With the heavy snowfall came a real organizing buzz– the snow just keeps coming and people just keep finding order!

I am so surprised how many people have commented to me that they were getting organized while they were stuck at home. I thought it might be interesting to explore some reasons why that might be happening. Here are a few I came up with, and PLEASE feel free to comment on a few more!

• It creates time available to organize. Our regular agenda shifts and our normal routine moves to the back burner
• It provides chunks of time that are required for bigger projects
• There is time to clear the decks of the little things
• Nothing is competing with organizing
• Organizing gives us a sense of accomplishment and it’s a way to not feel stuck

Here are some tips for organizing when you are stuck at home:

• Organize your tax information and be ready now so you can enjoy that spring weather in April!
• Pull out those photographs and spread them out on the dining room table and start sorting!
• Delete all those emails that are clogging your inbox and get rid of files you will never use.
• Clean out that recipe box, you may find the perfect cozy treat.
• Update your calendar with birthdays and anniversaries.
• Update your address list and card lists so you are ahead of the game next holiday season.
• Go through your medicine cabinet to clear out expired medications.
• Clean out and update your music on itunes.

If you are standing in your bedroom and have to go downstairs to get it — is that a SYSTEM FAILURE or SYSTEM SUCCESS? While working with one of my all time favorite clients it occurred to me that we had very different definitions for SYSTEM FAILURE! My client viewed this as system failure if she had to travel to get what she needed. Her vision for a system that works included having “redundancies” all over the house as a “convenience”. It was a powerful moment when she re-framed this and realized that these duplicates were becoming clutter and more trouble than convenience. Beautiful, well designed spaces designed for holding bathroom items were holding “backup” supplies and were losing their functionality! You can be a good provider, homemaker and mother and only have ONE pair of scissors or one roll of tape.

There is not one right answer here! Just considering what ENOUGH looks like is a big win and helps you live more intentionally! Of course some items need to have duplicates, but if you tend to over-do that, ask yourself these questions:
Are there duplicates in this room?
Do I have a favorite?
Am I using it or saving it?
Am I backing up my back ups due to lack of confidence in my system?
Are there duplicates in other rooms?
Do I feel the need for each person to have there own?
Are you having trouble committing to a “home” for an item?

Sometimes “choice” becomes a burden and backup get in the way of order.

Getting stuck is all about perspective.  Often by the time clients call for our help they really have had several failures and their veiw of their problem is blown out of proportion.  They are seeing everything from an extreme point of view.  They are CATASROPHIZING!

• They have decided that I am PERFECT and will think they are terrible.
• They have decided that their space is the worst space I have ever seen.
• Sometimes they see it as impossible or hopeless
• They think that they or the people in their lives will be traumatized by letting go of certain items.

But often what is trally happening is that i have seen spaces that are in worse shape and all I am really looking at is the person, not the stuff.  I am trying to understand how they want to live in the space and what might be getting in their way.  Often letting go brings energy and a sense of empowerment and control to everyone involved.

Be careful if you tend to think in worse case scenarios.  This highly emotive thinking can get in the way of clear decision making and making decisions is the key to processing the things that are in your life.  Building your decision making muscles and confidence will help you keep a healthy perspective as you face challenges.

If you are trying to change any habit-set your self up for success by taking less on during that time.  We have been focusing on lateness and procrastination lately but this can help with any behavior change from smoking to getting exercise!  Reducing stress at that time increases your will power to succeed.  Stress often makes you resort to those old ways of dealing with things instead of trying new ways. 

So clear the decks and plan successful change by giving yourself a little break to do so.

Sibling Rivalry is a big problem in families that needs to be addressed very early in the process. There are three strategies I found to be very powerful.

1. When one child is mean to another, don’t lavish all your attention on the child that hurt their sibling by yelling at that child. Go directly to the child that is hurt and give them the major share of you attention. Make sure that there is no “reward” for that behavior. It is amazing to watch how that child seem a little deflated because they did not get what they may have ultimately wanted, your undivided attention.
2. A fun exercise to get siblings to show their respect is to simply have them plan an imaginary extravagant birthday party for each other. Help them be outrageously generous to their sibling. What would the cake be made of? How enormous would it be? What movie stars would attend? How many presents would be there? What would be the best one? What would it be wrapped in? Where would it happen? It is a fun way to flatter and respect a sibling.
3. Decide on a family goal and set up a reward that they all the siblings want to achieve. Make it something they can really do and set them up to cheer each other on and celebrate each other’s successes so they all work towards the same goal! It is a delight to see them help each other!

When I meet client and they show me their messy spaces they often punctuate that tour with “and when we get all this done, I can finally do my photos”. People are often paralyzed when they feel a task is really important. This problem only got worse when scrap booking came into fashion. People are able to invest in all these possibilities but ultimately get overwhelmed because they made it too hard! Now there are so many ways to do it “wrong”! This “all or nothing” thinking is an attribute of disorganized people and it really comes into play with photos.

What to do? DECIDE! Decide on the materials you are going to use and get started with what is current. I did the research and tried the products and here is my “professional opinion” for the average Joe who just wants to protect and organize their photos. (This is not scrap booking).

I use the 12 by 12 Pioneer Photo Albums with the Easy Top Load Pages with Black pages.
The 12 by 12 size holds more pictures per page and I like to arrange photos on the page and glue them in. I do crop them but I try to crop using similar dimensions. I will crop a 4 x 6 horizontal picture to be 4 x 4 so it fits in a layout with a vertical 4 x 6 picture. If you use consistent cropping size, more pictures fit uniformly on the page. I do not use many shapes like hearts because they look dates FAST and it is hard t use the photo any other way. The only shape cutting I will do is an occasional circle. I like the way the pictures look on the black paper and they really pop when you put them in the sleeve. The sleeve makes view easy because photo corners are not lifting where the page bends and smeared glue want make pages stick together. I use a photo safe glue stick to quickly glue them in place.
I use basic photo boxes from Exposures and the Photo Envelopes from Light Impressions.
I organized my photos chronologically as best I could and kept aside a “best of” envelope for each very important person in my family. I marked on the front of each envelope the rough dates and theme/event. Then I marked some of the “star” photos so that they would be easy to retrieve later. If there was a photo where a very important person was the focus I would put it in their best of envelope.

In these economic times, REDUCING should be easy! It is the first step towards making lasting change. When I speak to clients who reference this step as one of their goals, on know that they are going to make great progress. There are many ways to-REDUCE.

First you need to work on your mind set. It is very easy to stop bringing more into your life if you already feel like you have ENOUGH. You need to try to visualize your life as a “cup that is full”. Some of our “cups” are actually spilling over, or bursting and it is time to recognize the burden that places on our lives, spaces and time. So when you are in the store and see that beuatiful vase that is on sale, STOP and think about the abundance in your life. Realize that you can enjoy that vase’s beauty and even it’s bargain price with out owning it. Think of all the vases you have at home and the stories and memories they hold. Are you willing to get rid of one or maybe two of those vases to bring this one into your life.

Reduce by not bringing more into your life, and then take a close look at what you already have. Keep only what is useful and makes you happy. This makes everyday easier to maintain and navigate. Simple systems work because they are not overloaded. Drawers have a single purpose and are duplicated throughout the house. Closets function for the rooms that they were designed to serve. It is amazing how your home will start to become easy to manage because the tools in place to storage now work!

There hasn’t been a better time to really revisit these principle. You will help yourself, your pocketbook and our earth.

Anyone who has EVER emailed me knows that they need to be brief and get to the ACTION in the first few lines or else I will MISS IT! I love bulleted emails that get right to the point! The following format that is recommended by Mike Song in the book “The Hamster Revolution”. He calls it the A-B-C format.

A-for Action
B-for Background
C-for Close

State the action you want right away,(and frankly if that is all you want, don’t hesitate to put it in the subject line with EOM*). Then give the background information and a closing with your signature. For example:

Dear John,

Thank you so much for previewing this course and I am happy to hear any comment or suggestions.

That is so much easier to read than a huge WALL OF WORDS!
You will save your readers time and they will LOVE hearing from you!

By the way
*EOM stands for End of Message

Family Meeting
What are every one’s favorite Fall activities? Make sure to enjoy the season together by making sure that Fall events get on the calendar. Even block off some time for “NON-EVENTS” like taking a walk every Friday afternoon to really take in the sights, smells and sounds of the season.

Shop Locally
Take a break from the supermarket for one week and visit your local farmers market to fill your pantry with the abundance of the season. Try to eat what you have on hand. This also makes room for the holiday cooking supplies!

Closet Clean Up
This is the perfect time to visit local consignment shops as they are turning inventory and looking for fall/winter clothes. Take a close look at what you have not worn and weed out anything that are stained or don’t fit. Remember, you deserve to look nice every day, so why are we holding on to those items that we don’t feel GREAT in!

Home Sweet Home-Get Ready for Winter Before it Gets Too Cold!
Don’t wait until the last minute to put items away for winter. Service lawn mowers so that they are ready for spring, check insulation to save money on energy, and have the items like the furnace and chimneys maintained. This is a great times to clean out that garage get items ready for seasonal storage.

The Holidays are Coming…
It is time to start thinking about the Holidays. Just getting it into your head, where you will be going and what you will be doing. Perhaps looking at photo to see if you have a nice one to send or updating your addresses so you can be ready. Many people have their entire Holiday preparations done in July, but I prefer to keep it simple so that there is not an overwhelming amount of stuff to do and I can do it during the actual Holiday time!

These are my favorite things to consider in fall and when I pay attention and take care of these the winter never seems too stormy!

OK, I’ll admit it, I really don’t like 3 ring binders! This is a huge confession coming from a professional organizer! Organizers LOVE binders. Professional Organizers will “binderize” anything that is not nailed down! I always found it laborious to punch holes in hand outs and those jaw-like clips scare me! More things would lay on top of my binder than get in. But the point was driven home when i was reading Donna Goldgerg’s book, The Organized Student. She addresses the student’s organizational style and suggests that binders don’t work for some students. Her main point was that LEFT HANDED students can’t write on paper that is attached to a binder. Well call me slow, but I AM LEFT HANDED and I really never realized that all of you RIGHTIES were actualy writing in those binders. No wonder I can’t stand them. I guess on some level I knew because LEFTIES even have trouble with spiral notebooks, but I felt so much better after seeing it in print! So Mothers of LEFTIES, please don’t make your child use a binder if they resist. Use an accordian file or folders and you may see them have more success!