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Looking for a way to shed a few pounds this summer? If you start with your home, you will gain more than weight loss benefits. Consider the excess weight that is in your home in the form of clutter. Clutter not only adds pounds, but drains your finances and takes a toll on you and your family –  physically, mentally and emotionally.

Take a guess at the approximate weight of these items (answers below):

1.  A 12” stack of paper:   15 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds
2.  A 13 gallon garbage bag of clothing:  8 pounds, 15 pounds, 20 pounds
3.  A 12” stack of books:  10 pounds, 17 pounds, 30 pounds

By taking time to de-clutter your home this summer, you will enjoy these benefits.

Physical

• Easier to find and maintain what you have
• Easier to clean your home
• Increased productivity
• Increased energy
• Feel physically lighter

Mental & Emotional

• Less stress
• Increased enthusiasm
• Enhanced mood
• Increased momentum and direction in pursuit of goals
• Improved personal relationships

Financial

• Save money by being able to find what you have
• Reduced financial loss from overspending
• Decrease late fee payments
• Increased productivity
• More time – time is money

Shed some weight in your home this summer and you might find that the space you create promotes healthy changes in other areas of your life.

Answers to above: 1) 30 pounds    2) 15 pounds   3) 17 pounds.

So much of getting organized is about building new habits. To maintain those habits, you have to exercise your organizing muscles regularly. Below are a few exercises to help you get into shape.

• Build Your Muscles
  Build up your organizing muscles by picking one small area to start and staying there until that area is complete. It could be a junk drawer or a cabinet. This will help you to stay focused and keeps you from running in circles from room to room.
• Increase Your Endurance
  Increase your endurance with repetitions of sorting, purging & categorizing. Always sort, purge and categorize first. Sort into two groups: things to keep & things to let go. Categorize the remaining items by type. Toss or donate the items you don’t need or love.
• Feel the Burn
  Intensify your aerobic activity and feel the burn. Put on some good dance music, grab an empty laundry basket and set a timer for 10 minutes. Ready, Set, Go… through every room in your home as quickly as possible, collecting any and all clutter in your path. The key is to continue moving for the full 10 minute period.
• Circuit Train
  Try circuit training by selecting six small organizing jobs, such as, a junk drawer or a medicine cabinet. Set your timer and give yourself 10 minutes per space. You will be amazed how fast and efficient you can be when you are under the gun to get it done! In the end, you will have six areas of the house organized within the hour.
• Limit Your Intake
  Limit your daily intake to reduce your household weight. Every time you make a purchase, ask yourself if you need or love that item. If the answer is no, leave it at the store!
• Flush Your System
  Create a designated area of your home for donation items and see how much you and your family can add to it each week. Make a game of trying to remove more items from your home than the amount of items you bring home.

Remember, one of the fastest ways to feel lighter is to exercise your organizing muscles by shedding pounds of clutter.  Happy New Year!

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STEP ONE: DOWNSIZE

Now is the time to be selective. Plan to bring only the items you really want in your new space.

• Do I love it or need it? Consider your space and purge enough so that all your items have a place in your new home.
• Determining what to do with all of your purged items in advance and save time.  Donate, give to family and friends, trash or sell.
• Check your local donation outlets to see what they take and if they pick up.
• Be sure to ask family and friends before giving them any of your items. You don’t want to fill their house with your unwanted stuff.
• Check with your county waste to see if there are items that cannot go into the regular garbage.
• Research the value of an item. Send a photo to an auction house for a quick response. Other avenues for selling items: yard sales, ebay, letgo, Craig’s List and consignment shops.
• Give yourself permission to let go of sentimental items. It’s okay to let go of items you don’t want or love.

STEP TWO: PACK

Packing Paper vs. Bubble Wrap

• Paper for dishes, mirrors and small fragile items. It takes up less space than bubble and allows for stacking items, like dishes.
• Bubble wrap for larger items like appliances and lamps.
  It adds a layer of air cushion.

Packing Boxes vs. Plastic Tubs:

Packing boxes:

• Easy to stack and store flush in a moving truck
• Recyclable & easy store when they are broken down
• Come in standard sizes for easy moving
• Made to protect household goods

Plastic tubs:

• Great for storing items in your new home
• Inefficient and cost more to move because they cannot be stacked edge to edge
• Vulnerable to cracking and collapsing during a move
• Keep items dry

Best Labeling Practices:

• Label on the top and side of the box
• Use permanent marker
• Put your name on the box – first
• Put the name of the room on the box – second
• List the items in the box – third
• Share your floor plan
• Label the rooms in your new home

STEP THREE: UNPACK

• Put on some great dance music
• Set up bedroom and bathroom first
• Reclaim packing materials. Many moving companies will pick up moving materials and recycle them after the move.
• Avoid clutter as you unpack by giving all items in your new home a place to live. An item that does not have a home will be put down in any available space.

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Every time I enter a client’s home, I’m reminded of the sheer amount of stuff with which we surround ourselves. Does our stuff make our lives better or more difficult? And, what happens to all of the stuff we don’t want?

Most clients try to recycle as much as they can, but the truth is, much of what is donated ends up in the dump. Just this week, I was at a baby shower and the mother-to-be received so many gifts, she remarked they would need a storage unit. She wasn’t kidding.

April 22nd is Earth Day and a great opportunity to reflect on the world we would like to leave to our children and grandchildren. Take a look at the road sides as you drive around this month. Few places don’t have plastic bags blowing in the limbs of the trees and litter strewn about. While we need things to live, conduct business and improve our quality of life, do we want to leave a legacy of trash for the next generation?

Water bottles are a scourge on our earth and resources. According to Ban the Bottle, “Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S.’s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles – more than $1 billion worth of plastic – are wasted each year.” The EPA estimates that 75% of the American waste stream is recyclable, but we only recycle about 30% of it and The Recycling Coalition of Utah states that “Americans represent 5% of the world’s population, but generate 30% of the world’s garbage.”

How can we stop burying ourselves and our loved ones in garbage? 

• For starters, buy less. Do you really need that new (fill in the blank)?
• Reuse what we have. Owning fewer items makes them easier to find and in turn, we are more likely to not have to re-purchase the same items.
• Buy items that come in less packaging: less packaging means less waste.
• Shop for pre-owned items and support local organizations like thrift stores.
• Compost food scraps; vegetables/fruit peels and leftovers.
• Donate what we no longer want, need or love. This extends the usable life of the items, allows someone else to enjoy them, and they stay out of land fills.
• Re-use glass bottles/jars for water/food, in place of plastic bags or wrap.
• Stop using plastic shopping bags. Get into the habit of using reusable shopping bags.

Happy Earth Day!

Are you in need of a new beginning? The New Year resolutions have faded into the holiday glow, and now is a great time to renew and refresh your home, your space, your life. The best way to begin anew is to plan with intention. According to Deepak Chopra, M.D., Intention is the starting point of every dream. It is the creative power that fulfills all of our needs, whether for money, relationships, spiritual awakening, or love.

Intentions are the bedrock of goals and desires. When planning with intention, you want to come from a place of authenticity. Ask yourself what you genuinely want to achieve. For your intentions to take form, it’s important to set goals.

Goals should be specific and measurable for them to be powerful and effective. That doesn’t mean that your goals must come from a place of stress and guilt, be competitive or full of pressure. Setting measurable goals gives you the clarity that is needed to help manifest tangible outcomes.

Actions support your goals and intentions allow the goals to take form. Creating daily, weekly, and monthly actions is key to achievement and may involve building or changing some habits. Habits require practice to establish or break, and the cessation of action is more about the loss of support and accountability than failure or weakness.

Sometimes we all fall short of our goals. This is when a shift in perspective can help us overcome feelings of defeat. Be kind to yourself, practice focusing on what you have accomplished and allow yourself to make mistakes. Enjoy the process and have fun along the journey.

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To roll or not to roll…that is the question. There’s a lot of debate about the best way to pack a bag for travel. We’ve used three different methods with our clients. The best method depends on the purpose of the trip, the kind of clothing you are taking, if you prefer hanging your clothes at your destination and wrinkle control.

Layering
In the layering or bundling method, layer the clothes in a crisscross fashion in the suitcase and intertwine them into a bundle. This is a great method to reduce wrinkles and we were easily able to pack as many as 25 items of medium sized women’s clothing in one 22” carry-on. The downside is that the entire bundle has to be removed and unwrapped to retrieve your clothing.

Rolling
Rolling the clothing is another popular method. You can roll each item individually or group like items together and roll as a bundle. We found that grouping like items together does save some extra space and reduce some of the wrinkling that can occur with various fabrics when rolled.

Folding
And finally, the folding method. This method does take up more space than layering or rolling. However, for some fabrics, it’s a better way to reduce wrinkling. Folding the clothing with a piece of tissue paper or plastic in the middle will reduce friction and therefore the wrinkles.

In the end, we found that a combination of methods often works best. Rolling items that don’t wrinkle easily and folding others with plastic were the easiest techniques to combine. Once the larger, bulkier items were placed in the suitcase, we filled in all the gaps with smaller items like underwear, tank tops, bathing suits and belts, so that every nook and cranny was filled.