Hasta La Ideas

No one is perfect, and eventually your organizing system will fall apart. How you respond when this happens, however, will determine how much anxiety, stress, and clutter paralysis you will feel.

Keep Things in Perspective:

• Failure only happens if you never recover. If your system falls to pieces but you eventually get things back in order, you simply learned a lesson. You only fail when you give up entirely and abandon all uncluttering and organizing efforts for the rest of your life. You’re not failing; you’re learning.
• Being organized takes practice. You wouldn’t play a musical instrument or a sport like a professional if you hadn’t put in hundreds of thousands of hours practicing, so don’t expect professional organizing results without years of practice.
• Who cares?! Unless your health or welfare are at risk, being disorganized is not the worst thing in the world. Watch 30 minutes of the national news to help put things in perspective.
• Embrace the mess. Since you will eventually get off your bum and get back to an organized existence, take a day (or seven) and enjoy the chaos. At least temporarily, let go of the stress.

Find Motivation:

• Determine why you want to be organized. As I’ve written in the past, if you don’t know why you want to be organized and clutter free, you’re going to struggle with every attempt you make to be an unclutterer.
• Ask for help. Call a friend and ask him/her to help you get your project started again. If you don’t want your friends to see your place a mess, call in a professional organizer.
• Plan a party. Nothing gets me moving faster than knowing there will be people coming into my house. Plus, the reward is that when your space is orderly, you get to celebrate with a party!
• Acknowledge that you’re procrastinating. I don’t know why this works, but simply admitting to yourself that you’re avoiding a task can help get you motivated to change. Check out “Eight strategies to stop procrastinating” for tips on what to do next.
• Plan your project. As you would a project at work, plan your entire uncluttering and organizing project to help you get back on track. Pull out your calendar, determine the scope of your project, create action items, and block off time each day to reach your goal. Being specific (and realistic) about what you will want to accomplish helps to alleviate the overwhelming Cloud of Doom and realize you can get things back to normal.

Get Started:

• No excuses. Follow your project plan and just do it. There isn’t an easy way. You will have to do the work. However, the end result is definitely worth it.

Maintain:

• Create household routines. In my home, we have “Doland Duties.” If you don’t have a chart of daily routines and responsibilities, now is the time to establish one or evaluate your old one.
• Use a meal plan. The easiest way to eat healthy and keep from stressing out about what is for dinner is to create a weekly meal plan.
• Declutter. The less you own, the less you have to clean, organize, store, and maintain.
• Enjoy the calm. Take some time to reflect on how different you feel when things are uncluttered and organized instead of chaotic and disorganized. Remembering this feeling, and enjoying the remarkable life you desire, are great motivators to keeping you on course in the future.

A lovely woman named Meri who works for California Closets e-mailed me last week to see if I would be interested in talking to Peter Walsh about garage organizing. Her offer came literally minutes before I was to interview him about office organizing. I told Meri that Peter is probably getting sick of us here at Unclutterer, and maybe she could just pass along some of his tips by e-mail.

She happily obliged, and a day later the following advice arrived in my inbox. If you’re in need of turning your garage back into a garage, these tips can serve as your instructional guide to a clean and organized space –

1. Remove: If you want to really organize from the ground up, take everything out and take a good look at the space you have.
2. Measure your car: When everything is out of your garage, pull in your cars and mark the floor where your car ends on all sides. You now know how much room you have if you want your car to fit.
3. Throw Out: Get rid of the old and damaged. Decide what items are no longer useful, damaged, or have missing pieces, and dispose of them.
4. Recycle: Reduce the clutter and be eco-friendly. Old newspapers, magazines, glass, aluminum, old oil or paint can be recycled.
5. Donate: Time to get rid of the things that won’t ever fit or you won’t ever use again. If the items are still in good shape, donate them to a worthy cause.
6. Group Items By Category so they are easy to find: When returning items to your garage, group like items together, such as sports and recreational equipment, garbage and recycling, lawn and garden, hardware, home maintenance, and tools.

I really liked the second tip to outline the car while the garage is empty. Simple, practical, and a fantastic idea. Once again, thanks to Peter Walsh for his terrific advice.

1. Oversleeping. Waking up just 10 minutes late has the ability to throw your entire day off schedule. Use a timer for a week and determine how long it actually takes you to get ready in the morning, commute to your office, and start working on valuable action items. Are you waking up early enough to get everything done?
2. Getting involved in office gossip and/or office politics. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again — these negative behaviors are pure clutter.
3. Tossing junk mail somewhere other than the trash or into a shredder. Don’t let junk mail accumulate on your dining table, desk, or anywhere else it doesn’t belong. Immediately process your mail the first time you touch it.
4. Losing your charge. How many times have you been on a cell phone call when your phone has died? How many times have you needed a flashlight during a blackout, only to find one that is out of batteries? Create a charging station for all of your portable electronic devices that is in a place you will use it. When doing spring and fall cleaning chores, include battery tests for all items you might need in an emergency. (Go ahead and check the charge on your fire extinguisher, too.)
5. Throwing your dirty clothes on the floor. Get ready for bed before you are tired so you have enough energy to put your clothes in the hamper or put them up on a hanger. If you throw your clothes on the floor, you’re just creating more work for yourself in the future and a possible hazard in case you need to get up in the middle of the night.

What stumbling blocks have you found that are guaranteed to clutter up your day? Add to the comments any problems you’ve encountered and the solutions you’ve discovered.

I once worked with a woman who has kept every single piece of clothing her children wore from birth until they went off to college — including underwear, torn jeans, stained t-shirts, and socks with failed elastic. The clothing is stored in a room in her basement and it lines the walls on custom designed clothing rods. The items are organized by child and then by size. The room looks like a boutique children’s clothing store, except, of course, the clothes are not for sale.

Whenever I read an article about downsizing, my mind always returns to this woman. I wonder what will happen to the early-1980’s infant sailor suits, the haphazardly created Halloween costumes, and the Bedazzled worn-out Keds when my former co-worker leaves her family home for an apartment in a retirement community. Will she take any of her collection with her? Or, will she try to give it away to her children, a new parent, or a charity?

We all have collections like this — albeit probably smaller — that have meaning to us and possibly no one else. Maybe you’ve kept every fortune cookie fortune that has crossed your path or never parted with your favorite childhood action figures? Whatever it is, you care about it and have made space for it in your home. But, when faced with the possibility of moving to a smaller place, you might decide to let it go.

Unfortunately, the reality is that not everyone gets to decide what makes it into a new place when they downsize. Instead of making the decision for yourself, you might be the person making this decision for someone else, such as an injured or ailing parent. If this is the case, you have to make choices about the things other people value — and this can be extremely difficult.

“Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now.” — Fred Pearce in the article “The shock of the old: Welcome to the elderly age” in the April issue of New Scientist.

If you are preparing to downsize (either yourself or for a family member), keep the following thing in mind:

• Emotions are strong during this time, even when the move is desired. Take the time to carefully sort through everything. Whomever is downsizing needs to be heavily involved in the process and have time to share stories about the items with others.
• Snap digital photographs of anything you plan to throw out, donate to charity, give away, or recycle that has an emotional connection for you or your loved one. This might be the one time you want to print the photographs and stick them in an album for easy viewing (especially if an older person who doesn’t have a computer will want to look at the pictures).
• Consider hiring a senior move manager to help with the process. Having a third party involved who isn’t emotionally tied to the situation can help significantly.
• Measure the new place and know exactly how much stuff can be moved into it. You may need to go through the “taking with me” pile multiple times to ensure that the right amount of stuff will be transported.
• If family and friends are interested in some of the personal items in the current home, only let the person or persons who are downsizing decide what pieces go to whom. Try your best not to let the person moving spaces be bullied into decisions. When financially valuable items are involved, you can contact an appraiser to provide information so the best decisions are made for the person downsizing.

Downsizing can be a wonderful experience, especially if emotions are respected throughout the entire process. It can be liberating to rid yourself of the responsibilities of caring for so many possessions — even the objects you spent years collecting and treasuring. Take the time and say farewell appropriately to your family home.

If you don’t have a dedicated room for a home gym, you probably try to disguise your unattractive tread mill or weight bench as best as possible. Or, like me, you join a local gym so you don’t have to hide and store gym equipment in your home.

The Italian company Angelo Dall’Aglio has designed the XFit home gym — complete with 19″ LCD television, DVD player, tread mill, weight bench, and weights — that fits inside a custom wardrobe so hiding and storing unsightly gym equipment is simple. I think this piece is perfect for fitness enthusiasts who live in small spaces:

According to the website SocialWorkout.com, the XFit is currently retailing for 4,649 Euros (about $6,264). So, you would need to pay a pretty penny to have one in your home. However, I take this as a good sign that over the next couple years we might see some more reasonably priced competitors.

I love the idea of a place for everything, especially unattractive home gym equipment! Check out the XFit marketing video to learn about the construction of this unit.