Professional Organizers of the North Shore Offer These Tips

January is known for many things: short days, cold nights, slippery roads and often broken New Year’s resolutions – how depressing! There’s always another side, maybe January is a time to accomplish indoor tasks, get cozy by a fire, bake cookies and avoid going out in a snowstorm, and get to those New Year’s Resolutions. When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, set yourself up for success. Sometimes the old adages are the best: baby steps, achievable goals, start small, one thing at a time, stay focused and you can do anything. If your goal has come and gone, try re-evaluating and set a new one. When it comes to organizing, we thought we’d share some words that we can’t attribute to one person specifically as most organizers preach the following. We will list all 10 Tips this week and delve into each one more thoroughly throughout this month and next.

1) Stay focused on the task at hand.
If your goal is to organize your kitchen, and you find a vase that you want to store in the attic, just put it aside for the time being. Many people might make the mistake of going to the attic and then becoming distracted with another project once they are there. Check out our blog on Page 3, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

2) When evaluating an item, ask yourself have I used it in the last year, do I really need it or does it bring me great pleasure?

3) Is it clutter or is it truly a collection.

4) Ask yourself before you purchase an item, “Do I really need it?”  If one thing comes in, two things should go out.

5) Am I going to really read all these catalogs that I receive?

6) Have a vision of what you want the room or space to look like before you start.

7) Don’t look to storage units as a solution to your clutter problem.

8) Evaluate what works and what doesn’t.

9) Where is the clutter or stress coming from? Is it due to your actions or the actions of those you live with?

10) Have I established “homes” for my belongings.

To quote Peter Walsh, one of the organizing gurus, “Our home should be the antidote to stress, not the cause of it.” Hopefully as we go through these tips in the following weeks you will find they motivate you. We’d love to hear from you, so let us know how it goes.