Table of Contents

-Introduction
-Did you know?
-Monthly Mission – Recap, Tidy Up, Relax!
-What’s New on Plan-and-Organize-Life.com – Recent site additions
-The Clutter Zone

Introduction

For those of us with kids, summer should be in full swing by now. I know we’ve been adjusting to our summer schedule and trying to keep a bit of structure to it. We’ve put up new chore charts, for the kids and myself, to help remind us that certain things still need to be done. But we’re also enjoying the nicer weather and having some good summer fun. We plan to take it a little easier this month and focus more on just keeping up with the systems we’ve established so far.

Clutter makes you fat?

This is according to professional organizer Peter Walsh. He has found that when people declutter their homes, they also report to him that they’ve lost weight. Coincidence? There appears to be a link between people who overconsume “stuff” and people who overconsume food. Sounds like we can all lighten up in more ways than one.

Peter Walsh’s book is called "Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More. I have not read it, but my understanding is it’s very focused on decluttering your kitchen.

I have read It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff and thought it was a fantastic and motivating book to help you declutter your entire home. Definitely worth a read!

We all need to take a break and re-evaluate how we’re doing with our organizing goals. July seems like a great month because it seems like a lot of people are vacationing and relaxing anyway. Take some time this month to catch up in areas we’ve covered in the first 6 months of the year, tidy up where things have gotten behind, and take a little time to relax and enjoy the summer.

For more information about July’s Monthly Mission, click here.

Here are some of the more recently added pages to the website you may have missed.

Adding A Closet Shelf - See how adding a quick and simple shelf to a closet can add functional space.

Spice Rack - See before and after photos of my spice storage including my new spice rack.

Garage Makeover - before and after photos of my personal garage makeover. See how we tackled the problems and ended up with a functional garage.

Streamline Your Morning Routine - Ideas to help you get out the door in the morning and be on time for work or school.

Storage Shed Organization - Before and after photos of my storage shed reorganization project.

Toy Organizing Project - After Christmas I had to do some toy re-organizing. Here is a before and after of my little toy organizing project.

Bathroom Drawer Make Over - How to organize a bathroom drawer, an example with before and after photos.

Stop Clutter - Quick simple tips on how to stop the clutter from coming into your home in the first place.

Here’s a suggestion for those times when you simply can’t get everything put away in it’s rightful home. I mean, we’re only human, and as regular sort of people, clutter happens and we don’t always have time to sort things out “right now” when we’re running ragged and short on time. Sometimes, things just get out of place. But we can put an easy system into place to help things from getting out of control.

Enter, “The Clutter Zone”. I have seen people recommend setting up a particular place for clutter. This is a TEMPORARY zone. For example, an attractive basket or box that goes in each kid’s room, or the living room, or your bedroom, or on your desk where things can be tossed when you’re running short on time. This gives us permission to make some progress with tidying up and not needing to be perfect, which is our motto here.

This allows things to look reasonably picked up. It also gives you a particular area to focus on tidying up the next day. Then, when there is more time, you can put things away from this temporary basket, and even carry it around the house to drop off items to where they belong.

I can see how this might be valuable in my own home. It would be nice to have a spot to toss things that need to be walked to another room later, or collect a few things that didn’t get put away properly, either because of a time shortage or because frankly, it’s time to go to bed and get some much needed sleep. I’ll know right where to start tidying up the next day. And I think this will help my daughter who always feels overwhelmed in the evenings to clean up easier.

So let’s stop beating ourselves up for not having everything in perfect order and allow ourselves this little bit of clutter freedom. However, the key to getting this to work will be making sure it’s only a temporary clutter zone and that it’s maintained daily, as with all organizing systems we put in place.

Give it a go and let me know how it works for you.

Until next time, happy organizing!

Sincerely,

Tracy Greene
Plan-and-Organize-Life.com

P.S. Sometimes links to website pages get broken. If a link doesn't work, you may need to copy and paste the entire link into your browser.