Organize Oregon

Many clients simply do not have time to get organized. They work 60+ hours a week, have children, rarely get time to use the stove, even if it wasn’t covered with pans.

This weekly organizational series is for you. Each day’s task shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, except for one 30 minute session each week.

I hope this helps you start to reclaim you life and home. It’s a slower process than an all out attack on the clutter, but you will see results, and will be motivated to continue.

Remember, even young kids can help with organizing, and in each week’s post, I’ll make a note how they can help.

You can view each week’s post here: http://www.organizeoregon.com/category/organizing-weekly/

Please subscribe to the blog feed to get notified of new posts, and follow me on Twitter to see all the tips and ideas!

Continue Reading

Organizing for a move is not the most fun thing we can do with our time, but with some preparation, it can make the whole process go smoother and quicker, with less stress.

Your first step is decluttering, which ideally should be started months in advance. This gives you time to go through everything and have a yard sale if you like, without rushing and stress.

Supplies needed:

• Boxes
• Newspaper
• Yard Sale Kit (at least pricing stickers and signs)
• Packing tape
• Markers

Get a box for each room of your house. Each time you’re in that room, look around. See something you don’t want to pack, move, and eventually unpack? Put it in the box. If the room is very cluttered, you may need to take a day or more (and extra boxes) and concentrate on just that room.

Look in cupboards and every nook in your home. Imagine yourself packing each item, moving it, and unpacking it. Is this object in your hand worth it? If not, in the box it goes. Create a separate box for breakable items, and wrap dishes, etc in newspaper so they don’t chip or break while they await their next home.

When you’ve gotten rid of everything you can, it’s yard sale time. Now is not the time to try to get rich or completely finance your move. Remove your emotions from the item and price it low enough it will actually sell.

After your yard sale, take stock of what you have and what you need now, and what you can do without until you’ve moved.

Items you can usually do without until after your move (depending on how long it is til you move, of course):

• Seasonal clothes and bedding (considering packing in Space Bags to save space, just don’t make your boxes too heavy)
• Hanging art/pictures
• Holiday decorations & supplies
• Extra bedding, towels, curtains
• Books, photo albums, movies, video games (leave out often used)
• Anything else you won’t need for about 2 weeks after you’ve moved in

Pack these items, tucking the boxes away to be added to (and taped up and labeled when full). If you do this over months before your move, it’s so much less stressful than trying to get everything sorted and packed a few weeks before. As you are packing, if you find more items you don’t want, put them in a box by the front door and take those items to a donation drop off.

Coming soon: Organizing for a move: Part 2 (Moving Day)

Continue Reading

If you have more books than you know what to do with, you aren’t alone. Something all of my clients have in common is too many books – oftentimes they even have stacks upon stacks of books they’ve bought to read later, and there they sit collecting dust, months, even years later. The rest of their book collection consists of a library’s worth of books they’ve read, but won’t ever pick up again with a few books that they do reread on occasion mixed in. 

Unless you have a room dedicated to being a library, most regular folks don’t have room for all the books they’ll read in a lifetime (never mind most Americans aren’t reading as much as they ought to!), but people with mild to severe hoarding almost always hang on to every book they’ve ever brought home. But only a handful ever get read more than once. I walk my clients through the process of parting with all these books and learning how to adjust their behaviors so it doesn’t happen again.

The Kindle has been a big help to both my clients and myself. E-Readers have come a long way since their first inception and offer not only a fantastic reading experience, but a huge assortment of books to load your Kindle, not your home, with. They have come down dramatically in price that they are within reach of most families, and make a great birthday or holiday present.

You undoubtedly have books you will never part with. But all those paperbacks you read once and haven’t picked up since… your local shelter would be thrilled to get them! So go through your books. Make a list of the books you want to “keep” and see if they’re available on the Kindle. During this process, you might just find that you aren’t as interested in many of those books as you thought and you’ll be able to part with them without buying their digital counterpart. Below are some books to get your started, they all come in Kindle versions, and the last 3 also have bound book versions, just in case you aren’t ready to make the Kindle plunge yet.

Continue Reading