Is Clutter Overwhelming You?

Join Beth Dargis to create a great plan for decluttering your life and enjoy fun support!

Beth hosts declutter groups twice a year, in January and again in the fall.

The groups are 8 weeks long and the current group starts in just 8 days' time.

LIMITED SPACES - Declutter Group starts Jan 26, 09

Don't forget to come tell me if you joined because I can't WAIT to hear how much you declutter during your 8 weeks with Beth.

Come on - show me your plates and bowls!

Remember we're decluttering and organising in our KITCHENS this month and this week, we're decluttering plates and bowls.

One of our challengers last week donated her surplus mugs and glasses to charity - what an excellent idea!

(if you don't want to post on the theme, go right ahead and post on whatever you felt like decluttering, or other wise, just show us how you store your plates and bowls :)

There are some bowls I'd dearly love to declutter because I think they're ugly. In fact, I've been trying to get rid of them for years.

The problem is my husband loves them. Apparently they're just the right size for his 2 1/2 Weetbix!

As a side note, there's not much he cares about in the kitchen so I let him have his ugly bowls and a purple mug I also don't care for but is again "the perfect size for coffee" :)

So I haven't decluttered anything but before you get cross, here are some pictures of how I store my plates and bowls.



Now tell me, did you declutter any mugs or glasses?

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Have a look at the Organise your Home e-course and get your entire home organised in just 12 weeks.

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Now for this week's challenge

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures and talk about what you decluttered. If you don't have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything - physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism! :)

What did you declutter this week?

Do you have too many purposes in one room?

computer desk

I often see people with beautifully ordered houses but there's one room which is a catch-for-all and therefore off-limits.

This is usually the room with the closed door :)

It's as if you don't want to make decisions about what to do with things so you dump them all in one room.

Often this is called the junk room or the spare room.

It may have been intentioned that it would be a guest room, craft room, etc. but it's the place where, if you say, "where do you want this to go?" you just say, "the spare room".

Now hear me, there is nothing wrong with having a room with multiple purposes as long as:

• you know what those different functions are
• each function has a separate "zone"

Let me give you an example. Our home office/ study has multiple functions. What happens there?

• computer work
• gift storage and wrapping
• reading
• storing library books
• filing and doing household admin
• business admin
• crafting (when I used to still actively make my beaded bookmarks)

Each of those functions has a specific place.

business admin

So to answer my question above, I think if you have a specific purpose for each function, you can have many purposes in each room.

Do you have one of those junk or spare rooms?

Your challenge is to make a note of all the purposes that go on in that one room and make sure that each purpose has a specific place.

Are you up for it?

P.S. Don't forget tomorrow's declutter challenge. We're decluttering plates and bowls.

Office Organising Makeover - Week 1

Hello. My name is Anne. I am so happy to have you join me this morning. Today I will be showing you my office in its various stages. And while we walk and see, we can talk about the benefits and rewards of having an office system like mine.

Please remove your shoes, grab a pair a slippers from the pile over there, and follow me. We will be walking though the living room and dining room to descend the staircase. Here at the bottom of the stairs you can see a wide open room that is quite bright from the sun streaming in the window. But this room, while large and bright does not appear to be an office. We sneak a look behind each of the three doors finding 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom... We see no office.

No, really, we are in the office. A closer look around reveals wall studs built into place. Electricity run to lights and plugs. There appears to be the skeleton of a closet off to the side. And this wide open space. This space with no insulation, no drywall, no paint, no window coverings. This is my office space. But it is unfinished, in partial completion, and is being used as a junk collection station.

And let's go around this dark corner under the stairs. I want to show you my Long Term Storage Closet. I know that you will be timid to enter at first, squeezing in behind the stairs, next to the bookcases, but come along. There is much to see! We step into a large room. Each wall has rack upon rack upon rack of books and homeschooling supplies, office supplies, school supplies and crafts, Long Term Legal Files, even Long Term Linen Storage and Childhood memorabilia. I have science projects, family games, push pins and office equipment plugs. THIS is my long term storage.

Now, we haven't see a desk or anything resembling workable area, so follow me back upstairs and I will show you where I work. Back through the dining room, living room, down the hallway past the children's bedrooms and into the master bedroom. Although it doesn't look like a bedroom other than the blankets.

As we walk in the door we immediately see paper holders on a large dresser to the left. Looking right I see a table that had once been a patio table. It now houses 2 large printers. Beyond the table is a large executive size desk.

It is a bit worse for wear and appears to have had its return section removed leaving a bare feeling on the left side. But above that is a large pile of papers from the kids this past week.

Leaning against the wall is a 3 file holder in black mesh. It looks like it could be useful. But with all the papers streaming out of their respective folders at all angles like fireworks... it certainly doesn't seem to work right now.

I sit to use the laptop provided and immediately roll the chair over the wires plugging in said laptop. Whoops. I lean in to type and bump my elbow on another printer. piggy-back style on the printer is a cable box and a 20" TV. Half the desk is covered by TV and the other half is covered by piles flowing into piles.

I pick up one of the piles and decide to file those papers. The closest files are in the lower 3rd drawer. I look in there, bit those files look like craft stuff. I glance around the room. Clear on the other side is a large file cabinet.

There is no file for this paper. I set it aside and take another. This one is a receipt for a large Christmas Purchase, Electronic. I dont see a file for receipts. Should I just stuff it in this file with all this other paper? And this BILL looks urgent. Do I need to file it too? Or should I leave it on the desk so I remember to pay it? I probably will file it. It goes in the red BILL folders.

Let's see... It is a Bill, but what kind of a bill? a Gas Card. But from what company? OK, we go to the red section. I find the Bills. Behind that category it says "gas cards and stores" OR "Credit cards" OR "Signature loans". It is a gas card. so back up to that section. Hm mm, now where in here does it go? Ah Ha, here. Lookie! I got one filed! Whew. At this rate it is going to take FOREVER to file this pile... and there is another stack of papers right here stuffed in the drawer and they all need to be filed too. UGH!

I should make files for this stuff, I suppose. But that means another trip around the house and through the basement to get file folders. Then again, if I am going to walk all that way, maybe I should just take the whole pile and shove it into a box down there to deal with later. uh, no, I can't do that. I already have a couple boxes like that from the 90s.

Well, forget the filing. I want to scrapbook. Then again, there isnt any space to scrapbook. I will have to dig all the supplies out of the closet (stuffed in with the clothes) and haul them to the kitchen table. I don't want to do that either.

This is horrible. Ridiculous even. I think we should just have a snack and watch TV. If we ignore this mess, it will go away, right???

BUT SERIOUSLY, there are no benefits or rewards to my office space(s).

Here are the challenges:

• Things I need are not at hand
• there is no space to work
• the filing system is confusing
• things pile on top of piles
• I have remnants of 2 at-home jobs, remnants of homeschooling (it has been 4 years since we stopped) and everyday family life.

I need help! I need to dig out and move forward. Lucky for me, Marcia has an Office plan!

Please continue to join me on my Office Organizing journey.

I will be decluttering, tossing, donating, filing, shredding, and finding a way to work in the space I have available to me.

See you next week for an update!

Hello all, Marcia here.

I think Anne's very brave to share her journey with all my readers. Go ahead and encourage her in the comments. She's doing a great job :)

And of course, you're all very welcome to tackle your office over the next 4 - 6 weeks.

Ask the organiser - how do you stay focussed?

My biggest struggle is to keep focused. I start one thing and go to another. Plus the phone and computer waste a lot of my time.

Thanks for your input.
Mary Coalson

Here's my answer

Mary, you are not alone! In fact, I also naturally have a problem staying focussed and yet this is my top productivity tip so I have a few tricks I use which I'm happy to share with you:

1. Eat the frog
I choose only a few things to do every day but I make sure they're important tasks that will move me toward my goals. And here's the important part, I do nothing else til those tasks are done. And then I reward myself.

Some days (like weekends) it's as simple as laundry, cooking and getting us set up for the week ahead and on the weekdays it could be working on an important work project.

I'm hosting a Big Juicy Goals teleseminar tomorrow so one of my big things tomorrow will be preparation for that teleseminar.

2. Remove distractions
Different things distract different sorts of people. I'm not too bothered by the phone because I simply turn mine to silent and check messages and voicemail when I feel like it (once or twice a day, when those Eat the Frog tasks are complete :))

Email, however, is a big problem for me. I'm insanely curious so I have to close down Outlook and have nothing else open on my computer except the task at hand.

3. Use a timer
No need to get fancy; a simple kitchen timer will do. When I'm at work, I can't really use a kitchen timer (because then they'll know I'm weird, instead of just suspecting :)) so I use the timer on my cell phone.

Set the timer for a realistic time but not so long that you can't concentrate. I like to work in 3 X 15-minute blocks and then I take a break unless I'm so close to finishing that I might as well work one extra block of time.

Over to you, dear readers - how do you stay focussed?

Introducing our guest blogger for the office makeover

I'm so excited.

I had many, many great entries to the office organising makeover that made my job really, really hard but I finally selected Anne Alagna at Confessions are good for the soul.

Anne is working through my 7 easy steps to organise your office MP3 and ebook system and she'll be posting here once a week until she's done. I'm putting no pressure on her :)


To give you a taste of Anne's blogging style, go over and read this post where she showed us how she creatively organised her kitchen, which she says is her favourite room in the house.

Mine is, of course, the office. All that yummy paper, computer and email organising :)

Don't forget to come back every Tuesday to read Anne's office organising post.

P.S. If paper is your downfall, there's a free Clear the Paper Clutter book for you in my Organise Your Life Success Pack, over there on the sidebar ----->>>

Friday Decluttering...a day late!

Oh my word. Do you know what no internet does to me???? Makes me crazy.

We've been on holiday for the last week and thank God I delegated email to my virtual assistant just in case because there was absolutely NO SIGNAL up there.

There was one shopping centre with free wifi but after waiting for 20 minutes in the HEAT for the guy to show me how to connect to it (my laptop wasn't showing that little icon and I'm a technophobe as you know), I left, still not knowing, because he was still busy with a customer. Grrr!

Of course that means I couldn't blog yesterday so here we go, a day late :)


Remember we're decluttering and organising in our KITCHENS this month and this week, we're decluttering mugs and glasses.

This is your challenge to throw out any chipped or surplus mugs or glasses that you can't use anywhere else.

(if you don't want to post on the theme, go right ahead and post on whatever you felt like decluttering, or just show us how you store your mugs and glasses :)

Since I wasn't home, I'll show you some boxy t-shirts I unearthed and decluttered before our holiday.

Why do we think that unflattering clothes will hide our unsightly bits?!



Now tell me, did you declutter any mugs or glasses?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a look at the Organise your Home e-course and get your entire home organised in just 12 weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now for this week's challenge

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures and talk about what you decluttered. If you don't have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything - physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism! :)

What did you declutter this week?

Favourite organising tool #14 - mesh bags

These two mesh bags have a very important job in my life.

They help to keep my handbag organised. One has my makeup and the other has the medication I'm taking at the moment and my sweetener.


The pink one came in a set of three (for only R12,99 [$1,30] at Sheet Street - I know, crazy!) and I use the biggest of those to keep all my smaller bits and pieces organised when the handbag I'm using is just one big open cavern.

I can't STAND scratching around looking for things. So all I have to do is haul the mesh bag out, get my wallet or car keys, and I'm good to go.

Why do I like these mesh bags to organise?

• I can categorise
• When I'm transferring items between handbags, I can quickly decide if I need it with me or not
• It's see-through and I have a sincere love for any clear storage tools

Do you use smaller bags to organise your handbag? What other uses can you think of for mesh bags?


Check out the other favourite organising tools posts here

Ask the organiser - tell me your favourite online calendar?

I still haven't got myself a planner and I am still in the process of organising my stuff (schedules, tasks etc) but since i can't seem to find a decent planner I'm opting to go electronic. I can't use my outlook cause it's very slow and i use just my gmail for the emails.

Do you have any suggestions on how I can organise my schedules electronically other than outlook?

Thanks!

--
Ella Pelayo
Virtual Assistant
www.epvirtualassistant.wordpress.com

Here's my answer:


Hi Ella

I am no good with electronic tools because I’m a paper gal ;) but I do use Outlook for my time-based appointments.

I would say gmail because I’ve heard such a lot of good things about it.

For tasks, there are a number of things I’ve played around with like http://simplegtd.com http://tadalist.com and http://rememberthemilk.com

For scheduling I still recommend Outlook but sync it to your phone too so it reminds you of appointments and then, I like to also print out the page for very busy days so I don’t forget anything.

Please help Ella and share your favourite online calendar.

(I'm particularly interested in hearing from Janet, Suzanne and Beth.)

Let's declutter our kitchens this month

We're decluttering and organising in our KITCHENS for the month of Jan and this week, we're decluttering Tupperware. Let's also include old margerine and similar containers that you've been saving just in case you one day have a shortage :)

(if you don't want to post on the theme, go right ahead and post on whatever you felt like decluttering :)

As you know, I declutter very regularly so I only had one sad container to declutter (I won't even bother posting a picture - it's that sad :))

Now tell me, how much Tupperware did you declutter?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a look at the Organise your Home e-course and get your entire home organised in just 12 weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now for this week's challenge

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures and talk about what you decluttered. If you don't have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything - physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism! :)

What did you declutter this week?