A
Crash course in De-cluttering your life
You
are smart. You are talented.
You have big dreams and lots of energy…
... But if you’re not organized, every step is a
struggle
- and you’re unlikely to accomplish much. You have to work
twice as hard as other people simply because you never
learned the
basic principles of organization.
Sound familiar? Well, you’re
not alone. According to the American Demographic Society,
Americans
waste more than 9 million hours each day looking for lost
and misplaced
articles.
Here’s a crash course in
de-cluttering
your life.
1. Make the time to organize
your desk,
your workplace,
your house and home office.
2. De-Clutter any clutter-magnets: desktops,
shelves,
drawers, closets and cabinets.
3. Decide what you can do without...and where to
put
the things you really need.
4. Use your calendar to budget your days better and
create more quality time for the things that really matter.
5. Learn which products help you stay organized -
and
which ones just get in your way.
6. Decide the fate of every incoming piece of
paper.
7. Aim mail and other documents to their final
destination.
8. Put time-sensitive documents, like invitations,
where you will be sure not to forget about them.
9. Develop files that are easy to keep current and
to use.
10. When you set up your home office, take traffic
patterns
into consideration.
11. Pre-plan your trip to the office supply store.
Be sure
your
organizing products help you, not just get in your way.
12. Get things you seldom use out of your way, but
still keep them within easy reach.
13. Use a rule of thumb to decide what stays, and
what goes.
14. Have a mini-agenda. Use it to shorten business
calls
by a few minutes each. It can add up to hours per week.
15. Make reasonable estimates of the time you’ll
need
for any task.
16. Consider using post-it‘s for your things to do
list.
17. Consider what clutter is costing you, and
eliminate things you don’t need.
18. Store things at or near the point where they
are to be
used.
19. Establish a place for everything, and put
everything
in its
place.
20. Use the last 5 minutes of your workday to
straighten
up. This will allow it to look nice when you walk back in the next day. | Article reprinted from: The Miami Herald / January 1, 2006
BY JODI MAILANDER FARRELL
It's
clutter-busting time
Organizing our homes
for 2006 is a primary goal for a nation of hoarders and
gatherers
Look
around you. Clutter,
clutter everywhere. We are a nation consumed with the joy
of acquiring
stuff -- and the agony of getting rid of it.
Tossing out junk is now the
focus of
at least five home improvement TV shows -- including Clean
Sweep
(TLC), Clean House (Style Network) and Mission:
Organization (HGTV)
-- and dozens of self-help books. There are online message
boards,
magazines, blogs, 12-step programs, support groups,
professional
organizers and container stores to help us get our lives
in order.
''It's all about postponed
decisions,''
says Marsha Sims, owner of Sort-It-Out professional
organizing service,
which is based in Miami Lakes, but organizes homes from
the Keys
to Vero Beach. ``Everybody is swamped all the time and
they have
to make a decision: Do I spend time with the kids or make
dinner
or sort mail? If your priority is not sorting mail, it's
on the
back burner, which can turn into weeks or months.
'We're all so overwhelmed. Barbara Hemphill [a
nationally
known organizing expert] was the one who first pinned it
down to
delayed decision making. We put something down and think,
`I'll
put it here for now.' '' Then the time to put it away
never comes.
Sims says the majority of her
clients
are professional women, small business owners,
entrepreneurs and
successful career types -- in other words, people who
seemingly
have it all together. ''You get to a point where you can't
do it
all and there are some things you don't want to do,'' Sims
says.
``That's my real clientele -- people who could do it, but
really
don't want to.''
SOME TIPS
Some purging tips from people who are tops in the
clear-out business
• Have a strategy. Be
efficient
and grab things in categories. Snatch up everything that
goes in
the bathroom, for instance -- brush, lotion, hair spray,
bobby pins
-- and make one trip to put them in their place. ''One of
the things
people do wrong is that they'll pick up eight items and
then walk
around the house to drop them off,'' Sims says. ``They're
in perpetual
motion and they never finish the job.''
• Start small. Don't try to
organize
your home in a day. Focus at first on a closet or room
that frustrates
(or embarrasses) you most.
• Work on surfaces first. A
place
naturally looks more organized when things aren't piled on
counters,
desks, dressers and floors. Mentally divide the surface in
half
or quarters and clean it off little by little. Once it's
cleaned
off, nothing can go back on it. Dust it.
• Sort it out. Put things in
categories,
such as things you love or use, things you could give away
or sell
and things that can be trashed.
• Look for hidden spaces. Try
to find new storage spaces. It could be your grandmother's
chest
or under a bed. Williams, from the Container Store says
over-the-door
hanging organizers are popular for storing everything from
shoes
to pantry items. Divide large shelves into smaller spaces
so things
can easily be seen.
• Pare down. If you have more
than one of an item, be honest. How many do you really
need? If
you have an exorbitant number of pens or rubber bands, ask
yourself
how many are enough. Keep what you can use.
• Make it a daily task. Spend
15 minutes a day on decluttering (15 minutes a day adds up
to seven
hours a month). Write it in your daily planner and honor
the appointment
as you would any other, advises Donna Smallin, author of
Organizing
Plain & Simple.
• Multitask. Use TV time to sort out
a drawer. During commercials, dump the drawer and
sort the
contents into four categories: throw away, give away or
sell, put
somewhere else and put back in the drawer. When you're
finished,
put back what goes in that drawer and get another drawer.
At the
end of the evening, throw away the trash, put give-away
items and
things to sell in a box for distribution and put away what
belongs
elsewhere.
Turn kids into organizers.
Arrange
toys at kid level so children can put their own things
away easily. |
|
|
M
- Mark your calendar for a time to finally clean off your
desk.
Be realistic about how long it will take.
A - Always have supplies on
hand before
you begin.
R - Re-arrange equipment,
supplies
and files in your work space according to their frequency
of use.
S - Stack all loose papers in
one neat
pile to create the illusion of order.
H - Have a designated
"in-box"
in a convenient location. Encourage others to use it.
A - Allow time in your daily
planner
for meeting preparation and travel time between
appointments.
*
S - Sort all papers and
folders into
"to-do" "to read" "to file" "to
sort"
I - Identify the supplies you
use most
often; keep close by only what you use regularly.
M - Make time to clean off
your desk
daily.
S - Set up a simple desktop
area for
mail to be sorted each day. |
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