Hasta La Ideas

Reader Mary submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

My parents both passed away before I was 30. My sister and I cleaned out our mom’s house and stored some items in Florida in separate units until we thought we could use them. After 10 years (!!), I finally realized I was never going to move that stuff out to California where I live, so I went back and cleaned out the unit and ended up keeping very little. One thing I did keep, however, is ALL of the family photos, and the envelopes of negatives. Some are in albums (all unmatched, of course) and some are still in their envelopes. Plus I have my own photos and negatives. I’m swimming in this stuff (about 2-3 large totes worth) and have no clue how best to organize, what to keep, what can I toss (the negatives??). Because it’s only me and my sister now, and these photos are all I have as “evidence” of the first three decades of my life.

My condolences about losing your parents. I realize it has been more than a decade, but I’m still sorry for your loss.

As far as the photographs are concerned, I’m of the belief that photographs aren’t clutter. Okay, so maybe that blurry one of the ground you accidentally took in the eighth grade doesn’t need to be in your collection, but the rest are of family, friends, places, and experiences you value. The majority of them likely bring you joy — and those are worth keeping.

However, I don’t think storing them in a large tote is the best way to show you value these images. Here’s how I would tackle the project:

• Pick a Saturday on your calendar when you can sort through all of the photographs. Keep the day free of all other obligations. Wear comfortable clothes, have your favorite snacks on hand, and play your favorite music. Going through all of the pictures is going to take time and a lot of mental energy. Give yourself the day and don’t rush.
• You’re going to want to sort the pictures into two groups: Trash and Keep. Obviously, you’ll throw out and/or shred the Trash pictures at the end of the sorting process. Get rid of any blurry ground shots or ones where the flash didn’t go off and you can’t identify anything in the photo. All black pictures from when you forgot to take off the lens cap can go into the Trash without a second thought. Duplicates, photographs you can’t stand, and anything else you don’t want to keep because it’s associated with a negative experience can go into the Trash pile, too.
• The Keep pile will be the photographs you plan to store and look at from time-to-time. As you decide to keep them, lay them out onto a cleared floor or dining table. I suggest making piles by decade (1970s, 1980s) or life stage (elementary school, middle school, high school). When you put the photographs in albums, you can organize in more detail by months and years.
• Once all of the images you have chosen to keep have been sorted, you may choose to bundle and box the photographs and have them professionally scanned. (ScanMyPhotos and ScanCafe are national companies that do this. However, many photo processing businesses offer this service, so check locally if you don’t wish to ship them across the U.S.) If you have the images scanned, I also recommend uploading a copy to a private Flickr or Picasa Web account. This way, you can easily share the images with your sister and friends, and you have a back up copy in case a fire, flood, or other disaster destroys the originals.
• When you have the original images back from being scanned, you can sort them in more detail and put them into albums. You may decide that since you have digital copies of the photographs that you don’t want to keep the originals. If this is the case, I suggest giving your sister a call and offering them to her. She might prefer the originals to the digital version.
• Write information about the images next to the photographs in the album, or type the information into the Notes field of the digital file. This way, you’ll know who is in the picture, when it was taken, and why you chose to keep the picture. These can be great reminders when, years from now, you have forgotten some of this information.
• If you use photo albums, store them in a place where you can easily look at them and enjoy them whenever you want. Keeping them in a box in a closet or a basement makes it difficult to view these memories. Also, you may find a few favorites in the tote that you want to frame and enjoy every day.

As far as negatives are concerned, I don’t see anything wrong with ditching them if you have a good, quality digital copy of the image. Most photographic printers are digital these days, even at photo-processing businesses, so a good scan should be all you need if you want to make physical copies of an image.

Thank you, Mary, 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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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?

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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.

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The question I am asked the most is: “Where should I start uncluttering?” I typically respond to this question with the standard “start small” response — a drawer, a purse, a pocket of a coat. Although this is the answer I most often give because starting small is really easy, it’s not actually what I believe is the most rewarding place to start.

When faced with a cluttered home or office, I find that people get the greatest satisfaction from uncluttering the area that annoys them more than any other area. It’s the area of your home or office that makes you curse each time you look at it. Even just thinking about it makes your stomach tighten and jaw clench. If you used a word as strong as hate, you would say you hated it.

Back in my cluttered days, there was a stack of boxes by the front door that drove me bonkers. Worst of all, it was the first thing I saw when I came home after a long day at work. I’d be ready to relax, and then AHHHH! I’d see it and instantly tense up again. “I have to take care of that,” would be the next thought that popped into my mind. And then, I’d walk into the living room and forget about the boxes until the next time I left or came home. I grumbled about those awful boxes of clutter for years.

When I finally sorted through the contents of those boxes and cleared them away from the front door, it was as if I had won the lottery. I took myself out to dinner. I called and told a few friends. I may have pulled a neighbor in from the hallway just to take a look at what I had done. I was elated, and the remainder of my uncluttering work was a breeze after that.

Starting small is easy, and it’s actually how I started my first big uncluttering project. I went through one box at the bottom of a closet. I didn’t get a giant burst of motivation and satisfaction, though, until I tackled those boxes by the front door. It was only after the biggest frustration was gone that I really wanted to get rid of all the clutter and embark on my new, uncluttered life.

If you’re looking for a boost of uncluttering motivation, slay the clutter dragon that is your biggest frustration in your home or office. Stop putting it off, and take care of it. You’ll be glad you did.

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