Archive for the ‘clutter’ Category

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National Organize Your Home Office Day & National Clutter Awareness Week

Friday, March 5th, 2010


Here’s the definition of clutter that I like: Clutter is postponed decision making. Can you relate? I thought so. Certain decisions you avoid making, for one reason or another, create clutter. De-cluttering will be difficult – if not impossible – until you face them and take the necessary action. I sometimes jokingly say to clients that I do organizing, not magic. Believe me, if I had one, I would be happy to wave a magic wand and make everyone’s clutter disappear!

Tuesday, March 9 is National Organize Your Home Office Day and National Clutter Awareness Week is March 15-19. Most of you are probably fully “aware” of your clutter and don’t really need an official National Week to notice it or an official National Day to know that your desk needs organizing. However, they provide a reminder and an opportunity to actually take the time to think about how clutter affects your life – and the lives of those around you – and DO something about it. Doing something about it means learning new habits and behaviors that help you get and stay organized. It also means getting yourself help if you need it.

You need the right plan and the right products to successfully get organized. Asking someone you feel close to to help you is a valid approach and it can be effective IF they are able, willing and have the time and the skills. If no such person exists, a Professional Organizer can provide both and do it quickly, efficiently and discreetly. A good organizer knows what works and – just as importantly – what doesn’t. For these reasons, many people prefer the specialized skills and training that a Professional Organizer has to offer. Just as you would consult a doctor, lawyer, financial planner, auto mechanic, personal trainer, etc., you can feel confident turning to a Professional Organizer for reliable, skilled and confidential help if you’re having trouble getting or staying organized. There’s no substitute for being guided by an expert in the field who will calmly help you without judgment, provide you with motivation and keep you focused and on track.

Posted in clutter, disorganization, home offices | Comments Off

Announcing the formation of The New York Public Library Clutter Support Group.

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Do you feel overwhelmed by the possessions, paper and piles that have taken over your life and space? Don’t know how or where to start to make changes? You’re not alone.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is pleased to announce the formation of a free, educational support group for individuals who are struggling with clutter and disorganization. The NYPL Clutter Support Group will be a member-based group facilitated by organizing expert A. J. Miller. It will meet on an ongoing basis to address clutter and disorganization related issues and offer support, information, tips and techniques to combat clutter and become better organized.

The NYPL Clutter Support Group is open to people of all ages with any degree of disorganization. Whether you’ve had a life long struggle with being organized or your problem is more recent; whether you’re just a little overloaded, a hoarder, have ADHD or are living with someone who is one of these, please join us.

We look forward to seeing you at our introductory meeting on February 4, 2009 from 6:00 – 6:45PM at The New York Public Library, Grand Central Branch, 135 E. 46th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.

Posted in ADHD, clutter, disorganization, hoarding, products/resources, simplicity + consumerism, stress | Comments Off

January is National Get Organized Month.

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Did you know that every year getting organized is one of the top five New Year’s resolutions? January is well underway but, unfortunately, if you’re like most people, you’ve probably already broken some or all of your resolutions. If that’s true, the good news is that even though we’re already half way through the month, there’s still plenty of time for you to fulfill the promise of National GO – Get Organized – month and accomplish your goal of getting organized this year.

Changing even just a single habit or routine can be very difficult. If it wasn’t, there would be no need for New Year’s resolutions because we’d all be able to make a change as soon as we recognized the need for it. The important thing is to get started and chose just one, simple goal, something that you know you can accomplish before the month comes to a close. Break your goal down into small steps and reward yourself when you accomplish it. By focusing on just one goal, you can devote all the necessary attention and effort to it, greatly improving your chances of success.

Begin with a small, manageable project. For example, organize your sock drawer. If you’re like most people, being able find a pair of matching socks every morning will inspire you to tackle organizing additional drawers, your closet and other spaces. Experiencing the benefits of organization – more time to spend with the people you love; more energy for the things you want to do; more money in your pocket and less anxiety in your life – breeds the motivation to do more. Accomplishing your organizing goal this month will make it easier to accomplish another organizing goal next month and the month after that and the month after that and so on.

Regardless of whether the past year was good or bad for you, focus now on what the new year may bring and what you can do to conquer your organizing challenges. Happy New Year. I hope that 2010 will be one of your best years ever!

So, what are you waiting for? G.O.!

Posted in clutter, reasons to get organized | Comments Off

Say hello to your new BFF.

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Here’s what InStyle Magazine had to say in their November 2009 issue about My Style Fashion Assistant, an app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.

“Macworld.com’s App Guide reviews more than 73,000 iPhone apps now available to download on iTunes. We’ve combed through them to find the best ones for shopping, saving and amping up your style.

We love this app, which acts as your very own stylist. It keeps track of what you have, what you wear, what you want, and it allows you to mix and match it all. It even helps you plan for trips – it’s the ultimate fashion organizer!”

Features include:

* Take Pictures Of Your Clothing, Shoes, Accessories & Bags
* Add Items To Your Closet Or Personal Fitting Room
* Mix-&-Match Items With The Revolutionary 3-Panel Slider
* Create Outfits For Every Occasion
* Window Shop Online
* Item & Outfit Calendars
* Get Fashion Feedback From Friends
* Take Your Wardrobe With You Everywhere
* Organize Outfits In Specific Lifestyle Categories
* Plan For That Upcoming Trip, Event Or Special Occasion
* Get Expert Fashion Tips
* Receive Savings From My Style Retail Partners

If you’ve ever stood in front of your jam-packed closets wondering what to wear or bought the same item multiple times because you couldn’t find the original one, this app is for you. Save money and reduce the clutter in your closets by making the most out of your wardrobe with My Style Fashion Assistant. You’ll never had to say “I don’t have anything to wear!” again.

Posted in clothes/shoes, clutter, money savers, products/resources | Comments Off

Charitable gift giving

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

money/billfold

Choosing the right gift for loved ones, friends and associates can often be a tricky business so some gift givers choose to make a charitable donation in the recipient’s name instead of opting for a more traditional gift.

Focusing on the recipient’s interests, passions, lifestyle and what would be meaningful to them is the key to a successful giving experience. Consider children, as well as adults, when you’re thinking about charitable gift giving. Giving children a small amount of cash and letting them choose which cause they want to support is a wonderful way to encourage them to become philanthropic adults.

Here are just a few of the many organizations that are worthy of consideration:

  • UNICEF – Works for children’s rights, their survival, development and protection by providing them with vaccinations, food, education and much more.
  • Kiva – Allows you to make a loan to a low-income entrepreneur across the globe for as little as $25 and help them to start their own business.
  • Heifer International – Gives hungry, poor families livestock and training, providing a source of food rather than short-term relief. Recipient families are required to share their animals’ offspring with others, creating an expanding network of hope, dignity and self-reliance.
  • National Park Foundation – Helps educate Americans about the their National Parks.
  • National Foster Parent Association – Helps foster parents and children through advocacy, services and scholarships.
  • Trickle Up – Offers grants, not loans, to women and people with disabilities in Africa, Latin America and Asia living on less than $1 to help them launch their own microenterprises, while providing business training and savings support to build assets.
  • Smile Train – Provides cleft lip and cleft palate surgery to children in need, as well as providing cleft-related training to doctors.
  • Reading is Fundamental – Books, literacy campaigns, and reading to children.
  • Habitat for Humanity – Builds houses for needy families.
  • Big Brother Big Sister – Provides mentors to all children who need caring adult role models/special friends.
  • Sierra Club – Promotes conservation efforts aimed at protecting communities, wild places and the planet itself.
  • Doctors Without Borders – Doctors and nurses volunteer to provide urgent medical care to victims of war and disaster regardless of race, religion, or politics.
  • ORBIS International – Focuses on the prevention of blindness and the treatment of blinding eye diseases in developing countries.
  • National Center for Tobacco-free Kids – Helps reduce the number of children who will start smoking.
  • Rainforest Alliance – Dedicated to the conservation of the planet’s vital tropical forests.
  • Children for Children – Promotes community involvement and social responsibility in children from all backgrounds, beginning at a young age.
  • What I Did Not Buy – An online community where people choose “not to buy” and can see the impact of that re-directed money on poor people in developing nations.

I would recommend that you use Charity Navigator to help you to evaluate charities before you donate to them. If you’re not sure which charity would be most meaningful to your recipients, let them choose for themselves by giving them a gift card like the ones offered by Just Give, Global Giving and Charity Navigator.

Giving to charities is a clutter-free, feel-good, do-good way to honor the person in whose name the gift is made, and, really, how many people do you know who need more “stuff?

Posted in clutter, donate/charities/thriftshops, gifts | Comments Off

Holiday shopping traps you should know about.

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

spider web

Bricks & mortar and online stores are both hoping you’ll spend more than you meant to and they’re expert at making it easy for you to do just that. BEFORE YOU GO SHOPPING, make a list of what you need to buy and stick to it. Watch out for the following traps:

* Free gift with purchase. If you’re spending more than you had intended just to get a “free” gift, then it’s really not so free after all, is it? Think about it.

* Free shipping. Ditto.

* It’s on sale. If you didn’t plan to buy it in the first place, it doesn’t matter what the price is, it’s not a bargain! Stop clutter where it starts…at the store!

* Bigger is better. Not if you really don’t need it in the jumbo size! And not if it takes you two years to go through a package of twelve and you really can’t afford to spare the space for them for that long!

* If one is good, two is better. Don’t buy an item in every color unless you really will use them all!

Posted in clutter, money savers, seasonal | Comments Off

Clutter-free gift giving ideas

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

red bowSince the major gift giving time of the year is upon us, here are two ideas to help stem the tide of gift clutter. My first suggestion is simply to go gift-free. For those of you who aren’t ready to do that, my second suggestion is to both request and give clutter-free gifts.

As someone who helps people deal with too much “stuff” and not enough space for it all (FYI: it doesn’t matter how much space you have, you never have enough!), I can tell you that giving gifts that don’t clutter up the receiver’s space or life yet are creative, thoughtful and useful are the best kind you can give .

Here are some clutter-free suggestions for everyone on your holiday list. These will allow you to participate in and enjoy gift giving while at the same time relieving the burden on the recipient. Be sure not to give a well-intended gift that might be misunderstood and that ends up offending the recipient. For instance, if your sister doesn’t like or wear make-up, don’t give her a gift certificate for a make-up consultation. Ditto for other self-improvement services.

Memberships to:

* museums
* zoos
* botanical gardens
* aquariums
* historical societies
* theatre clubs
* state parks, county parks, etc.
* health clubs/gyms
* humane society
* nature conservancy
* AAA (Automobile Club of America)
* Zipcar (Cars parked around a city for members to drive by the hour instead of owning their own vehicles)

Gift Certificates for:

* massage
* facial
* their favorite hair salon
* manicure/pedicure
* health club
* exercise class
* spa
* local greenhouse, nursery or garden center
* bulb or seed catalog
* fun workshop or mini-course
* iTunes music download
* home improvement store to help with the cost of home maintenance
* computer software
* Blockbuster or Netflix
* Starbucks
* car washes
* trip in a helicopter or hot air balloon

Gifts of Service – Create your own voucher good for:

* babysitting
* breakfast in bed
* house cleaning or yard work or snow plowing/shoveling provided by you or someone you hire
* automobile maintenance (oil change, etc.)
* dishwashing for a day, a week, etc.
* running errands for a day, a week, etc.
* helping them with their next spring cleaning
* painting or hiring someone to paint that room they’ve been meaning to get to
* getting something of theirs that is broken repaired
* helping them plant their garden next spring
* helping them organize their photos

* teaching them a skill you have

Consumable Gifts:

* theatre, ballet, concert or symphony tickets
* tickets to an art exhibition or sporting event
* home cooked frozen meals
* homemade cookies, brownies, etc.
* an invitation to their favorite restaurant where you also give them the gift of your love and attention
* their favorite chocolates, wines or cheeses, etc.
* a selection of their favorite, hard-to-find, childhood candies or cookies
* a fruit of the month basket
* a voucher good for homemade meals for a day, a week, etc.
* a selection of organic teas and fair trade coffees or dried fruits and nuts
* dinner cooked by a personal chef
* tickets to a wine tasting or vineyard tour
* their favorite flowers sent to them regularly
* movie passes
* prepaid phone cards
* postage stamps
* frequent flyer miles
* airline tickets to visit you
* a weekend getaway at a bed and breakfast
* a trip to someplace they have never been
* candles
* handmade soap
* already stamped and addressed cards for various occasions (birthday, anniversary, holiday) that can be sent out to friends and family by the elderly or disabled in your life who can’t get out to buy cards or whose handwriting might be too shaky to read
* a voucher good for a walk together, a picnic together, a back-rub/foot-rub, a day of skiing or anything else you know they would like
* a voucher good for some of the perennials in your garden that are getting crowded and need dividing

One nice thing about consumables is that, if you’ve done your homework properly, the recipients consume them – which means you get to buy the same gift next year or even year after year!

Financial, Charitable and Unusual Gifts:

* make a charitable donation in their name (Think about causes and organizations that would be meaningful to them — then you take the tax deduction!)
* donate a book(s) to a library in their name
* pay their phone or cable bill for a month (or more)
* give them a share(s) of stock
* stocks, bonds, CDs, or contributions to a child’s college education fund
* name a star in the cosmos after them

* have a tree planted in their name

Gifts of Classes in:

* music
* dance
* Yoga
* Pilates
* self-defense
* foreign language
* computer
* magic
* continuing education
* art
* pottery
* photography
* jewelry making
* flower arranging
* knitting
* quilting
* sewing
* acting
* cooking
* stand-up comedy
* horseback riding

Posted in clutter, environmentally friendly, gifts | Comments Off

Freecycle: A network promoting waste reduction and helping to save the landscape from being taken over by landfills.

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

You just gotta love this group. Here’s what their mission statement says:

“Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,830 groups with 6,573,000 members (and growing) across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer. Membership is free. To sign up, go to Freecycle.

Posted in clutter, environmentally friendly, reduce/reuse/recycle, sell/giveaway/trash | Comments Off

Another reason to love Costco

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Costco has teamed up with Gazelle to offer its members a Trade-In & Recycle Program. Members receive a cash card for their trade-ins good for anything at Costco warehouses or online. Laptops, cell phones, LCD monitors, external hard drives, digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, movies, camera lenses, streaming media, projectors, Blue-Ray players, home audio, calculators, PDAs, GPS devices, gaming consoles, satellite radios and video games are all welcome. Trade in your old computer through 10/15/09 and get a 10% bonus. Every item gets an offer and personal data will be wiped from all items. There’s no limit on the number of items you can sell; the more you sell, the more cash you make. Gazelle even offers free shipping and packaging, within the continental U. S., on all qualifying items. They’ll send you a prepaid shipping box or label and insure packages up to the value they offered you for their contents. Cash card payments normally arrive within 10 business days after an item has been received, inspected and approved.

Gazelle has also built a network of local recyclers to help you with some items that are not currently accepted online: televisions, CRT monitors, printers and fax machines. You can search by zipcode to find the drop off location nearest to you.

If you’re a Costco member, it couldn’t be any easier to declutter and get rid of unwanted or unused electronic items so act now!

Posted in clutter, money savers, reduce/reuse/recycle, technology | Comments Off

Shining the spotlight on America’s penchant for excess.

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

This past weekend, The New York Times ran an interesting article on how the downturn in the economy is affecting the self-storage industry. Not surprisingly, it confirms what I and my fellow organizers already know: the vast majority of storage units contain mostly clutter.

Since the start of the recession, occupancies at storage facilities nationwide are down 2-3%. While not a big drop, apparently it has shaken an industry that has always thought of itself as recession-resistant, if not recession-proof.

Here are some quotes from the article:

“After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.”)”

“A Self Storage Association study showed that, by 2007, the once-quintessential client — the family in the middle of a move, using storage to solve a short-term, logistical problem — had lost its majority. Fifty percent of renters were now simply storing what wouldn’t fit in their homes — even though the size of the average American house had almost doubled in the previous 50 years, to 2,300 square feet.”

“Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators,” Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, told me. “Because once they’re in, nobody likes to spend all day moving their stuff out of storage. As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they’ll leave that stuff in there forever.”

If you rent self-storage space, I dare you to multiply what your storage space costs by the number of months you’ve been renting it. Okay, now that you’ve picked yourself up off of the floor, do you even remember what you have in storage? Think about what you could have done with that money instead of lining the pockets of the storage industry with it.

I urge you to read the entire article. It’s fascinating and may provide just the inspiration you need to go clean out your storage space! Hire an organizer to help, if you need, too, but get it done!

Posted in clutter, money savers, simplicity + consumerism, storage | Comments Off

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