Hasta La Ideas

Reader J.C. submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I’m exploring new streams of income and one of my goals is to take my absolute LOVE of uncluttering and organization and parlay it into a side business.

I’m wondering if any of you are members of the National Association of Professional Organizers or any other groups. Do you recommend that? What “first steps” would you advise for someone who wants to get started in this business?

First off, I think professional organizing is an amazing career path. It is a great option for people who like puzzles, a new adventure every day, working with people, teaching, and, obviously, uncluttering and organizing. A good sense of humor, being a self-starter, and an intense commitment to follow-through are additional qualities that usually bode well. I truly love what I do, and I have deep respect for so many of my peers.

I’ve been a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers off and on for a number of years. I think it is a wonderful association and I have personally garnered a great deal from my membership. I have also benefitted from my membership in my local NAPO chapter. I’ve never been a member of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, but they are also a well-respected group and I trust their work.

I recommend saving up and joining NAPO and your local chapter. Take advantage of all of the training opportunities these groups offer, including conferences and workshops. Also, attend local NAPO chapter meetings and sign up for their mentoring program, if they have one. Get to know the Golden Circle and Certified Professional Organizers in the group and ask to be considered to help out with their larger projects. Even though you may be doing mostly physical labor on these assignments, you can have a front seat to see how experienced professional organizers work with clients and navigate the organizer-client relationship. Plus, you’ll get paid, which is always nice.

Good luck on your new adventure, and enjoy this next chapter in your life. Be sure to check out the comments for insights from more professional organizers and readers who have hired them. Thank you, J.C., for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

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This week is a bittersweet one for me. After six years in our amazing home, we are moving. I’m sad to say farewell to this place — we love our neighbors, we love the house, and this is my son’s first home. Unfortunately, the house isn’t configured for our needs. My son really needs his own bedroom (he’s been in a crib in our bedroom for the past 18 months), and we also want a dedicated office space since both my husband and I typically work from home.

We found a new place, which surprisingly has fewer square feet than our current house but has the exact room arrangements we need. Honestly, the new house is incredible and it’s going to greatly improve our quality of life, but packing up everything we own, moving across town, and selling our current home is very stressful in the short term.

I’ve moved fourteen times in my life, and I’ve learned a great deal from these experiences. Additionally, I’m learning even more on this fifteenth move. Over the next couple weeks as we personally go through the moving process, I’ll write posts sharing tips and tricks for each stage. Please feel welcome to jump into the comments and share advice you’ve garnered from the moves in your life. My hope is for these posts to become guides for anyone going through the moving process who wants the move to be as simple and organized as possible.

Packing

• Wear shoes with good arch support and full-foot coverage. If weather permits, also wear long sleeves, jeans, and socks to help avoid injuries.
• Gather supplies: boxes (small, medium, and large), packing tape, roll of bubble wrap for fragile pieces, permanent black markers, band-aids, ice packs, pain reliever, trash bags, a wardrobe box for each person in the house, a good sense of humor, and anything else you’ll need.
• When acquiring boxes, make a stop at your local liquor or wine store to grab a few boxes with divided inserts. These boxes are perfect for safely transporting alcohol and other kitchen liquids like vinegar and olive oil. (If moving across state lines, check regulations for transporting alcohol and make certain to abide by these laws.)
• Make a hotel reservation for the night you arrive at your new place. Your goal will be to get the best night’s sleep possible so you can start refreshed for your first day of unpacking. You’ll also want a shower after moving stuff all day, and it’s best to not have to worry about making sure these things can easily happen.
• Clear floorspace in your home in four different locations and mark each area: Packed Boxes to Move, Charity Donations, Giveaway/Return, and Sell. These areas are where you will put these items until you’re finished packing your things. You will likely need at least a 10′ X 10′ area to hold the Packed Boxes to Move. Also, the area holding items you intend to sell should be easily accessible from the front door or in your garage so that potential buyers can see the product without having to climb over boxes and mess in your home.
• If you have children under the age of five, see if a grandparent, friend, or babysitter can keep your child occupied while you work.
• Your first act of packing should be a suitcase with two weeks of clothing and supplies. Be sure to include your toothbrush and toothpaste, a couple bath towels, soap, shampoo, hair dryer and anything else that is part of your daily hygiene routine.
• Your second act of packing should be an essentials kit — but don’t tape it up! These will be the last items you take out of your current house and the first items you unpack in your new place. These will be things like cleaning supplies, two or more rolls of toilet paper, a frying pan, a few paper plates and plastic utensils, sheets for all the beds, and anything else you will need the first couple days in your new place.
• Make large print signs for your new home with room names: Living Room, Family Room, Master Bedroom, Sally’s Room, Sally’s Bathroom, etc. These signs will make it easier on you and anyone helping you move boxes into your new place. Bring a roll of painter’s tape with you in your essentials kit and plan to hang the signs immediately upon getting access to your new place.
• As you move throughout your home packing boxes, I recommend starting with the heaviest items that will form the base of your Packed Boxes to Move area. Books are almost always a good item for this. Use small boxes, and group similar types together (cookbooks with cookbooks, children’s books with children’s books).
• Label the top and all four sides of a box with a short explanation of what is in the box (Toys) and what room the box should be placed in at the new house (Bobby’s Room). You want to label the top and sides so that the box can be facing in any direction and you can still know what is inside it and where to take it.
• Try your best not to mix different types of things in boxes (your shoes shouldn’t be with your coffee mugs). If this is unavoidable, at the very least do not mix items that belong in different rooms. Only pack kitchen things with other kitchen things, bathroom things with other bathroom things, etc.
• Sort and clean everything before packing it. If you never plan to use eight vases, put some of the vases in the Donate to Charity pile. The key is to not pack to move ANYTHING you don’t want in your new home. Clear the clutter now so you don’t have to spend time and energy moving it.
• Only use trash bags for trash. This will keep you from accidentally throwing something valuable away. If you want to use trash bags for transporting charity items, use differently colored bags (black for trash, white for charity) and write DONATION in big letters on the bag. Be sure to let the ink dry before using the bag.
• Set packing goals the same way you set other goals in your life. Be as specific as possible: Pack the living room on Monday, the garage on Tuesday, or whatever systematic method works best for you.
• Take breaks at least once an hour for five or ten minutes. Your sanity depends on it.

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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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No one likes to think about his or her death. However, not thinking about it doesn’t mean it won’t one day happen. Not thinking about it also can put an undue burden on those you leave behind. I’ve recently witnessed firsthand the stress and anxiety thrust upon grieving friends and family members when no instructions or a Will exist.

One of the nicest things you can do for those you love is to have plans in place in case of your death.

If you’ve never taken the time to think about your death, please consider the following actions.

Your job:

• Think about all of your job responsibilities and determine what you could do to help your boss and co-workers fulfill these responsibilities if you were to suddenly and unexpectedly leave your job. Then, do the things you know could help them. This might include creating a list of all you do, regular deadlines, important contact information, and names of vital files and passwords. Write a memo, put it in an “in case of” envelope, and give it to human resources to be placed in your personnel file. Be sure to tell your boss about the letter, and let her know you’re not planning on anything happening, you’re just being organized. Suggest your co-workers do the same, and review your document every six months to make sure it’s current.
• If you own your business, meet with a lawyer and have a document drawn up that explicitly says what will happen to your company if you are no longer capable of running it. Identify if the company will be dissolved, sold, or passed on to heirs, as well as how debts and profits will be handled.

Your personal life:

• Meet with a lawyer and have a Last Will and Testament created.
• Write a letter detailing exactly what you want done with your body after you death, how you envision your funeral, and any other relevant information. Be specific about any religious traditions you might have, anything you want included in your obituary, and how you will cover the costs of all your wishes. Give a copy of the letter to the executor of your Will and another copy to your lawyer.
• Review your life insurance policy and make sure it will cover all of your funeral expenses, and any additional insurance you might wish to carry. If you don’t have a life insurance policy, get one.
• If you wish to be buried, buy a burial plot.
• Write a letter detailing what you want done with your personal possessions after your death. If you want a niece to have your engagement ring, put it in this letter. Give a copy of the letter to your lawyer.
• Similar to what was mentioned earlier in the Your Job section, think about all of your responsibilities in your home and personal life. Create a list of all you do, bills and accounts, names of vital files, passwords, contact information for your children’s school, etc. Put this information in an envelope, and put it in a home safe that is secured to the floor. Give a copy of the key and/or code to the executor of your Will to access only in an emergency.
• Review these documents once a year (or more, if necessary), to ensure they match your current wishes and responsibilities.

Have you taken these steps? Have you planned even more than this? If we have forgotten something on this list, please add it to the comments.

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Sorting through your items is an essential stage in the uncluttering process. It is also a stage where many people have difficulties and consider bailing on the entire process. It can be hard to look at your things and know if you should keep or get rid of them. What if you might need it one day? What if you lose weight? What if, what if, what if.

When sorting — even if you aren’t having much difficulty — keep the following three things in mind to help you speed through the process:

1. Don’t touch it. Avoid touching items you anticipate are going to be difficult for you to sort. Instead, ask a friend, family member, or professional organizer to hold these objects up for you. When we touch objects, we form stronger emotional connections with these objects. You’re more likely to be reasonable and make rational decisions about objects if you don’t touch them.
2. Post your goal. Draw a picture, write it down, or find an old photograph of the space when it was uncluttered and organized and post it where you can see it while you work. You can’t talk yourself into keeping objects you don’t need when you have a constant reminder of your goal staring you in the face.
3. Be happy. Play upbeat music, listen to an audiobook with a positive message, have a friend with a good attitude keep you company, or do whatever you need to do to stay happy during the process. When you’re in a good mood, your stress levels decrease and you’re more creative, able to come up with alternatives, and be more hopeful about the future. Happiness is a terrific friend during the uncluttering process.

Good luck, and happy sorting.

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