Love is in the air…

This year in my Neat Freak Newsletter, I’m going to be sharing my step by step, room by room approach to organizing your home. You can buy books that will tell you how to do this, but hey…why not read it here for free! Check out my newsletter every other month, follow my advice (as much as you can stand!), and by the end of 2008, I guarantee you’ll be living with less and have more room to breathe. Enjoy.

THE MASTER BEDROOM
In the spirit of love and romance (it is almost Valentine’s Day, you know), I’m going to start with your master bedroom. Whether you live in a studio apartment or a mansion, we all need a place to rest our heads at night. Take a look around. Is your bedroom a relaxing, romantic retreat? Does it welcome restful slumber and relationship building? Or does it more closely resemble the local thrift store? If you spot clothes that don’t fit, exercise equipment that is unused, or reading material that predates the Bush administration, get ready to roll up your sleeves, reclaim your space and bring a little peace, warmth and love into your bedroom (cue the Barry White music…).

1. Not to sound like your mother, but make up your bed already! This one simple task can turn your bedroom from disaster area into not-half-bad in less than three minutes.

2. Get down on your hands and knees and see what’s hiding down below. Unless you live in a NYC studio apartment with no room to spare, the space under your bed should house nothing more than the occasional dust bunny. Feng Shui practitioners will tell you that it’s bad for your Chi…I’ll just tell you that storing stuff under your bed invites dust mites and if you really use the stuff that’s under your bed, what’s it doing down there in the first place? Clean it out!

3. Hmmmm….what are those dirty socks doing on the floor? Purchase an attractive hamper (two if you want to separate darks and whites) and toss the dirty stuff in it. Anything else should be folded or hung up after you take it off.

Good grief, I do sound like your mother! Keep reading…

4. Assess the other activities that go on in your bedroom. Do you watch TV in this room? I dare you to remove the TV for a week or two and see if anything changes in your life. TV’s have a way of attracting other “things” (e.g. DVDs, VCR tapes, cords and cables, not to mention the stress that comes from falling asleep to or waking up to CNN on a daily basis). Try doing without…you might just like it!

5. Count the number of books on your nightstand table. If there are books there that you’ve already finished, or books you don’t plan to read for another week or two, or books you just like to keep next to your bed to make you feel smart (I swear this is the year I’m going to pick up Mandelbaum’s translation of The Aeneid!), move them to a bookshelf. Also, consider NOT buying books for the next six months. Check books out from your library instead. Knowing that they’re due in a month might speed along the reading process and keep you from accumulating more things in your home.

6. Clothes. Shoes. Purses…oh my. It really is true that most of us wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time. If it doesn’t fit you right now, let it go. If you lose 20 lbs., I promise you you’ll want to go shopping. If it has been stained for more than six months and you haven’t cleaned it, let it go. If you purchased it in the late 80’s and you’re waiting to see if it comes back in style, let it go. If you’ve been meaning to hem it or mend it for more than six months, let it go. Can’t quite part with it? Fold it up, put it in a box and write the date July 30, 2008 on it. If you haven’t gone looking for it by that date, take the entire box to a local charity of your choice and say “bye, bye.” And finally, commit to a one in, one out philosophy this year. If you purchase something new, something old has to go.

7. Once you’ve followed this advice, look around and see what’s left. Mail, work papers, bills, children’s toys, broken things and solo socks do not belong in your bedroom. Once all of this is gone, you can safely light a candle, relax and enjoy your chaos-free sanctuary. And hey, if I managed to inspire you to spice up your love life along the way, I’ll gratefully accept chocolate as a thank you gift!

Your trashed clothes, another persons “treasure?”

As an organizer, I spend a lot of time hauling away unused, unwanted, and unworn clothing from my client’s homes. If someone is not going to wear, mend or clean an item, I do believe that it needs to go. I don’t see my business drying up any time soon, given that Americans purchase a lot of clothes (I’m guilty of this, as well!)– spending roughly $82 billion each year according to some estimates! And despite buying new stuff, I still find that I typically wear about 20% of my clothing on a regular basis (in fact, I purchased two long sleeve t-shirts at Target last fall and admit to wearing them 3-4 days/week).

When I haul away a client’s clothes, I typically take them to our local PTA Thrift Shop or to Goodwill. I know that they sell a lot of the goods they receive at deep discounts to low income people locally. But I also know that a great deal of what they receive ends up being re-sold to recyclers or even overseas. Another “green” organizer just sent this article to me today from The Green Guide, and I think it does a great job of highlighting some of the issues related to clothes and shoe donations throughout the US. I urge you to read it to get a better understanding of what happens to clothes in America (9 million pounds are typically trashed and close to 300 million pounds are exported to developing nations!). It’s really enough to make you want to re-evaluate the clothes you have and stop and think before you buy!

A look back, and leapin’ into 2008

Based on my blog hits these past few weeks, it looks like a lot of you are reorganizing your playrooms after the big Christmas throw-down. I revisited my post on Playroom Organization 101 and still think it hits the nail on the head when it comes to keeping toys under control. Admittedly, my kids have been total mess makers since December 25th (well, technically, no one was having any fun until December 27th here since I had one kid puking for two days and the other fighting off a fever and respiratory infection…Merry Flippin’ Christmas Kersh family!). But now that they’re on the mend, they’ve been hopping from one cool new toy to the next (highlights include a bucket of car wash tools for my son and an electronic keyboard for our daughter…I can already tell who will be the cheap date in 14 years!) leaving a trail of mess behind them. Only 3 more days until they’re back in school and then I’ll start to enforce my pick-up rules again!

Carter and I did our own little bit of organizing while he had some time off. I can’t believe I’m airing this dirty laundry, but I’m prepared to take the heat. This is what our basement had become after a busy fall of building projects and some serious neglect:

And here’s how it’s looking now:

We truly had gotten to the point where we just opened the door and threw crap into this room without giving it a thought. It happens even to those of us who considered ourselves to be organized! But rather than beat myself up about this dirty little secret, I decided to embrace the mess and put off the project until we had the time to tackle it. We shipped the kids off for 24 hours, put up new shelves, peg board, recycled a van load of cardboard, freecycled the rest and now we have a basement that functions for us. It STILL may not be ready for the Real Simple photo crew to come in, but it’s oh-so-much-better.

My advice, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your mess, is to start small. Pick one space–just ONE. Set aside some time to tackle it (we don’t always have 24 hours without children to clean up and clear out)–even if you only have 15 minutes, you can still get started! Start by sorting and categorizing the things you need and use, purge what you know you can live without, and then create a home for what you keep. Beautiful bins and lovely containers are nice, but the most important thing is to create a system that you can maintain and that truly helps you to function better day by day.

I hope 2008 is your most organized year yet! If one of your goals for this year is to shovel out from under the mess, let me know. I’m happy to help you set realistic goals and problem solve how to achieve them. Happy New Year!