by Eileen Roth
Sale: Your favorite four-letter word
You walk into any store and what’s the first sign you see? SALE!
So you make a beeline to the display behind the sign to see all the ways you can save money by buying more today. Suddenly, shopping is not a matter of looking for what you came for but of choosing from what the store has put on sale. You’re no longer matching a solution to a need. The seller takes over, telling you what to buy — even if you already have a sweater in that color, or own nothing to match, so now you need to buy a pair of pants—at full price—-too. As you organize yourself and your home, you’ll find it easier to put up a stop sign between you and the sale sign. You’ll think of your nice neat closet . . . your nice full wallet . . . and you’ll just say no.
Freebies
Even more appealing than a sale to our bargain-hunting soul is that other four-letter word: free. Free lunch, free toothbrush, free trip for two to Bermuda — this single syllable is a siren call to all acquirers. But free offers usually have a price. Either the item comes attached to something else that you have to buy and might not want, or you have to buy more later, or you have to spend time filling out rebate forms and matching them to receipts and getting them in the mail.
Let’s say a certain brand is giving away a free toothbrush when you buy a tube of toothpaste. Great, you think, I need a toothbrush, so you buy it. But you use a different brand of toothpaste specially formulated for sensitive teeth, and the new tube sits around forever. Was that toothbrush free? Nope. It cost the price of the toothpaste you didn’t use and the space to store it.
Maybe you spend 15 minutes filling out a $1 rebate. Isn’t your time worth more than $4 an hour? Add in the cost of the stamp and envelope, and you’re really in the hole.
Then there are the notorious offers where you get a free book or CD if you agree to buy ten more during the year. Would you buy ten books otherwise? Do they have the books you want? At the end of the year, will you have read them all? Any? Do you have space on your shelf for ten more books?
Even true giveaways — pens, mugs, calendars, caps, knickknacks — that promote a company or product aren’t free. You’re advertising at the cost of the space in your life.
I’ve already talked about the costs of clutter. As you read this book and become more clutter-conscious, you’ll free yourself from free things that come at a price.
Warning: This car stops at garage sales
Many cars have such a bumper sticker. The warning can at least help prevent accidents from the sudden stops, if not the clutter disaster that can result from garage-sale shopping.
I admit that I once had a garage sale problem myself. When my girls were young, they liked to take their little wallets full of pennies, nickels, and dimes and go trolling for clothes, costume jewelry to play dress-up, puzzles, games, books, toys; once we even landed a pair of roller skates. But as I started to see my house fill up, I realized what was happening: Everyone else was putting out their clutter, and I was taking it home and making it mine. How did I recover from this organizing error? I turned around and had my own garage sale. What came in the front door went out the garage door. (Now, of course, I don’t let clutter in any door at all.) For ideas on having your own garage sale, see Chapter 24 in the Part of Tens.
Organizing principles show you that if you do buy something used, you should check to be sure you need it and that it works. Are all the parts there? Does it look nice? If it needs repair, can you take care of it easily, cheaply, within the next week?
Getting organized will also help you drive on by those garage sales and get on with your life.
The cute effect
One quick definition of the word cute is useless. Cute things are rarely high-value purchases, but they have a way of getting you to open your wallet. Probably the reason the thing is sending a smile across your face is because it’s so silly — a wild and crazy dress you’d never wear outside the fitting room, a really dumb joke on a coffee mug, a talking tie. The problem is that cute (or stylish, or wild, or silly) wears off fast. Puppies are cute too, but you better not buy one unless you eventually want a grown-up dog.
As you discover how not to clutter up your life, you’ll find yourself less attracted to things of only momentary meaning. You’ll gravitate to acquiring items that will last and matter. You’ll buy less “cute.”
Gifts that keep on taking
A gift, almost by definition, is something you didn’t choose — so you may or may not want it. But a gift is also a token of affection or esteem, so you have to keep it, right?
The important thing to remember about gifts is that they’re meant to make you happy. Clutter doesn’t do that. Clutter messes up your life. So observe the true spirit of giving by returning gifts you don’t want to the store, exchanging them for something you can use, or putting the refund money in the kids’ college fund. Maybe you know someone who really wants or needs the item. Give it to them. (Don’t just pass on clutter, though. That is not the spirit of giving.)
There are occasional cases, usually involving good friends or relatives, in which the giver expects to see the gift in use. Does that mean you have to display the ugly vase from Aunt Susie or wear the so-not-you sweater from a friend all the time? Of course not. The true clutter-busting solution is to tell Aunt Susie the vase broke and your friend that the cat clawed the sweater to shreds or you spilled coffee all over it and the ugly stain won’t come out — then quietly return or donate the gifts. If you prefer not to fib, put the vase away in a remote cupboard and the sweater on a high closet shelf. Get the vase out when Aunt Susie comes to visit. Wear the sweater once in awhile when you see your friend. Don’t let things you don’t like take up prime space in your life.
Saving for later
Did your parents teach you to save for a rainy day? Great. Go have a garage sale, get rid of all the junk, and put the cash in the bank for the day you lose your job, leave your relationship, or make another major life change. Clothes you can’t or don’t wear anymore, old appliances and dinner plates, outdated files and papers, and extra boxes of staples simply aren’t going to make the difference on that rainy day. Though someday may always seem just around the corner, the chapters that follow will help you make more of today by clearing away the clutter you’re saving for later. Focusing on the present can yield many future benefits.
Souvenirs and mementos
Souvenirs are another form of saving for later, trying to capture a moment in a thing. When travel becomes a quest to acquire objects to remember you were there instead of devoting yourself to being there, you’re cheating yourself now and cluttering up your later. Why not skip the souvenir shops and loll on the beach, lay back in a café, or take in a museum or show instead? The word vacation comes from to vacate, which is hardly what you’re doing when you fill up your suitcase with tchotchkes to take back home.
You want to remember special moments. This book offers hints on how to snap photos and shoot videotapes packed with personal meaning; catalog your archives for easy, anytime enjoyment; select the special accents from your travels and adventures that spice up your life, and leave the junk behind.
Why get organized? To collect the payoff of putting everything in its place: More time and less stress. Cash in your pocket and peace of mind. Peak productivity, better health, and more rewarding relationships.
Flip through the pages of this book to see how you can put organization to work for you, from planning a meal to pulling off a strategic project; from beautifying your home to cleaning up your computer. Get organized so you can make more of your life while working less, and let these proven systems take care of the rest.
Aunt Babe’s gifts
I was the only relative living nearby when my Great-Aunt Babe decided she was getting old and wanted to start passing on some of her things, which she had plenty of. She and Uncle Abe had lived in their house since the 1930s or so, and though it was very neat; boy, was it packed full, so I greeted her announceme
nt with some trepidation. Still, she was like a grandmother to my girls and very dear to me, so I dealt with her gifts and learned some good strategies in the process.
Gift #1: Don’t want or need it. Aunt Babe’s first gift was simple: some cloth doilies for the holidays. Though I didn’t want them, it was easy to take them and pass on to my sister, who did.
Gift #2: Needs work but useful. The next visit to Aunt Babe’s house was a little more nerve- racking. She had some chairs, she said. Oh no, I thought. I have zero appreciation for antiques (what can I say?), and it would be tough to get rid of an entire set of chairs, let alone explain their absence when Aunt Babe came over. But lo and behold, Babe pulled out these light wood chairs with gorgeously carved backs that I absolutely loved. The only problem was that they were upholstered in an awful shade of green. I took them directly to the furniture shop — and the key word here is directly — and had them recovered in a shade I liked. Transformed by a simple fix from ugly to beautiful and very useful for parties and holidays, those chairs are still with me, though Aunt Babe’s been gone for more than ten years.
Gift #3: I hate it, the kids love it. The next time, Aunt Babe pulled a grandmother’s trick and applied her gift-giving wiles directly to my daughters. “Girls, would you like those shell collections on the wall?” she innocently asked. We’re talking two truly bad-looking spraypainted shell collections that had me groaning and the girls, age 3 and 5 at the time, jumping up and down with glee. Nothing to be done here. To them, the shells were a piece of Aunt Babe. Those shell collections hung in my basement for 15 years until I moved. Some gifts you just can’t fight.
Gift #4: I hate it, the kids hate it. The fourth time, Aunt Babe bypassed me again, offering the girls an old chenille bedspread. Chenille apparently has none of the appeal of shells to little girls, and it went over like a lead balloon with them. The spread looked old and decrepit to me too. I didn’t want it, they didn’t want it, but what were we going to do, hurt an old woman’s feelings? We took the old spread and I donated it to charity.
Chapter 2
Training Your Mind to Be Organized
In This Chapter
Organization as a state of mind
Setting your organizing goals
Making time to get organized
Breaking down organizing jobs into bite-size pieces
Personalizing your organizing plan
Maintaining an easy mindset to end yo-yo organizing forever
I n the last chapter, I hope I convinced you that organization isn’t inherited — organizing is learned. That means that whatever disorganized secrets lurk in your past or what a mess you see when you assess your present condition, you can become organized and stay that way for a lifetime.
“But organizing sounds hard!” you may think, and that could be the case if I were talking about calculus and you’d only gone as far as basic algebra. But I’m not. Though there are many useful principles and tips behind getting organized in every aspect of your life — a whole book’s worth in fact — thinking like an organized person isn’t rocket science. Being organized is simply a habit, just like brushing your teeth, which, believe it or not, you once didn’t know how to do.
Organization begins in the mind. Once you’ve got those synaptic connections in place, you can start to see what to do even before I tell you. Take a few minutes to read this chapter to get a jump start on the organizational mindset, as well as how to organize the process of getting organized. After all, how can you get started if there’s a mess in your mind?
Letting Go to Find Flow
Begin by clearing the decks. Sit back for a minute and close your eyes. Dream up a picture of perfect peace. Do that now, and then come back and read on to the next paragraph.
What did your picture of peace look like? Was it full of papers and old clothes and tightly packed days on the calendar? Probably not. The first thing most people do when they picture peace is let go of all that stuff that seems so important in daily life, and return to a clean, clear state that you may consider original. The way people were meant to be.
Flow is a word used by psychologists, artists, coaches, and other performance-minded people to describe the state of mind and body when everything’s perfectly in tune. You’re completely focused on your task. Nothing stands in your way. To get there, you have to let go.
What blocks flow? Time wasters, distractions, and frustrations. Items out of place. Disorder, and the disaster that can result when you don’t plan ahead. Freeing your life from things and tasks that aren’t necessary and streamlining those that are is the best way to attain flow, find fulfillment, and achieve your peak potential. I’m not talking about being a minimalist (though you’re welcome to take that course if it’s your way). Bare skin and bones don’t make a person. The builder builds a house, but until you put things inside, the house is not a home. Sometimes, new clients are afraid that when I come in I’m going to throw out their favorite possessions or interfere with their daily rituals. Getting organized is not about stripping away the extra touches that make us who we are. I’m not a minimalist, nor am I trying to turn you into a robot. I simply want you to get organized so that you can enjoy life.
Your Organizing Plan
The first step in wrapping your mind around the organizational challenge is to make a plan. How to begin? What next? Start with a basic planning tool that will pop up throughout the book. To make a plan, simply think like a journalist. No, not “man bites dog.” This technique is what I call the Five Ws Plus How — six questions reporters ask when writing a story, and that can put any plan into place: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? These are easy questions, but actively answering them can help you make a concrete plan.
Organizing your mission
Why do you want to get organized? To create an organized mindset, you need a mission. Saving time, saving money, reducing stress, enhancing performance, building self-esteem, and improving relationships may figure into your organizing mission. For me it always boils down to my trademark phrase, which you just read a few paragraphs back: Get organized to enjoy life.‰
Aren’t those little trademark signs nifty? By the way, you definitely need to be organized if you ever want to deal with the Office of Trademarks and Patents. But that’s a story for another day.
Take a minute now to decide on your organizing mission statement. Here are a few examples:
My mission is to get organized so that I can enjoy more time with my family and friends.
I want to improve my organizing skills to achieve my true potential at work.
Our group’s objective is to use organizational techniques to speed processes, facilitate communications, and reduce individual stress levels.
Have you got your mission statement? Good. Write it down here.
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Your organizing goals
What are your organizing goals? Once you’ve got a mission, you can set specific objectives. Do you want to organize your home? Your office? Your time? One after the other in priority order? The point is not to try to take on everything at once, but to focus on what you want to do now. You can select a single closet or an officewide process. You might want to shape up your computer files or finally find the right containers for your kids’ toys. Maybe the main immediate goal is to clean up your living room so you can welcome friends and family into your home. You may have one goal or ten, big ones or small ones. Perhaps your goals have a domino effect — if you get one done, then you want to do another. Can you guess what I’d like you to do with your organizing goals? That’s right — write them down.
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Your organizing time
When’s a good time to get organized? Eventually, the answer may be “all the time,” but when you’re just getting started, being more specific helps. Spring cleaning, fall cleanup, the new year, or start of the school year are all natural times to get organized. A big deadline at work may spur you to organize at the office. Knowing the family is coming for Thanksgiving can get you in gear at home. Moving? You better get organized from bottom to top. (I’m moving from Chicago to Phoenix as I finish this book, so I know what I’m talking about. You should see me opening up one of my carefully catalogued and numbered packing boxes to pull out a reference book when my co-author Elizabeth asks a question I need to research. Trust me. This book would not be in your hands if I didn’t practice all the principles you’re discovering here.)
To find out more about setting goals by the season, you can peruse Chapter 18. But for now, you can get going simply by reading on.
One of the most frequent complaints I hear is, “I don’t have time to get organized!” Have you ever made such an assertion yourself? As I said in Chapter 1, the less time you have, the more you stand to benefit from organization, so break down the time barrier with five easy techniques for managing your organizing time.
Chunking your chores