1. Make a plan:

You CANNOT get organized (not truly and forever) without a solid plan. If you willy nilly organize, you’re more likely to willy nilly keep it up – and we all know what willy nilly behavior can lead to. Or maybe I just like to say willy nilly? Hmmm. In any case develop your perfect organizing plan by reading:

• One of the first things you should do before organizing your house
• Three ways to motivate organizing change
• Quick Tip: Be Realistic About Your Organizing Goals
• Organizing problem: you have too many organizing tools
• One organizing step that many folks miss

2. Get started:

Start slow, start small, start huge if you like, but just getting started with decluttering is half the battle won right there. If you’re just sitting and looking at your disorganized house, nothing is going to change. You need to stand up, walk over to that pile and start sorting. Sad but true. The only way to declutter and organize is to DO IT. Try some of the following easy start tips…

• Organize the worst first – yes or no?
• Reduce prime clutter areas
• Help for the Overwhelmed House – A Quick 11 Shot To Do List
• “What If” Items – Tips for Clearing Clutter
• The 2 minute toss it rule

3. Deal with your clutter issues:

We all have clutter issues of some sort. Some of us have too much clutter. Some people like me, get rid of stuff so often that their house is clutter-free, but some decisions can’t be taken back (like those letters you tossed). As you get started with decluttering and organizing, some issues are sure to pop up. These issues can hold you back from ever getting organized. Deal with them. Read the following…

• You won’t go to Hades for tossing that (fill in the blank) out
• Clutter Confessions and Denial
• Four Tips for Clearing Out Sentimental Clutter
• Organizing problem: you have too many organizing tools
• Ways to Remove the Mental Clutter from Your Head

4. Keep it under control:

After you go through steps 1-3, and get all your rooms under control, you’ll want to develop a plan for keeping your home organized. It’s lame to do all this work only to lose the battle again because you start to slack. Once your home is good and clattered, you should plan a weekly cleaning/organizing schedule. Keeping up with the incoming clutter on a normal basis is far easier than dealing with all of it again in a year. To stay on top of it, try the following…

• Don’t bring in new gear, junk, stuff unless it’s necessary. Most of people’s clutter is just stuff they think they need. Consider all your purchases carefully.
• Live smaller to fight clutter & cleaning issues.
• Give everything a home and once daily or weekly return misplaced items to their home base. This is one of the most important rules to follow if you want to live clutter-free. If an item has no home, maybe it’s an item you don’t really need or want.

Spring is less than a month away; hence spring cleaning is less than a month away. Are you getting started now with your decluttering plans?

Post from: Blisstree

Start to get organized – it’s not as hard as you think

Happy hearts day folks. I know decluttering and organizing is probably the last thing on your mind today – and neither is the most romantic idea BUT if your special someone is heading over later tonight, you might want to consider picking up. At least a little.

Eight easy and fast ways to sparkle up your house today:

1. Clean the sinks – all of them folks.To make it easier, spray some water in the sinks, sprinkle baking soda, allow it to sit, and later go wipe them out.
2. Clean out any and all expired food in the fridge.
3. Grab a box or bag. Wander the house for ten minutes. Pick up anything that’s sitting around without a home base. Put items in said box or bag. Place box or bag in a closet. You can worry about its contents later, but at least your house will look picked up.
4. Remove all the dripping wax from your candle holders; you may need them later tonight.
5. Restack all your nesting bowls and Tupperware items. If you’re really feeling motivated, toss the silverware drawers into the dishwasher.
6. Take any outdated reminders, coupons, recipes, or to-do lists off the fridge and bulletin board.
7. Clean all your interior window sills.
8. Make a list of all the things you liked to get organized later this month. It’s smart to have a visual reminder.

Take the rest of the day off and go find someone to hug on.

Post from: Blisstree

Happy Valentine’s Day – Now Clean Your Sink!

For example:

Any liquor bottles sitting around less than 1/4 – 1/8 full. In most cases, 1/8 is not even enough for a mixed drink, it’s just a bottle taking up storage real estate. Use the 1/4 rule to double check alcohol you hate. If you’re not gonna drink this stuff ever, recycle the bottle and save some space.

Kitchen food jars. The fridge is one of those places in your home, that always seems to be short on space. If you have a million 1/4 – 1/2 full jars, see if you can move their contents to a smaller container, thus freeing up space.

Spice jars that are less than 3/4 full can usually be recycled. 3/4 is actually a lot of spice. The issue here is that often, when you look in a cupboard, and see spice jars that are less than 3/4 full, they’re expire. There are those folks who use up their spices, but it’s more common to see expired half-empty jars.

What else can you think of?

Post from: Blisstree

Get rid of mostly used items to reduce household clutter

How this happens: A well meaning individual who want to get organized heads to the stores and scoops up organizational products without a plan.

What happens next: The well meaning individual from above gets home and now has a pile of bins, file folders, kitchen containers, and hanging closet racks with no rhyme or reason.

The end result: The well meaning individual now has two organizational issues – getting the house organized, and figuring out what to do with all this stuff they just bought. The job just got twice as hard.

Instead:

• Before you ever buy a bin, file folder, or hanger, have a plan.
• Jot down your organizing goals in order of importance. I.e. Closets, kitchen, garage.
• Jot down your organizing needs for each space. AFTER you purge the clutter. Don’t make a plan until you sort and get rid of stuff in each space you don’t need. It’s a waste of time and money to buy extra bins for a crowded space, when in reality you could just lose some stuff.

Before heading to the store:

Measure and estimate. It’s all good and fine to buy bins for that shelf in the garage but not bins that won’t fit. Measure first and attempt to estimate how much bin space, file folders, what have you, that you’ll need for a project.

Plan for aesthetics. Plastic bins are ok for a garage, but do you really want to look at rows of plastic in your dining area? No you don’t. Plan your organizing products on a room by room decor basis.

Color coordinate. Unless you go with clear bins, aim for containers that jog your memory by color. I.e a pink bin can hold Easter decor, while red works good for Christmas. Clear bins work best for items like clothing that you want to locate fast.

Take a list and stick to it. If you made plans don’t detour. It’s easy to get to the stores and feel overwhelmed. But trust me, if you knew you needed about 50 file folder when you were planning at home, you don’t magically now need 100 just because the store carries more. More is almost never better when it comes to organizational tools. “Just what you need” is a better motto.

Post from: Blisstree

Organizing problem: you have too many organizing tools

Before we get going, I wanted to post some basics tips. These posts linked below are some of the basics we’ve seen here at Declutter It, and they should get you thinking about how you’re going to go about organizing and decluttering your whole house.

• What exactly is clutter?
• One of the first things you should do before organizing your house
• Getting Rid of Dead Space
• You won’t go to Hades for tossing that (fill in the blank) out
• Visualize A Clutter Free Space
• Organize the worst first – yes or no?

Coming up this week, we’ll be looking at the basics of creating a clutter-free and organized kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, dining room, kids space, and more.

Which room are you most interested in getting organized this year?

Post from: Blisstree

Get An Organized & Clutter-Free Home for the New Year

To use dead space:

Make a list: Trot around your house and make a list of dead spaces. Types of dead spaces include inside cabinet doors, above bookshelves, under tables, and some wall space.

Make a second list: Your second list builds on your list of dead spaces. For example; you see that you have a dead space in your hall closet. When you open the closet door, there’s perfectly usable space on the inside of the door. You can un-dead space it by adding coat hanger hooks, or a magnetic strip for keys and such. Another example may be under your coffee table. You can add a basket and get those stacks of magazines sorted away. Yet another could be that empty wall above your desk. Placing a small wall shelving unit there gives you a place to store pen holders, small index file boxes, and maybe a few books.

Be frugal: Some dead space is nice. If every single inch of your home is full of stuff, well, that’s not the idea. Dead space serves a purpose for items that actually really need a home, not silly collections, old newspapers, or junk you won’t ever fix.

Where are the usable dead spaces in your home? 

Post from: Blisstree

Getting Rid of Dead Space

Get rid of numbers you never call, people you now don’t like, and any other useless numbers. Go through your pictures as well. Transfer keepers to your computer and delete the rest. This entire task will only take about an hour (give or take) but it will make you feel all refreshed. It’s a small thing during this busy season that can help you stay clutter free.

Post from: Blisstree

Quick decluttering task to do this week

Small living rules: 

Keep small collections: Set limits. Allow yourself one shelf of books. If it overflows, send some books packing before you get more. Own only the shoes than will fit in your shoe holder. Have only 10 (or choose another number) frames of pictures on shelves at any given time – switch out pictures rather than gathering more frames to dust and organize.

Live in a smaller house: Small room = easier to organize, clean, and less easy to fill with junk.

Own actual smaller items: DVDs take up less room than video (purge the old VHS movies). A smaller couch or shelf system means less to clean and dust. Tennis shoes are the ultimate small in exercise equipment – try walking outside instead of owning a treadmill. A smaller desk or file cabinet is less likely to get covered with junk and paper piles, because you’ll only have so much room to work with.

Forget bulk anything: I used to be into bulk, for the money savings. Now, I’d rather my house be less cluttered than have extra toilet paper. Seriously, unless you live in the way far out boonies, you’ll never have a serious lack of toilet paper, milk, or printer paper issue. Bulk is ok, but not if your goal is to live smaller. Also read, The Case Against Deep Storage.

Living small, living with less, living without everything you think you want is a tough transition for many. It’s a process. But the gains, once you start living smaller are huge. More time, less clutter, less to clean, and you’ll feel better. A bonus is you may end up with more cash in your saving account as well.

Need help getting started…

• Organizing by Simplifying
• Need a Bigger House, or Just Smaller Ego?
• Scaling Down Your House and Life
• How To Live Small
• You won’t go to Hades for tossing that (fill in the blank) out

For parents with stuff loving kids:

• As a parent, do you understand the impact of the need for stuff?
• Kids & Shopping – How Kids Can Be Smart Consumers

AND in case you think I’m a major hypocrite for showing products on this blog, while I go on and on about too much stuff being bad, you can read this post: If you’re so against having stuff, then why show all these products on this blog? – I wrote this for another blog, but the sentiments are the same. I’m not pro-have nothing EVER, just pro-have what you need to make your life easy or beautiful, but not in excess. Stuff doesn’t have to own you, but sadly, it does own many people.

Post from: Blisstree

Live smaller to fight clutter & cleaning issues

4 ideas… 

Buy every single greeting card you’ll need all year, at one time. Make a list of all the birthdays and holidays you know of during the year, and spend one good afternoon choosing them all. Bonus points if you go sans cards and simply send digital greetings – not AS BIG a time saver, but no driving to the store and it’s a nice eco-friendly choice.

Make all the dinners for one week or one month (go you) on one weekend day. Chop, cook, freeze, wash all the pots, then just heat and eat.

Shop for all your groceries once a month. Only go in between big trips for fresh veggies and fruit.

Pay all your monthly bills one one day, not as they come. Pay online for even more time saving.

Shower for the whole week on Sunday – just kidding! Just making sure you’re awake

What other time consuming tasks can you do all at once to save time? 

It’s the Blogtoberfest icon! Which means a super keen (and secret) prize is hidden behind this special blog post. If you want to win the great prize that I’m hiding, simply leave a comment on this post. A totally easy way to win a prize. Within a week, the winner of the hidden prize will be announced here at Declutter It, so check back often.

Other ways to win a prize! You have lots of chances to win great Blogtoberfest prizes? Today, October 15th, there are secret special prizes hiding at the following Lifestyles Channel blogs: Junk Creation, Tree Hugging Family, Inside Motherhood, A Creative Journal, Babylune, MyCrimeSpace,  One Book Two Book and Thrifty Mommy. Visit all of these blogs, look for the blogtoberfest icon on a post, and leave a comment for your chance at another great prize. 

Good luck and happy blogtoberfest! 

Post from: Blisstree

Do time draining tasks all at once to save time

So hop to it. Need help? Read:

Organizing by Simplifying

How To Start Getting Rid of Stuff – Get Rid of “Maybe” Items

Clutter Confessions and Denial

The Case Against Deep Storage

What exactly is clutter?

Post from: Blisstree

Quick Clutter Tip: Donate before December 31st