you can stay organized. A well-oiled machine works well because it’s continually maintained. Remember those lovely words that have stood the test of time, those words that your mother or grandmother repeated: “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

By Ann Springer

Everyone has it. No one can escape from it. But you can fight the beast that is clutter and win.

First, you have to understand the enemy in order to conquer it. As stated in the dictionary definition of the word, clutter is basically anything that stands in your way of being organized.

Second, you have to recognize clutter in its many forms. Like many great enemy fighters, clutter is a shape-shifter and can take on many faces to attempt becoming victorious. Clutter in one house may appear as piles of unread mail and unpaid bills mixed in with to-do lists and important documents. In another home clutter may be endless toys and clothing (most of which have been outgrown by the children they’re intended for). Clutter comes in many forms so you have to look at which areas of your home are not working well for you.

Next, you must diagnose why clutter has gotten the best of you so that you can dismantle its power source. Do you have clutter in your garage because the tools are too hard to access so you just keep piling up tools instead of replacing them to their intended home? Is your home office a mess because you don’t have an updated filing system to include new clients and projects?

Finally, you’ve must slay clutter through the heart to kill it once and for all. Once you’ve removed the unwanted, unneeded items you can easily find and enjoy the possessions you use most often and cherish the most. Remember to continually sort and sift through things before they pile up or you’ll be back to where you started – fighting the clutter bug!

Clutter Control: Common areas to Look for Clutter

Papers. Thanks to work, school, children, and mailboxes we all come into a lot of contact with paper in a day. Taming the paper monster is no easy feat, so you must have a plan for papers or they will overtake your life, even in a supposed paperless world we know strive to live in.

Kitchens. Grandma gives you her hand-me-down casserole dishes. Your mother buys you a new dinnerware set for Christmas. Your husband gives you another vase for your anniversary. Before you know it, your kitchen is overflowing with dishes than any one family can dirty in a year. The kitchen pantry is also an enticing place for clutter to accumulate . Chuck items with past-due expiration dates and put older items on your menu planning calendar to use up before they go bad.

Bathrooms. How many shampoo bottles can one person use at a time? Really? What about over-the-counter medicines and supplies? The cough medicine you bought last Christmas is probably no longer effective. It’s time to toss it and utilize that space in your medicine cabinet more effectively.

By Ann Springer

Most people really do want to get organized. In fact, getting organized makes the top of many people’s New Year’s Resolutions each January. If it’s a top priority for most people then why do so many people struggle to stay on top of it all? Why is clutter winning the fight? Why can’t a person get organized and stay organized? What is the real cost of disorganization in someone’s life – monetarily and emotionally? Why is it so hard to let go of things?

Holding onto possessions from our past can offer the feeling of comfort and stability, but the reality is that holding onto things from our past that are no longer practical is like carrying dead weight. Instead of helping us live in the present or look forward to the future, these items hold us down.

Keeping clutter from our past not only weighs us down emotionally, it can also cost us financially. Some people have so much stuff that they buy extra storage spaces or sheds to house their possessions. Disorganized people may end up buying multiple items because they don’t know how the first items ended up in their house. This leads to wasted time, money, and storage space that could be devoted to other things.

Staying organized is an uphill battle. Once you’ve gone through and purged your house of excess and clutter, you must continually purge in order to maintain order and aesthetic peace in your home. This is often the most neglected step to becoming organized. It’s also the step that requires only about 10 minutes per day to tackle.

Here are three excuses people give when they don’t want to get rid of the things that are cluttering up their life.

1. “I use all of the things I have.” Even when you’ve paired down the items you own there are always more things you can part with. Who really needs 12 coffee mugs? How often do you really use all of those mugs at the same time? You may think you use items, but in reality you haven’t touch them in years.

2. “The items I own have sentimental value. I could never get rid of them.” While some things – like a chest of drawers passed down from your grandmother – may have sentimental value, hang onto those that also have practical value. For example, keep a chest of drawers because it holds clothing. On the contrary, your teddy bear collection from your childhood is not practical enough to outweigh your sentiment. Pictures are a great way to memorialize favorite items long after they’ve worn out their practicality.

3. “I might use it someday.” While preparing for the future is important, it’s also important to realize that we need to have space to breathe in the present. If your house is cluttered with items that may be useful someday but haven’t used in the past six to 12 months then you should considering donating it to someone who can use it now. Retail stores consider items to be a loss if they sit on store shelves more than three months because they take up valuable shelf space.