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Entries Tagged 'Decluttering' ↓
Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed out and frustrated every time you walk into your office? That’s no way to work! I’ve got 7 easy office decluttering tasks that you can tackle in your office and each one will take less than 10 minutes. Set the timer for 10 minutes every day and see what you can accomplish in just 7 days!
Office Decluttering Task #1: Recycle your phone books because you are now using google. This should take maybe 2 minutes, 1 to track them down, 1 minute to walk to the recycle bin, easy peasy!
Office Decluttering Task #2: Recycle or move software boxes to another location other than your immediate workspace.
Office Decluttering Task #3: Declutter your bulletin board. After a while we just tune out the ‘important’ stuff we placed on the bulletin board. Declutter by removing papers, schedules, cards and phone lists that are no longer relevant.
Office Decluttering Task #4: Remove garbage & dirty dishes. Gather up the coffee cups, plates and silverware that have gathered from lunch and get them outta there. Look around for wrappers, fast food containers and empty Starbuck’s cups and get them outta there!
Office Decluttering Task #5: Remove items that are not office related. Which of these don’t look like the other? Has your desk turned into a dumping ground for items that belong elsewhere? Gather toys, beauty supplies & small tools and return them to ‘elsewhere.’
Office Decluttering Task #6: Let go of extra office supplies. Do you have old binders, hanging file folders and 3 extra staplers? Maybe it’s time to dump them or donate them depending on their condition; don’t clutter your “prime real estate” with stuff you don’t use.
Office Decluttering Task #7: Minimize personal mementos. Now, I”m not saying you can’t display your pictures of your old Aunt Betty’s glamour shots, but do keep the volume down. Too many nick nacks, photos and cards on display make for a visually cluttered office. If you must keep them, put half away and switch them out by rotating every few months.
For more tips on how to get organized in your office, please read more right here! And if you have a comment, I’d love to read it right here!
Tags: declutter, decluttering tasks, DIY organization, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, office organization, recycle, software, Starbucks
It can be so much easier to boot excess belonging out of your home if you feel like you know where it’s going and you feel good about where it’s going. I personally just want to get stuff we aren’t using out of my house and I’m good with any local donation truck that may be rolling through. But if you need to go a step further, consider these 7 options to send off clutter for home organization:
- Donate to a charity that is near and dear to your heart. In our area, we have a thrift store that you can donate to who sells the items and uses it for a battered women’s shelter. Maybe you can’t donate money, but your belongings can still raise money-yeah!
Just being able to imagine the group of people you are helping, may be just enough to let your belongings go!
- Pass down children’s items to younger children in your family, neighborhood or church. Clothing, toys and books in good condition can be so appreciated by young families. Just be sure to ask if they need them in case storing your items creates a burden in their home.
- Pass down items to young people just starting out or starting over. Perhaps you know someone who is getting their first apartment or you’ve just read about a family in your area that suffered through a home fire. This is a great opportunity for you to go through your extra linens, dishes and small appliances to see what you can part with.
- Join Freecycle in your area, a grassroots community dedicated to keeping items out of landfills by giving away items for FREE! I used to to get free play chips for our outdoor play area a few years ago.
- Sell it: Sometimes it’s hard to just give away stuff that you’ve spent perfectly good money for. You have options such as consignment stores, antique malls, craigslist, eBay, an eBay trading assistant or a garage sale. Always remember, your time and energy to sell these items is valuable too, make sure it’s worth it to sell.
- Recycle it: If you can keep items out of the garbage and thus the landfills, more power to you! Here in the northwest, we’re particularly fussy about this so be sure to recycle cardboard, paper, bottles, plastic bags, cell phones, batteries and whatever else you can recycle in your area. If you live in WA State: dial 1-800-Recycle
- Shred it. If you’ve got sensitive documents lying around, you may feel better if you drop them off with a local shredding company to get them out of your house. Be wise with documents with bank account numbers, social security numbers, tax ID numbers and credit card numbers on them.
Whatever it takes to get it out, just let it go, you’ll love it and you have a chance to help someone else! For more ways to declutter your home, please read more here.
Tags: clutter, craigslist, declutter your home, DIY organization, ebay, eBay trading assistant, garage sale, hme organization blog, home, Home Organization, recycle, send off clutter
My kitchen is small and my preference is to walk in and see clutter-free counters so it doesn’t make my kitchen look even smaller. Plus, just by my nature, I don’t like to see too many things out all at once in any area of my home. I believe the kitchen is a very important room to keep organized and functional so we can prepare meals quickly and easily. The more we have to push past stuff and search for stuff, the harder it is to work efficiently. Since cooking isn’t my favorite task of the day, I’d rather get in and get out!
Here are 5 Strategies to Clear Your Kitchen Counter of Clutter so you can work efficiently whether you love to cook, bake or not so much!
Decluttering Strategy #1: Throw Away Trash
- Grab a trash bag and look for all the trash that can be tossed on the spot: food wrappers, fast food containers and recycle items such as pop cans (OK soda cans East Coast, I hear ya) and beer bottles.
Decluttering Strategy #2: Let Go of the Extras
- Go drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard and let go of items that you have too much of or that you no longer use. Kids no longer using sippy cups? Let them go. Do you have 30 coffee mugs when you can get by with 10, let 20 go. Chipped dishes that you never use? Let them go.
- Letting go of the extras will free up space to put things away and not leave them out on the counter.
Decluttering Strategy #3: Stow Small Appliances
- Have your counter tops turned into small appliance parking lots? Only keep the most frequently used small appliances out within easy reach. For most of us, this will include a toaster and a coffee pot. Use that extra space you created in the cupboards to store less frequently used items such as juicers and waffle irons.
Decluttering Strategy #4: Stretch Your Space
- Use organizing products to your advantage to stretch your space to hang up your paper towels & hand towels.
Paper Towel Holder from Organized A to Z
Towel Bar from Organized A to Z
Decluttering Strategy #5: Keep a Flow Going
- Make sure dishes don’t end up on the counter and in the sink because the dishwasher needs to be cleaned out. Be sure that someone in your home (or you) has dishwasher duty so you can load it up instead of backing it up.
For even more kitchen organizing strategies, you can keep reading more right here cuz that’s how I roll.
PS: These photos are from my kitchen on a bad day-see, I’m not perfect. 
Tags: clutter, clutter-free, Decluttering, decluttering strategy, DIY organization, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, kitchen counter, Kitchen Organizing, kitchen organizing strategies
If clutter being a nusiance isn’t enough to get you motivated to declutter your home, how about if you think about it in terms of being hazardous to your health? Maybe that will light a fire. Of course it’s all going to depend on just how much clutter any given household has. One cluttered coffee table-probably not so bad. Every floor and flat surface covered with stuff, maybe more of a problem going on.
I’ve got 5 things that I’ve seen personally that I believe can be hazardous to your health and a great motivators to start the decluttering process:
Hazard #1: Animal feces. It’s much easier for animals to get away with using the floor as a potty when they can’t get out the door. It’s also a lot harder to keep up with cleaning it when you can’t see it or the floor.
Hazard #2: Rodents. What a nice, warm, welcoming environment for these friendly little critters to get come in from out of the cold. I’m sure they are very grateful for mounds of soft clothes and paper to shred for their homes. Rat feces and people are not a good combination for good health.
Hazard #3: Accidents. If your floor is covered with clutter, it’s an accident waiting to happen. You don’t want to trip and fall over your own stuff, nor do you want something to come crashing down on your sweet, little head.
Hazard #4: Fire. Talk about scary! If you have stacks of paper a mile high and trails to get around your home, you could really have a dangerous situation.
Hazard #5: Mold. I’ve worked with paper that was stored in a box so long there was black mold growing in there. That is not good and you don’t want to be breathing that in. The good thing though, there was $500 cash in that box! Your house needs to breathe and if you have your walls piled high with stuff, it’s not breathing properly.
It’s so important that you are happy in your home and that your home isn’t a hazard for you or your family. It’s definitely worth your time, energy and effort to declutter so you and your home can breathe easy!
Tags: clutter, declutter, decluttering process, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog
Don’t let clutter live in your home with you forever, start the countdown until you kick clutter to the curb! It’s easy to set stuff aside thinking that you’ll get to it “someday,” that you’ll use it “someday” and that you will fix it “someday.” But “someday” never comes. Slap “someday” silly by creating deadlines for yourself and you’ll know exactly when “someday” has arrived.
Follow these easy deadline decluttering tips:
#1: Create a clutter withdrawl box. As you start purging your stuff, you may come across things you just aren’t sure you are ready to part with yet. Go ahead and put them in a box labeled: “Clutter Withdrawl” and then place a note on your calendar to donate the box. If you have to get something out, that’s OK. If you don’t, you can feel good letting the whole box go. The shorter the timeframe on your calendar, the less time you will have to store it. Aim for 3 months or less.
#2: Expired Stuff:
- Food: Don’t get sick, it’s not worth it. Plus the co-pay to go to the doctor will probably be more than the expired food-go hog wild and treat yourself to new food.
- Coupons: Expired coupons don’t work, say no more.
- Newspapers: It’s old news, let it go. There’s more news on the way!
- Medications: This will give me a freakout-I used to be a back office medical assistant. Please don’t even think about taking old medication, take it someplace where it will be disposed of properly (which means not down the toilet).
#3: Things to fix. Place things that need to be fixed on a shelf and address them once a month. Either fix them, take them to be fixed or throw them out after a month.
#4: Gifts to Give: If you must keep a box, bin or drawer of gifts to give, then make sure you give them. Whenever a holiday or special occasion comes up, go to your gift stockpile first before going hitting the mall. Keep your inventory moving, if it’s not gone by the end of the year, donate it.
#5: Clothes that don’t fit: You’ve got one year baby to get in a smaller size. Make sure you are being fair to yourself and are not keeping sizes that aren’t realistic to get back into. Our bodies change as we get older and it’s not fair to think you should get into your jeans from high school-15 years ago.
Make sure you keep clutter moving right along so you won’t get overwhelmed by yourself. If you need decluttering tips to help get you started, please read more right here!
Tags: clutter, Decluttering, decluttering tips, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, timer
Got clutter and need to hide it? Now, of course I can’t recommend shoving everything in a box and hiding it in the closet now can I? That wouldn’t be very professional organizer of me, but I do know that we all have paper and stuff that we need to keep but we don’t necessarily need or want to look at it 24/7. So here are 5 quick and dirty ways to camouflage clutter:
Mask the Mail
Make it look like it actually belongs on the counter by placing it in an attractive basket until you can process your mail. I always say, “Place it where you pile it.”
Organize.com
Spice up Action Folders
Place papers that you need to take action on (such as bills to pay) in decorative file folders. This is actually mine from my office from Staples.
Folders from Staples
Close the Door on Clutter
Again, I can’t condone shoving stuff behind closed doors, BUT if you have items you are using and you don’t want to see them all at once, consider storing those items behind cupboard doors like this one from Home Depot.
Smuggle it in Solid Baskets & Bins
If you’re anything like me, you don’t like to see all of your stuff at once. In my family room, I tuck my DVD’s in a basket from Ikea so I see the basket when I walk into the family room, not the DVD’s. Consider using attractive baskets or solid color bins instead of clear bins.
Solid Bin from Organize.com
Attractive Baskets from Organize.com
Banish it to a Box
Office supplies, small tools, light bulbs and batteries aren’t attractive, but you can hide them in boxes that are-yeah! Look for boxes that fit your decor, taste and budget.
Box from Organize.com
Box from Organize.com
It is A-OK to dress up your paper and your stuff and turn clutter into an attractive keeper! But if you’ve got clutter that actually needs to take a hike, here are 5 decluttering tips to help you get it out!
Tags: decluttering tips, DIY organization, home, Home Depot, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organize.com, Staples
The holidays are an interesting time of year. It’s the time of year where we are accumulating even more stuff through gift exchanges while also thinking about “getting organized” with new year’s resolutions right around the corner. Of course getting more stuff can make getting organized even more of a challenge! So, if you’re tripping over stuff and would like to use your table and counters once again, try these 5 ways to kick clutter out of your home!
Clutter Kicker #1: Find a charity that you can feel awesome donating your belongings to. It will make it easier to let go of your stuff if you know it’s going to a cause that is dear to your heart. One time, I had a client who had worked at a Montessori school, so we decided that’s where she should donate her children’s old dress-up clothes, it was a win/win.
Clutter Kicker #2: Make time to go through your stuff. You don’t have to wipe out a whole weekend to do it, even tackling one area 15 minutes a day will make a difference! Schedule decluttering time right into your calendar as an appointment or be accountable to a friend by scheduling time to work together. Remember, this is not the time to bring in new stuff though or it will be harder to get ahead.
Clutter Kicker #3: Make quick decisions on what to keep and what to let go, go with your gut. If you don’t use it-out. If you don’t like it-out. If it’s broken-out. If you have too many-out. If it’s no longer relevent-out. If it doesn’t fit-out. Make sure you keep the things that you really use and enjoy. Isn’t hat what you would rather surround yourself with in your home?
Clutter Kicker #4: Stop bringing more stuff in, stop it before it starts! If you’re working on having less stuff, this is a good time to avoid temptations by not shopping, by looking the other way past sales and by driving right past garage sales.
Clutter Kicker #5: Ask others to stop giving you gifts and start giving you activities or services instead. Rather than a gift for your birthday, spend time together going for lunch, coffee or ice cream. For 20 clutter free gift ideas, please read more right here.
Kick clutter to the curb and say, ‘bye, bye clutter!’
Tags: charity, clutter, clutter-free, clutter-free gifts, declutter, DIY organization, gifts, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, stuff
Being organized doesn’t have to be a dream, it can be your reality! I know, I know, you’re a busy mom with a long to-do list and getting organized is just one more task. But home organization projects can be manageable and they can be achieved in small chunks. Yeah for breaking this down and not getting overwhelmed-woot woot!
Incorporate these 5 easy organizing tips in your home so you can get organized:
1) Create a “Catch It” station to make it easy to drop things when you walk in the door and then find them again. Face it, you’re tired and the natural inclination is to drop stuff, usually on the kitchen counter. Instead, create a station by the door where your keys go every single time. This is also a great place to create space for your purse/briefcase, glasses, cell phone and the mail.
2) Keep a bag or box tucked in a closet or under a table for donations at all times. Teach your family to drop items in that they are no longer using or wearing. This will keep items moving out of the house on a regular basis without requiring a major purge.
3) Declutter your home so you don’t have to wade through stuff you don’t use to get to the stuff you do use. Chances are good this will be a longer project, but again, you can break it down and do a little at a time. For more on how to declutter your home without feeling overwhelmed, please read more here.
4) Give all items in your home a place or “home” that is obvious to all who live there, labels never hurt! This will help everyone know where things go, no excuses that they don’t know where to put something!
5) It sounds obvious, but if you get it out, put it away. Get your family in the habit of working together for 5 minutes every evening to put everything back that they got out or were working on earlier in the day. Pitching in to work together will make it go faster and seem easier than one person taking everything on themselves-ahem-Mom.
I would love to hear ways that you stay organized in your home already, please feel free to leave a comment for me!
Tags: DIY organization, get organized, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, home organization projects, labels, organizing tips, stay organized
Here’s one easy way to kick off reaching your home organization goals-toss some stuff! Look around your room or your home and start with easy decisions by getting rid of the clutter that needs to go in the garbage, recycle or shredder. Getting those items out of your way will instantly give you visible results. Visible results keep us motivated to keep going!
Here are 20 items that you should just let go today:
1) Food wrappers/fast food packages.
2) Pop cans (soda-East Coast I hear ya).
3) Old newspapers-it’s old news, let it go!
4) Old magazines. You can get the info. online, or you can rip out the articles or pictures that you really want to save in a notebook.
5) Recipes torn out of magazines that you aren’t ever really going to make.
6) Cardboard boxes-please let them go! If you really must keep some, keep a select few and store them flat.
7) Broken items. If you can’t fix it or won’t fix it, throw it away.
Old chemicals and paints-drop off at your local hazardous waste station.
9) Broken clothes hangers, wire clothes hangers.
10) Old paperwork that doesn’t need to be kept for tax, financial or legal purposes.
11) Old receipts that don’t need to be kept for tax, financial or legal purposes.
12) Plates & cups with chips-not safe.
13) Expired food, not worth it-let it go!
14) Old spices, they only last roughly 3 years
15) Broken or recalled toys.
16) Car seats that have been in an accident.
17) Pet waste-hate to say it but I’ve seen it all.
18) Expired calendars, if you must keep the pictures, then actually rip them out and frame them.
19) Old cell phones-get those to a drop off station.
20) Old batteries-drop batteries off at a local recycle center.
Wouldn’t it be great if all of these items were out of the way? Once these items are gone, you can work on the rest that is still left. Decluttering means making decisions. I’ve written a whole ‘nother post right here to help you with the decluttering process so you don’t feel overwhelmed!
Tags: clutter, declutter, decluttering process, DIY organization, garbage, hazardous waste, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, recycle
Who need more clutter? I don’t! You don’t! Your kids don’t! So here it goes, a quick and dirty brainstorm of 20 clutter-free gifts that you can give and I’m going for it right now!
1) Movie tickets/Theater tickets
2) Babysitting
3) Meals for a week
4) Outing for dessert and coffee
5) Membership to the zoo
6) Membership to the local children’s museum
7) Pay for lessons for children in the family-riding lessons, swim lessons, sport’s fees
Car wash/detailing
9) Housecleaning
10) Food basket
10 down, 10 to go!
11) Gift card for grocery store
12) Donation to charity in someone’s name
13) Flowers
14) Gift card for books for a Kindle
15) iTunes gift card (I love music!)
16) Pay for pet car-veterinarian, animal supplies/food\
17) Pay for a housekeeping service for a deep cleaning
18) Spa services-massage, manicure, pedicure, facial
19) Outing to a winery/wine tasting
20) Membership to movie service such as Netflix
There you go, 20 clutter-free gifts to get you thinking! Here’s a post on just how much clutter costs us to help motivate to keep clutter out!
Tags: charity, clutter costs, clutter-free gifts, declutter, DIY organization, Holiday Organizing, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, iTunes, Kindle, Netflix
