Too Much Clutter? – interview with Warren Moore, 2GB

Yesterday Warren Moore and I had a good chat about the benefits of downsizing and how to keep clutter at bay.

Listen in here.

 

Is Your Laundry Stuck?

Does your laundry get stuck?  It may sound like a funny question, but I often see laundry bottlenecks in homes I work in.  The cycle works like this…

Ready to Wear – Lightly Worn – Dirty – Washed – Dried – Folded/Ironed – Put Away – Ready to Wear

Here are some common places laundry gets stuck, and how to avoid it…

Laundry Bottleneck	What to do about it
Ready to Wear clothes get mixed with Dirty	Have a clearly defined and easy to use place for your dirty laundry to live, waiting for the next step in the cycle
Lightly worn clothes get mixed with Dirty	Have a place for lightly worn clothes to await another wear
Washed clothes are not Dried quickly, resulting in a smelly pile that needs rewashing	Be sure you have time and a plan for moving wet washing on quickly
Dried washing is not processed or put away	The most common of bottlenecks.  While folding and ironing are optional, putting away is the key to laundry flowing freely.  Decide where Ready to Wear clothes will live.  Is there enough space for all your clean laundry to live?  If not, you either have too much laundry or not enough space.

Once all those bottlenecks are clear, the cycle should flow easily, as long as enough time and energy is set aside for this essential task.

And we sure have come a long way from beating our washing on a rock, hand washing, or even using a copper and mangle.

If laundry still gets you down, or stuck, there is help at hand.  Creating Order from Chaos can help.

5 Minute Bedside Drawer Fling

Here’s another 5 minute organising task.  Sure, you might have more time on your hands.  Sure, big organising projects take longer than just 5 minutes.  But clients are often surprised when I tell them they can get organised 5 minutes at a time.

Some people believe you need to set aside a big chunk of time to get organised, perhaps even a whole afternoon.  And that stops progress, because honestly, who has that amount of free time on a regular basis?  No, even 5 minutes is enough time to make a difference.

Did you try the last 5 minute task?  Check it out here.

This time I want you to go through your drawers.  Well, just one drawer at a time.  Start with your bedside drawer.  Pull out the contents and quickly sort them.

You’re bound to find some things you no longer need.  You know what to do.

You’ll find things that belong elsewhere in the house.  You know what to do.

You’ll find things you don’t even recognise or remember.  You’ll think of what to do.  😉

This is a great one to do while you’re on the phone to a friend, or on hold with the phone company.

And that’s your 5 minutes for today.

No time to Get Organised?

Think you have no time to get organised?  I’ll bring you a series of quick tasks that will make a big difference, and they only take 5 minutes or less.  Yes, work your way to organised in just 5 minute increments.

Today’s 5 Minute Organiser Tip is…

Stop Junk Mail Coming in the Door.

Grab your Dymo Labelmaker or a felt tip pen and some masking tape or a sticker.  Create a “No Junk Mail” sticker and put it where it will be seen by the postie.

That’s it, you’re done.

No more junk mail taking up space and time and money.

Conscious Shopping Mini Course

Jill Chivers, creator of My Year Without Clothes Shopping, has developed a 6-week Conscious Shopping Mini Course, designed to help you identify how and why you shop, as well as giving you skills to change your relationship with shopping.

She identifies common driving forces for compulsive and over-shoppers while suggesting tactics to overcome these impulses and find the shopping buzz without spending money.  Especially helpful is the support provided through this course – twice weekly course content, coupled with regular blog articles help keep you on track to achieving the main course objective, without being overwhelmed by homework or feeling stranded between sessions.

The 6-week Conscious Shopping Mini Course is a fantastic introduction to her program, offering helpful hints and moments for self-reflection to help you become a more conscious shopper.

How to Create Order at Home

Save the Date for the upcoming Teleclass – How to Create Order at Home

Tuesday February 21st at 8pm

You will hear

• How to spot Clutter at 20 paces
• What to do about it
• Where to start
• How to stay motivated
• And more

You will receive

• Live Teleclass
• Recording of the teleclass
• $20 voucher to use for Hands-On and Virtual Organising Services

Your investment is just $20!

For more information, click here.

 

Living Large in Small Spaces

Have you ever heard of a Float Home?  It’s a home that floats.  It’s not a houseboat.  Houseboats have engines that can move them about.  Float homes just sit in one place on water.  I saw some on a trip to Canada recently.  They were simply adorable.  Talk about water frontage!

But there is a limit to how large a home floating on water can be.  Could you live life large in a small space?  What changes would you make?

A Word with Sarah Webb

Sarah Webb is the talent and brains behind Vivenda, a fabulous service that frees up your time and feeds you and your family nutritious and delicious meals.

I asked her to share some insights into how she manages to keep on top of things, and sane, while running her business.  Here’s what she said…

Sarah, I know you have a lot “on your plate”, do you prefer a paper or electronic diary to keep track of all your appointments?  Both.  Electronic so that I get pop-up reminders, I use my iPhone; but also paper so that I can look at it if I’m making an appointment with someone while I’m on the phone.  I have to be very conscientious about keeping both updated.

I’ll bet!  What’s your favourite iPhone App? Urbanspoon. I can feel like an in-the-know local wherever I am by checking out the restaurant reviews.

Tell us about a favourite organising tool.  It would have to be Excel, I love a good spreadsheet!  I like to be quite systematic about things and keep good track of what is going on in the business and Excel lets me do this simply & effectively.  For example, looking at my favourite spreadsheet I can tell you that my most popular dishes are Chicken, Leek & Pancetta Pie and Meatballs Napoletana!

Yum!  And that is very organised.  How do you reward yourself for your achievements?  Usually it’s by buying myself a new tool or gadget for the kitchen, I got some beautiful new tart tins to celebrate my first 6 months in business.

I can see a theme there.  You are very passionate about food.  How do you spend your down time?  I hang out with my niece and nephews as much as I can. They live 3 minutes away so I manage to find an excuse to drop in on them very regularly!

Thanks for spending time with us, Sarah!

How to Organise while you watch the Tennis

Today marks the start of the Australian Open – 2 weeks of top-quality tennis.  TV sets will be tuned in to watch every ball.

This does not mean you can’t achieve a little something while you treat yourself to a feast of summer tennis.  Here are some suggestions:

• Go through that stack of magazines by the couch.  Flick through and find the recipes you simply must try (and decide when you’ll try them)
• Go through the stack of recipes you’ve torn out of magazines in the past and decide if they’re still for you, and when you’ll try them
• Sort through books, DVDs, CDs, your iPod and decide on the ones that you want to read, watch or hear again, and you know what to do with the rest
• Finish a UFO – UnFinished Object – any project you’ve set aside
• Write those letters and thank you notes you’ve been meaning to get to
• Sort through photos and toss the blurry, the duplicates, the unnecessary
• Catch up on housework – ironing, laundry folding, mending, polishing silver
• Get some meal planning done

What else could you do?

How to Avoid Organising Mistake #7

Drum roll please!  We’ve come to the final in our list of 7 Common Mistakes of DIY Organising Projects.

Listen to well-intentioned but ill-informed advice

People don’t mean to make your situation worse, but unfortunately they sometimes do.  And sometimes it’s hard to differentiate the good advice people can give from the downright nonsense.  Most often it comes from someone who loves you and wants the best for you.  That’s probably the hardest one to resist.  But other times you can find this well-intentioned but ill-informed advice in glossy magazines – the ones with lovely pictures of expensive “storage solutions”.

Announcing to your friends that you wish you could be more organised is a bit like being a new mother – everyone has advice, some of it conflicting, and all of it from their own perspective, not yours.

Unless the advice takes into account your situation, your budget, your available time and resources, your learning style, your space, your needs, your desires, and the needs and desires of all the others you live with, then it’s just not good enough.

Too often well-intentioned but ill-informed advice is tempered with frustration from a loved one, for whatever reason.

Ever heard any of these…

• “You don’t need that, just chuck it out!”
• “What are you hanging on to that old thing for?”
• “Why can’t you just deal with this stuff on your own?”
• “If you haven’t worn it in a year, you don’t need it.”

Don’t get me started on that last one – it’s worth a post all its own.  Just believe me when I say, nothing is ever as concrete, set in stone, one size fits all, as that.

Anyway, my point is this – if you need help on your organising journey, by all means, invite a friend or loved along for the ride.  Just make it clear to them and yourself what their role will be, and who will be making the decisions.  And it goes without saying that if you feel pushed, or even bullied, into making decisions in the organising process, you have invited the wrong person to join you.