Your Organizing Coach

Clutter comes from many sources; a primary one is what we call delayed decision making. That's when things pile up because you haven't made a decision to move them on to their next stop: being put away, thrown away, taken to the cleaners, returned to their owner, tossed in the Goodwill bag, shredded, mailed back or foisted off on someone else.

Clutter can also come from projects in progress. It's understandable to want to leave everything out until you finish whatever you're working on, but if you're working on more than one thing at once and you've got the kitchen table, the dining table, your desk and the living room coffee table covered with projects, there's no room to eat dinner or set down a tea cup.

To combat this problem you want to:

• Make it easy to put things away
• Get in the habit of putting things away
• Embrace the idea of completion

Make it easy to put things away by getting a box or special case (for jewelry making, for example) to keep your project supplies in. Use a container if the place you work is different from the place you store the supplies so you can easily carry them back there. Or set aside some space on a bookshelf or in a drawer in the room you work in to stash your project.

Get in the habit of putting things away by remembering and visualizing how you want the space to look when you're not working. Also, think of putting things away as setting them up for your next session. These techniques make tidying feel like a positive and beneficial activity, rather than an onerous task.

Completion means that even if your project is unfinished, you still put things away after each session of working on it. For each session there are three steps: get out your supplies, work on the project, put everything away. Don't stop after step two!

Ease the Guilt of Unwanted Heirlooms

Why is it that a museum quality lamp can elicit a ho hum reaction, but the avocado green one with a dented shade from the time your sister threw it at you is a priceless and treasured heirloom? Such is the power of family stuff.

If the notion of inheriting that lamp or the notion of having to get rid of it both inspire you with dread, read this article in the New York Times about how to handle heirlooms. Although the tone of the article is humorous, Ms. Wadler has some good ideas about this touchy subject. I particularly like #6:

"6. Accepting a piece too big for your apartment because one day you will have a country house is like buying pants three sizes too small because one day you will lose 20 pounds."

My grandparents were very practical people and they asked everyone to tell them what items they wanted to inherit. I couldn't do it at first because I hated to think of them dying and it seemed so cold to lay claim to things before they died. But eventually I got a kick out of knowing the kitchen clock would one day be mine. It still has the piece of masking tape on the back with my name written on it just so no one would forget it was mine. 

[Winner of Ugly Lamp contest from merfam's photostream]

Should I Save or Should It Go?

People who are collectors love to tell me that things they've held onto for years and years have actually come in handy, so it was worthwhile to keep it. There's often a note of triumph in their voices when they come to the story's punchline, "and I had one!" They assume that I'm against keeping things and they want to head off any suggestions I might have for downsizing.

Sometimes, the story is that they decided to get rid of a bunch of stuff that hadn't been used in decades and "the very next day" they needed one of those things. They reluctantly decide it's a big mistake to get rid of anything at all, although they would like to have less clutter. What to do?

I heard a story like the latter one recently and it occurred to me that the storyteller was asking the wrong questions to determine what to keep and what not to keep. He asked himself if he'd used the item in question in the past few years and the answer was no. So, out it went.

But if he had asked, "what will I do if I need this next week and I don't have it?" he would've gotten more helpful answers. Could he borrow one, rent one or buy a new one? Could he farm out the item on long term loan to a friend with the proviso that he could borrow it back as needed? Could he make do somehow with items he did keep? And how would those options feel? If none were acceptable, keeping the item would be the best answer.

The idea is to look into the future ("what will I do?") and not the past ("I haven't used this in years") to make your decision. The future is where you're going to use it (or not).

[White elephant courtesy of Lenny Montana's photostream]

Check Out the Clutter Diet

Getting organized can be challenging and time consuming. My aim with the blog is to help people with that task as much as I can without actually being there in person. Of course, I'd be happy if you wanted to hire me, but if you have a large project, hiring a professional can be pricey, to be honest.

So, I'm thrilled to recommend my colleague Lorie Marrero's Clutter Diet service. For less than you would pay me to work with you once, you can get a whole year of this service, which provides unlimited virtual access to their team of organizers, plus a lot of other great stuff. The Clutter Diet gives you the education, motivation and support you need to keep going with that organizing project until it's done. 

Am I worried about sending potential clients to this lower priced service? No, because I know that there are plenty of folks who really want to work with me in person and who will get the best results with me right there in their home or office.

And there are plenty of other folks who just want to read my blog and get their ideas and inspiration from that. We organizers realize that all our clients are unique, so we strive to provide as many ways to help them get organized as we can think of. I think Lorie's come up with a winner!

Diet lunch courtesy of Malia's photostream.

How to Organize Your Wallet

It may be small, but your wallet can be chock full of clutter. You don't want to be one of those people who holds up the line trying to find her preferred shopper card, do you? Or the guy with the unsightly rectangular growth on his backside (because we know it's not all money)? Of course not. 

So, empty your wallet and let's see what's in there.

• Coupons:  Are they still good?  Are they worthwhile?  If you're not in the habit of using coupons, they can be more trouble than they're worth.
• Frequent buyer cards:  These can be like coupons.  Only use ones from stores you patronize regularly AND where the clerk asks you for it (otherwise you may forget to present it).
• Membership cards:  Most establishments will allow you to give your phone number instead of presenting your card.  Much less wallet clutter.
• Receipts:  Why are you keeping them?  To balance checkbook?  Tax purpose?  Possible return?  Assign a pocket in your wallet for receipts and regularly take them out.
• Credit cards:  You really only need one, or two if you have a business.  You have to be very organized to take advantage of perks like frequent flyer miles on credit cards.  Make sure using these perks doesn't cause you to buy things you don't need.  And make sure you have time to manage and track your benefits.
• Scraps of paper:  Dedicate some space in your date book for little notes and ideas.  Reminders should go on a dated page.  Phone numbers into the address book, even if they're only temporary. 
• Currency:  Keep your bills in denomination order.  Not only is it easier to find the amount you need, but you will have a better idea of how much cash you have at any given time. 
• Stamps:  Can be handy, but only if you remember they're there.  Otherwise, you'll find them by accident and discover they're 41 centers

See if you can pare down to what you really need and use. The short list:
Driver's license or CA ID card
Health insurance card
Car insurance card
Credit card
Bank or ATM card
BART or other transit ticket
Money!

The Costanza Wallet (George, from Seinfeld) wallet courtesy of shareski's Flickr stream

How to Weed Out Your Clothes Closet

It can be hard to know where to start when you want to pare down your clothes. If you're going to spend some time and go through everything, take it all out and pile it on the bed. That way you have to make a commitment to keeping something by putting it back in the closet. When you flip through the garments on their hangers, it's too easy just to keep everything.

 If you want to do a quicker purge, try my friend Ellen's technique, "Always, Sometimes, Never." Start at one end of the hanging rack and ask your self whether you wear each garment always, sometimes or never.

1. "Always" is for clothing you wear all the time. It also makes you look and feel good. (If you're wearing something a lot that doesn't make you look and feel good, we have to talk...)
2. "Sometimes" is for garments you don't wear that often, but they have a specific function, such as a velvet top you would wear to a fancy dinner or a pantsuit for special business meetings.
3. "Never" is for anything that you never wear because:

• Even though you paid a lot for it, you don't like it
• It doesn't fit
• It doesn't make you look great
• Even though it was a gift, you just don't like it
• It doesn't make you feel great
• It's damaged and not worth fixing
• It seemed like a good idea at the time, but, honestly, you don't like it

Keep the Always and Sometimes items (the Sometimes items might be better off at the back of the closet where they're out of the way). Get rid of the Never items. If it's just that you don't like them, they may have resale value. If not, cut to the chase and donate them to the thrift store.

The quicker you get them out of your life, the better. Why? Because now you have room, physically and psychically, to get some new clothes that you love and make you look and feel fantastic!

Have you purged your closet recently? How did it go?

Is Being Neat and Organized Overrated? Costco Wants to Know.

Costco, a place that sells an enormous number of items you can spend time keeping organized (or not), is running a survey in their online magazine titled: "Is being neat and organized overrated?"

Now, it always drives organizers crazy to hear those two adjectives used together as if they mean the same thing. They don't. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp? My dad was one of those people who have tippy-looking stacks of paper all over the room. But he knew what was in the stacks. He was a writer and was inspired by having as much material as possible to look through when he was working.

If he had been a piler who was also disorganized, he might have discovered some really interesting things to write about in those piles, but he also would have missed his deadline. Being an organized piler meant that he could meet deadlines and have fun reading obscure articles about incunabula that could inspire future writing.

The Costco article quotes David Freedman, author of A Perfect Mess, who proposes that you have to be messy to be creative. He cites the discovery of penicillin in a messy, disorganized lab where mold had grown on some sample dishes.

That's nice, but the ancient Greeks, among others,  had already noticed that mold could inhibit bacterial growth, and there's been a steady, scientific study of the subject since then. At least two scientists discovered penicillin before Fleming did, in the traditional way of being curious about phenomena they noticed in the world around them. They did not have to wait until an accident occurred in their labs. (Mold picture courtesy of the PBS website.)

It's probably a safe bet that once Fleming made his accidental discovery, he applied the scientific method to it. That involves a lot of experimentation and analysis that has to be kept and presented in an organized fashion. It's hard to get published in a scientific journal if you've misplaced your lab results.

Bottom line: being organized is about finding stuff when you need to, but that doesn't mean it's labeled and shrink-wrapped and lined up on a shelf. It means you know where it is and can get to it without breaking your neck falling on that old guitar.

So, what's your vote?

Desktop Clutter Made Artistic

The upside to having waaaay too many folders on your Mac desktop is that you can win a contest for most artistic creation using said folders. Last month, Gizmodo sponsored such a contest. Here's my favorite, the 2nd place winner, with a lovely rendition of a MacBook Air by Daniel Lagin:

Computer Clutter

I need to upgrade my computer and I've made the momentous decision to switch to a Mac Book Pro from my old PC. I'll be switching back, actually, since I bought one of those tiny Macintoshes many, many years ago (it was my first computer).

I had heard that someone at the Apple store would move my files to the new computer for me, but it turns out I have to put said files in a folder on the desktop first. That's when it dawned on me that it's up to me and no one else to figure out what needs to be transferred to the new computer.

That means looking through about a billion folders and figuring out what all that stuff even is before I can decide whether to keep it or not. As long as the memory holds out, it's easy to keep filling up your computer with junk you use only once, or never, and then forget about. It doesn't help that the files are called XRY22T7 or something equally obscure.

The insidious problem with computer clutter is that tools like Google Desktop search allow me to find anything I need very quickly. That means I don't have much motivation to keep the machine uncluttered.

In a way I'm lucky, as my Apple store personal shopper pointed out to me. If I were upgrading to a new Mac, it would be so easy and tempting just to dump everything into the new machine. Migrating from a PC is not that easy, so I can be more disciplined.

It'll be like moving to a new home, all clean and shiny because I haven't brought over anything more than the items I really need and love. Of course, soon enough I'll start cluttering up the MacBook too... (Mac pic from ShadyL via Flickr).

Criteria for Decluttering

It's simple. Whenever you're torn about getting rid of something or keeping it, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Do I need it?
2. Do I love it?

If the answer is yes to either one, you keep it.