Hasta La Ideas

Chores are tasks you don’t want to do. If you wanted to do them, you wouldn’t call them chores. Rather, you would refer to them as opportunities or entertainment or fun.

Even though you don’t want to do chores, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them to help your life run more smoothly. If you’re someone who lets dirty laundry and dishes pile up, avoids mowing the yard until the neighbors complain, or hasn’t cleaned out your car since 2005, maybe it’s time to learn why and overcome these obstacles:

1. Temptation. When a comfortable couch and favorite television show are calling your name, it can be hard to ignore these temptations. You want to participate in the short-term benefits of watching tv, instead of holding out for the long-term benefits of doing chores. Find a way to reduce or delay the immediate distraction (like getting a DVR and recording your favorite show), so you can focus on the long-term benefits first and the short-term benefits when you’re done with your chores.
2. Associated stressor. You may not be putting off a chore because you don’t want to do it, but rather because you don’t want to do something tangentially related to the chore. For instance, if you know you haven’t recently balanced your checkbook, you might put off paying your bills. Consider scheduling a regular coffee date with your friend where the two of you meet, hang out for awhile, but then vow to balance your checkbooks before you can go home. Being accountable to someone else often helps you overcome this obstacle.
3. On the road. Working long hours can often mean you don’t have much time at home to take care of chores like laundry, dusting, and scrubbing your toilet. The upside is that you don’t have much time to mess up your home, but the downside is that some chores still need to be completed (like laundry). If this sounds like you, outsourcing some of these chores might work best for you. Take advantage of a fluff-n-fold that will do your laundry, start using a dry cleaner that picks up clothes instead of requiring drop offs, have a cleaning service come in twice a month to scrub your floors, countertops, and bathrooms, and hire a professional errand runner to do other odds and ends.
4. Inertia. Humans are creatures of habit. If you haven’t been great at doing your chores in the past, it’s unlikely you’re going to wake up one morning a changed man. Overcome this obstacle by creating a schedule of the things you need to do and when you need to do them. Then, try your best to stick to the schedule. When your system falls to pieces, start again the next day. Consider hiring a professional nagger (there really are such things) or asking a friend to help encourage you. Simply acknowledging that inertia has the upper hand often can be all you need to get moving.

Looking at this list, I see myself in a lot of these obstacles (especially inertia). What strategies do you use to overcome these four obstacles?

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Cabinets under sinks in kitchens and bathrooms are common places to find clutter. There are pipes, maybe a hose or two, and usually a lot of stuff that was stored there in hopes that it would just magically disappear. Additionally, having clutter in this space can quickly become disastrous if one of the pipes or hoses develops a leak or bursts. Then, not only do you have a clutter problem, but you also have a soggy clutter problem.

The first thing to do with these spaces is to clear everything out from this area. Inspect the cabinet and check for signs of leaks or pests. If your cabinet is leak and pest clear, give the cabinet a good cleaning. If you have a leak or pests, call a professional and have the problem resolved before it gets even more out of hand.

Once everything is out of the cabinet, sort through it and ask yourself a few questions:

• Is this item expired or damaged?
• Is this item a hazardous chemical?
• Is under the sink the best place to store this item?

If the item is expired or damaged, get rid of it or have it repaired immediately. If the item is a hazardous chemical (like a cleaning supply), move it somewhere where small children and visitors to your home cannot easily get their hands on it (a locked cabinet is best for these materials). Finally, if you don’t use the item in the room near the sink, storing the object under the sink isn’t a good idea.

After sorting through your items, I strongly recommend installing a storage system that will get items up off the bottom of the cabinet and take advantage of the vertical space.

Under our sink, we have roll-out storage shelves similar to this:

We have items in small, clear, plastic storage boxes with lids on the pull-out shelves in kits. This makes it easier to pull out all the supplies we need for different tasks at once (pony tail holders, sponges). Also, if a pipe bursts or leaks, the plastic box provides a second level of protection from the water. What is nice about roll-out shelves is you don’t have to get down on your hands and knees whenever you want to reach something at the back of the cabinet.

If the pipes under your sink will work with it, adjustable under-sink shelves might also work well for your space:

Again, as with the roll-out shelves, we suggest using small, clear, plastic storage boxes with lids for your supplies when you return them to the cabinet, as an extra level of protection for you things from pipe and hose leaks.

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In 2011, I’m trying out small, monthly resolutions instead of large, annual New Year’s resolutions. My public resolution for January was to be more organized in the kitchen, and create and use more nutritious meal plans for my family. If you read SimpliFried, then you know I even made one of my meal plans downloadable for anyone who wants it.

The small goal worked well for me, and I’ll try to continue it into February along with my new resolution for the second month. I think the first resolution was successful because it was:

• Scheduled. Every Monday I had “Meal Planning,” written on my calendar between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. The block of time on the calendar helped me to commit to it.
• Prepared. I had the Harvard Medical School’s guide to healthy eating Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy as my nutrition guide, a blank meal planning worksheet, a pen, a stack of cookbooks, and my favorite recipes from the internet with me every time I made the plan.
• Concrete. My goal to make and follow a weekly meal plan wasn’t lofty or ambiguous. What needed to happen was clear from the beginning and it was easy to break into action items.
• Achievable. I knew it was possible to achieve the resolution, I just had to take the time and invest the energy to make it happen. Additionally, with fresh food in the house, I knew if I didn’t stick to the plans I would be wasting my money.
• Accountable. By telling my family and the readers of this website that this was my resolution, I felt a greater sense of responsibility to carry out the goal. I’m not sure this was necessary since I wanted to do it, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

My plan had been to make February my Super Simple Month again this year, but it unfortunately looks like it’s not going to work. I’ll have to rearrange things on the calendar to try for it in March or April. One of my extended family members is very ill and I need to do some traveling this month related to her.

As an alternative, my public resolution for February will be to go through everything — absolutely everything — in my office. There will be uncluttering, organizing, rearranging, and a lot of paper processing. I spend the vast majority of my day in about 150 square feet of space, and this room needs my attention. To a visitor, my office doesn’t look cluttered, but I know what lies beneath. I know how stuffed my filing cabinet is and how many things are ready to go from this space.

Tonight, I’ll kick off my monthly resolution by splitting the room into zones and scheduling when I will address these zones on my calendar. One shelf a day, followed by one drawer a day, and so-on-and-so-forth until I’ve tackled the entire room.

Do you have resolutions? What are you doing to achieving them? Can you do something today to get one step closer to your goal?

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

Guilt and regret are powerful forms of clutter. They can be small, but continuously present at the back of your mind, weighing on you for years. Or, they can overwhelm all of your thoughts and be the ultimate distraction.

Obviously, if we could find a way to avoid guilt and regret completely, we would. This is an impossible feat, though, as we’re human. We aren’t perfect. We do things that disappoint others and ourselves, and we simply strive to keep these disappointments to a minimum.

How we handle the guilt and regret in our lives can play a large part in how much they clutter up our thoughts. Large regrets may never disappear completely. Even after apologies have been given and wrongs rectified the best they can, you still might carry some guilt with you the rest of your life. Conversely, and thankfully, most small regrets can be alleviated by taking actions to rectify the situation.

The following plan of action will not work in every situation, but in many situations it can help to assuage the guilt and regret that comes with unintentionally saying something hurtful or acting in a hurtful way:

• Stop being defensive. When we have done something wrong, it can be easy to turn to the defense. Being defensive, however, isn’t helpful when we’ve actually done something wrong. Fight this reaction, and try your best not to make the regret worse.
• Acknowledge your mistake. As quickly after you recognize you’ve done something to disappoint others or yourself, acknowledge this mistake.
• If appropriate, apologize. Not all guilt-inducing situations call for an apology, but many do. If your situation would be improved with a heartfelt apology, step up and give one. Even if the apology should have come years ago, an apology is almost always welcome. Don’t apologize, though, if you’re not sincere. An insincere apology will only exacerbate a problem.
• If appropriate, provide restitution. Similar to an apology, not all guilt-inducing situations require restitution. However, if your situation would be improved through an act of righting the wrong, do it. If you borrowed a friend’s car and got in a fender bender, paying for the repairs and a rental car while her car is in the shop are good places to start to provide restitution.
• Do what you need to do. Not all guilt and regret comes from wronging someone else. If you are carrying guilt because you have failed to act in some way or procrastinated on something that is important to you, now is the time to act. Schedule time to do the thing you need to do. Stop making excuses and take care of what needs to get done.

Stop guilt and regret from cluttering up your mental space: say the thing you need to say, and do the thing you need to do.

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With my foot still in a cast, I’m obviously not running my typical 15 miles a week. Since I can’t take to the streets, I have been doing a lot of reading about running instead. I’ll admit, it’s a bit frustrating to read about something I can’t do, but I’ve learned a great deal and will use this knowledge when I start running again.

During my readings about running, I came across an article in the February 2011 issue of Runner’s World magazine that has potential application for unclutterers. The article “The Magic of Mantras” explores using positive self-talk to help push you through the difficult parts of a race, and could easily work for helping you continue through the onerous parts of uncluttering.

So what makes a good mantra? One that’s short, positive, instructive, and full of action words. Walker suggests preparing multiple mantras before a race tailored to various challenges. And don’t limit yourself to “real” words. A made-up word works for Tara Anderson, a 34-year-old runner in Boulder who recites, Lighter, softer, faster, relaxer. “I repeat it with each footstrike, and if I’m having a problem, I’ll repeat the relevant part until I’m in the flow,” she says. Her phrase helped her set a three-minute P[ersonal] R[ecord] in a 10-K in 2009.

Here are a few mantras I think could work for someone embarking on an uncluttering and/or organizing project:

• One box at a time.
• Less stuff, less stress.
• Love it or lose it.
• A place for everything, and everything in its place.
• Five minutes or less? The answer is yes.

Do you have a mantra? Could using some positive self-talk help you to achieve your uncluttering and organizing goals? Tell us what you tell yourself in our comments section of this post.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.