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Happy New Year! Organizing ranks as the second most popular New Year’s resolution – second only to losing weight and getting in shape. Follow my simple suggestion to open up some space in your house for all the new items that came into your life during the holidays; organize your flower vases.

Start by deciding how many flower vases you actually need in your life and where you use them. It’s nice to have one casual vase for those bouquets you pick up at the grocery store (especially during the winter when we yearn for something bright). A beautiful crystal vase is wonderful on the dining room table and another in the family room where you spend so much time during the cold weather. A pretty vase for the guest bedroom is a lovely touch when you have company. And let’s use one in the master bedroom. A vase of flowers in your foyer is always a perk. Or, keep it simple and just put a vase in every room of your house. Sound extravagant? For a 4 bedroom house that’s probably about 7 or 8 vases.

Now gather all the vases you have all around your house (several of my clients found over 20!)Place them on the dining room table – now count. Surprised? Now sort them – beautiful crystal vase/s you received as wedding gifts, glass vases from florist shops you are holding on to, old vases that belonged to a relative, seasonal vases, etc. Select the best or favorite vase for each room you counted. Take a hard look at what’s left. I’m betting there are many more than you said you needed. There are so many ways you can use these other than having them take up valuable space in your storage areas where they go unloved and unused.

Arrange fresh flowers from the market or from your garden during the various seasons and give them to:
• a friend celebrating a birthday or anniversary
• a new neighbor
• a neighbor who has collected your mail while you were away
• someone who has just lost a loved one
• the host of the party you are attending
• someone who just had a baby
• someone whose feelings you (unintentionally, of course) bruised

The vases you’ve stored away, sometimes for years, could now bring people smiles and spread happiness. All it cost was a little time and a few flowers! Now you have a beautiful touch in each of your rooms and space to store things you really need to keep. Happy New Year!

Does the thought of organizing your desktop bring music to your ears for the anticipation of the neat and orderly results of this accomplishment or does it bring painful groans of displeasure wondering how you will accomplish this seemingly impossible task for your desk?

As is the case with many tasks and projects, if we break it down into smaller parts then it’s not so overwhelming. Of course, there is always the super easy way out and that’s the complete one swipe and into the box removal. Quick, easy, and painless but I don’t think that’s really what you want to do. Especially not on National Clean Off Your Desk Day! So let’s take a look at a more organized and orderly approach.

1. Assess
First, take stock of what is on your desk. Consider what items you need to address such as: paper, files, and office supplies — along with any random items on your desk.

2. Store
Next, decide how to store these items that are currently on top of your desk.

• For example: if you have piles of papers that need to be filed, it’s understandable you may not be able to file them all at this moment. However if you can, go for it right now and file them away! If not, consider a folder or letter tray labeled “TO FILE” so you can organize those papers into one designated area. Now remember, at some point you will need to actually file those papers.
• If you have mounds of files and are working on multiple files at one time, you may not want to put them all back in the filing drawer and that is ok. However, to store those files in a more orderly fashion, you may want to consider a file folder for keeping them upright or letter trays to keep them tidy and easily available to you without each and every single file stacked high on your desk.
•  How about supplies? Do you have notepads, pens, pencils, paperclips, etc, strewn about your desk? Consider a desk organizer to keep those items neat and contained yet easily accessible.

3. Remove
Finally, remove miscellaneous items that have no relevancy to your work area. You may even find some items that are trash which is a super quick removal.  Here is where the one swipe and into a box is a handy option. Make sure to return all of those random items such as books, magazines, empty coffee cups, etc. to their designated homes.

There you have it: 3 easy ways to tidy up your desktop! Optimize your productivity while at your desk by using 3 simple steps — Assess, Store, and Remove — to keep your desktop neat and organized.

Let me be the first to wish you Happy National Get Organized Month! I saw a sign hanging in Lowe’s that said “Resolve to Declutter” and it was surrounded by a colorful array of storage containers. It’s that time of year when many of us look around our homes and ask “Where did all this stuff come from?” Taking the first step and staying organized can be daunting, but if you think you are alone, you are not. Here are ten barriers that keep my clients from starting and staying organized. Let’s break it down:

1. Don’t have the time. Time won’t magically appear when you want to achieve something. Use a day planner or your smart phone to schedule the time to organize, have fun, or accomplish something great. When you do, there is suddenly time to be spontaneous!
2. Allowing others to dictate your schedule. I’m not talking about going out and having fun, but I am talking about setting boundaries so others don’t infringe upon your personal time to get your own life in order.
3. You aren’t good at organizing. Some people need more practice than others and developing a habit takes at least 30 days to make it stick. Use books and websites to help.
4. Staying focused. Our brains aren’t wired to stay on task so use cues, rewards, or a stop watch. Use whatever you deem necessary to stay focused on the project at hand.
5. Perfectionism. If it can’t be perfect why start at all? If that sounds familiar, start small and celebrate small accomplishments. Practice saying the words “good enough.”
6. Too much clutter or CRAP: Clutter that Robs Anyone of Pleasure. If your things do not bring you joy, pleasure, usefulness, or life to your home, it should leave your home.
7. Once and done should do it. All homes need maintenance to remain organized week after week, but if you have a home for everything, cleanup will be a breeze.
8. The voices around you. Don’t allow others to make you feel bad about not being able to get organized yourself. Ignore the naysayers and enlist a friend or call a professional.
9. House isn’t big enough. The size or layout of a home isn’t always the issue. Organization methods, storage tools, and less clutter will usually do the trick.
10. Health issues. Even if you have the desire, you may not have the ability or the energy to do what is needed to get organized. Enlist help.

If you or someone you love needs help moving forward in the New Year, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a professional: a cleaning service, a senior care agency, financial planner, insurance broker, senior move management company, or a professional organizer. Professionals are trained to listen and narrow in on your specific needs. They can give you a jump start or much needed tools to help you or someone you love live their best life.

Clutter Quote: “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” Henry David Thoreau

Are you organizationally challenged? Professional organizers frequently hear clients proclaim this as they confess, “I just don’t know where to start” or “I don’t know how things should be set up”.  Or, perhaps you are space-challenged, sounding more like this: “I’m organized but there just isn’t enough storage in my home.”

In either case, one way to begin addressing the task of getting and keeping your home, with all its charms and faults, organized is to set up zones.

As an elementary school classroom may have a carpeted area for reading, desks for writing, and an art area with supply cupboards, our homes — and the rooms within — can be arranged so that items found in a certain zone support the activities that take place there.

To make the shift from feeling as though you have everything everywhere to having just what you need where you need it, start by making a list of all the rooms you will address. List the activities you would like to happen in each room as your roadmap toward creating your dream home.
For instance:
Dining Room – eat meals, do crafts
Kitchen – cook, homework, pay bills
Bedroom – sleep, exercise

Beginning with one room, let’s say kitchen, remove all items that have no relevance to the activities you have listed. Do you see any sports gear, toiletries or giftwrap lying around?
All these need to move out.

Once you’ve removed what doesn’t belong, it’s time to address what’s left. Think about what normally happens when you do the activities assigned to this room. Do you run to get a certain supply from elsewhere every time? If so, now’s the time to bring that item in. For instance, if homework and paying bills occur in the kitchen, are the basic supplies for those activities handy? Pens, pencils, stamps, a computer charging station? How about cooking supplies? Are you headed down to the basement for pans you use each month while storing the Thanksgiving turkey plate within an arm’s reach?

After you’ve determined that the supplies you have handy are the ones you need, it is time to set up your zones. Do you have trouble preparing dinner because your counter is cluttered with pens, glue and papers? Decide where homework and bill work is done and designate drawers, cabinets, bins or baskets to house those supplies. Relocate all your kitchen items according to their appropriate zone.

The final step is to assess the amounts that you need.
Now that you have all the writing instruments gathered into one area, will dozens of pens clog the supply drawer making it difficult to find anything else you need? See if just 5 or ten would suffice. Or maybe you haven’t assigned enough space for homework and office supplies.

Do you find that you no longer cook as much as you used to? Perhaps you don’t need to keep all three cupcake pans. When you got that new coffee maker that takes k-cups, did you hang on to the last one? How about the one before that? Do you have the space for all these extra appliances that might be useful again someday but take up lots of living space today?

When your zones are complete, take a moment each day before leaving each room to glance around for items that have wandered out of place and quickly move them back into their appropriate zone.

Let go of clutter and live your dream.

No Matter How Much
We Wish For More!

Managing our time and never having enough of it seems to be a common theme these days. I hear the same complaint from students, single people, married people, parents of young children, baby boomers, working people, and even retirees — believe it or not. No matter what your age or what stage of life you are in, time management skills will make your life easier to handle.

We all have demands put upon us by others (e.g., boss, children, spouse, friend, other family members). However, we are in control of what we decide to do and what we decide not to do. If it’s between going to the doctor because you are sick or driving 5 miles out of your way to save $.50 on a gallon of milk, you may want to forgo the latter just to give yourself more time to do the things that are absolutely necessary. Then, you’ll be able to give yourself time to relax, take a deep breath, and re-energize.

If you always have too many activities to handle in a day, think about what you have to get done, what you want to get done, what you don’t want to do, and what you don’t have to do. Make columns on a piece of paper with these headings and write them down rather than keeping them in your head. This will help you to visualize what is going on in your life and may even spur you on to not do those things you don’t want to or think you have to do.

And, by the way, don’t forget to fit sleep into those 24 hours. What are you going to do to manage your time better so you finally are able to do those things you love? My goal is to see you go from Bedlam to Brilliance!

Let’s take a brief trip down memory lane. What was it that initially attracted you to your spouse? Perhaps you fell for his outgoing, life-of-the-party personality. Maybe you were drawn to her gifted, creative nature. In those initial stages of love, you possibly detected his or her organizing limitations but those flaws were a small price to pay to be with the one you loved.

Fast forward a year — or maybe twenty — and you are at your wits end. Why is it so difficult for her to keep the house straight? Why does he leave his stuff everywhere? Your spouse’s disorganization is putting a serious strain on your relationship.

We, who are naturally organized, are mystified by others who struggle in this area. We seldom run late, we rarely lose things, and our homes have always been relatively organized. We take our innate organizing skill for granted. After all, how difficult is it to keep a tidy home, go through the mail, or clear out a closet?

Studies have found the more creative a person, the more organizationally challenged. So, may I be so bold as to suggest that it probably is not just your spouse’s disorganization that is causing a strain in your relationship. Could it possibly be your own willingness to accept that something so simple to you doesn’t come so easy to him or her?

We live in a society that places high value on being organized. A lack of organization costs us both financially and emotionally. Your spouse most likely feels a sense of shame, guilt, and embarrassment for not having their organizing act together. They desire to get organized; they just don’t know how.

Enter the professional organizer. Our purpose as organizers is not just to help you (or your spouse) tidy up, but to transfer and impart those ‘oh so needed’ organizing skills. An effective organizer encourages you to let go of the excess in your home, strategizes with you to plan the best organizing systems for your space, and ensures that you have learned how to maintain a structure and order that works for you both.

So, the next time you feel tempted to nag your spouse over the mess in your home, focus on all those wonderful qualities that drew you together, and consider the value of a professional organizer. We may not be able to solve all your marital woes, but we can surely help when organizing opposites attract.