Table of Contents

-Introduction
-Did you know?
-Monthly Mission – Calendars and Meal Planning
-Check Out These Pages! – Relevant pages and new site additions
-Indecision and Clutter

Introduction

My kids will be out of school in a couple days and we’ll be transitioning to our summer routine. We intend to have a good summer balancing fun summer activities along with learning chores and keeping the house in order as a team. Hey, a Mom can dream, right?

I also wanted to take a minute to connect with all of you. As much as I enjoy organizing, I have to work on keeping up with it daily as much as the next person. I also need reminders, routines and sometimes a good kick in the pants to get myself moving forward with my organizing endeavors. I write this website for all of you as well as for myself. I’m not a professional organizer, but I do strive to keep things organized as I feel better about myself and my home when it’s in order. And they say, we teach best what we most need to learn! I hope you’re enjoying the suggestions I’ve presented so far. Thanks for following along and happy organizing!

The average consumer makes 2.2 trips per week to the supermarket.

I can think of better ways to use my time than to hang out at the grocery store! With a menu plan and a grocery list you can make one trip per week and you can use the money, gas and time you save to do something more enjoyable.

(Source: http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts)

Is your family still not sure whether you’re coming or going, or what’s for dinner? Be sure to check out how calendars and simple meal planning strategies can streamline your life. See June’s monthly mission here.

Here are some pertinent pages on the website you may have missed along with any new pages.

How To Organize Books For Kids - A quick and simple way to organize kids books so they can actually access them and put them away when they're done.

Before and After Photos - If you enjoy seeing before and after photos of organizing projects, you can find them all right here.

Living Room Storage Make-over - See how we recently re-organized our living room (play room) with a new Ikea wall unit that's great for storing lots of stuff.

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.

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.

Last month we talked about procrastination and how it holds us back from getting organized. Now, you’re ready to get moving and tackle some of your clutter. The problem is, as you’re going through your stuff, you’re not sure what to do with some things, so you set them aside to think about until a later time. Ah…. indecision, the other stopping block to getting our homes organized.

To avoid clutter, we should only have things in our homes that we need, want, use and enjoy. Anything else is clutter. Everything should also have a home where it can live or be put away when not in use.

But here is an indecision dilemma that I experience… even after I declutter a drawer or clean out a section of a room, there always seems to be stuff left over. Little things I’m not quite sure what to do with, and these left overs can sit in a pile for a while waiting for me to decide what to do with them. Have you had a similar experience?

I start to think, “Should I just toss them, give them away, or save them for something someday. Do I really want it, need it, use it, love it?” If so, then it shouldn’t even be sitting in this left over pile of stuff. It should be in it’s home. And if that’s not the case, then it should definitely be going out the door.

And then that little voice says “But what if I get rid of it and regret it later? What if later I find a reason I should have kept it? What if I need it later down the road?” These kinds of thoughts can hold us back from letting go of our clutter.

I have read that it is actually the FEAR of regret that holds us back, not the actual regret. How could we experience regret if we don’t ever let anything go? However, people who have actually let go of something and then later actually did regret it, found that it wasn’t the end of the world or that it wasn’t that terrible at all compared to what they had expected. Here is a recent personal experience that I will refer to in helping make future decisions…

I had a box with seven unopened action figures that I had collected in the past. I’ve had them stored for the past 10 plus years in a box. I brought them out of the garage about a year and a half ago when we cleaned out the garage and fixed it up. I had intended to finally let them go and sell them on ebay or to someone who would appreciate them. Well, after numerous times checking out info on the internet and wasting more time, only to realize that they weren’t worth very much and after I finally realized that I had spent more time worrying and thinking about selling these figurines than they were worth, I decided to just give them away. So at the beginning of this year, more than a year after I pulled them out to sell, I took them over to Goodwill and dropped them off. The worker even said “these are toys??” (ouch) and dumped them all in a toy bin. And guess what? I didn’t freak out or cry or jump in the truck to take them back. I’m actually pleased that they are no longer sitting in a big box next to my desk looming over me waiting to be sold for a couple dollars. And I hope they found a happy home with someone who will love them. To think, for over a year, these items begged for my decision on what to do with them almost daily as they sat near my desk taking up space. And now I’m set free! No regrets.

I didn’t consciously do this in my example, but here is a possible solution to help you with those items you can’t decide about. Put items you’re unsure about into a box, seal it up and write the date on it. Specify a time, say 6 months, in which if you haven’t opened the box and taken out any of the items, you can feel confident that you don’t need them and you can freely donate them to charity. Don’t sort through the boxes when you hit your designated expiration date or you’ll refresh your indecision. Instead, take the unopened box directly to be dropped off.

As for papers and emails that need action, we simply need to make a decision. When you get that invite to a party, make a decision and respond, decide if you’re going to take advantage of that lunch special flyer, decide if you’re going to contact that service person, etc. If you stack these papers to decide later, it turns into a pile of clutter and you’re likely to miss the sale or the party if you end up not getting to it in time.

As for emails, wow, it can be simply overwhelming and should be a topic of its own! But briefly, we need to find a system that works to help us make decisions and act on our emails more efficiently. When we don’t, we have a huge inbox with a mix of stuff and if it’s like mine, sometimes the important stuff gets forgotten about if it’s not responded to right away. This is an area of my organizing I’d love to improve upon. Here is a link to one method I’m going to give a try: Clear Email Clutter.

Let's try to get those decisions made. If we make a choice we later regret, it's likely it can be corrected, or an item can be repurchased when we actually need it, or that it simply isn't so bad and we can focus on the benefit of the cleared space.

Until next time, happy organizing!

Tracy Greene
Plan-and-Organize-Life.com