- It's still kind of funny to me when
I do organizing videos, because I just, I always saw myself as a messy person. Any organization that I had put in
place in our house never lasted. It never worked. And so I
really had a negative taste, both about organization, and to be
honest, the people that organize. I guess I just felt like I'd been
burned by them so many times. I know if you go back to some of my
older videos, I've said I don't organize. I just declutter until
there's so little inventory, you don't even have to
worry about organizing it. And so today I am really excited
to share the most practical and realistic and effective organizing tips
that you've probably heard in a long time. [Music]. So this video is actually a
collaboration with a bunch of organizing experts. So sorry I just
said bad things about you. So I'm going to link to
a playlist down below. It will be available tomorrow if
you're watching this on Tuesday, but I'm gonna link to a playlist with
a bunch of other videos with top three organizing tips. And so it is a lot of professionals that
really know what they're talking about. So they're gonna be great tips, and it's part of the Get Organized HQ
virtual conference that's coming up here in a few weeks in September. It's
completely free. It's totally free, so you can sign up down below.
But here's what's kind of cool. So they invited me to
be a keynote speaker, so I'm gonna be kicking things off
on Monday night. I'm just like, oh my goodness, I'm a keynote
speaker at an organizing conference. So in all seriousness now, to be in a place where I'm
seen as an organized person, someone who can help others
declutter and get systems in place, it really does feel like we've come
a long way and I am proud of it, even though it just still
seems very strange and odd. So it's super good. I
hope you can join us. I'll be around in the live chat
after the session on Monday night on September 13th too, so it'd be super fun if you can be there
and join in and we can visit together. Those details will be down below. But let's jump into some
really good practical tips. So now I have kind of a
three-step approach to
organizing anything in our house. So I definitely want
to share that with you. But I asked the gals in my Facebook group, I asked them for some of their
best tips and they were so good. So I want to share those with you first,
and then I'll share my three steps too. So this is one of my favorites.
It's from Connie. She says, "Create safe places for the things
that you feel are most important. Otherwise your brain is constantly
worrying about those things." She said, "When I finally gave in and created
a memory box for each of my kids, sorting went so much faster because
instead of sitting there wondering what to do with something, my
mind went quickly to, 'I have a place for that.'"
And I think that's so good. If you have resisted the memory
bin, I've said it before, I think it's the most underutilized tool
when it comes to simplifying your home. And even last week, we got to go
to Rachel's house. I showed you, she came across a bunch of memory stuff
when we were going through the piles on her floor. And I was like, "Do you
have memory bins?" She was like, "I do. They're in our storage room." And so
there'd be a memory thing. She decided, do we want to keep it?
Is it container worthy? And then her son Grayson would
go run it down to the memory bin. And so Connie goes on to say, which
I think is helpful too, is that, "This was true for paperwork too. Once I understood what really
needed to be saved for long-term, I put those things in a red expanding
file that can be easily grabbed in an emergency. Then my brain stopped panicking
about paper piles." And so, again, when we were going through
Rachel's house, she did, she had a spot for paper too. She had a file cabinet and then we had
the memory bin and then we also created a bin for photos. So we would randomly,
when we were going through her piles, and then also what you're going to
see in her desk coming up this week, random photos. So we threw the photos
in the photo box and it was waterproof, it was safe, and she didn't
have to feel bad. I mean, she had said ultimately she wants
to get them into photo albums. But in the meantime, she has
a safe place for those items. So if you do not have a memory bin,
you don't have to take my advice. Take Connie's word for it and get yourself
a memory bin along with every other member in your household. Okay, let's talk about the
actual containers that we use. Several mentioned this,
including Michaela. She says, "Use what you have for
containers (decorate with
gift wrap or contact paper if you really want to) and then transition
to nice containers once you know what works for your location.". And I love this. The dollar
store has some good bins. They're not great for a lot of spaces,
but they're good to just get an idea. And what's funny is I put these ones in
the top of our closet a few years ago, and my thought was,
they're kind of temporary, let's see if these categories
work, if this kind of system works. And I never went back and replaced
them. Now, on the other hand, in our laundry room, I invested in good bins in there
because they get used a ton. And so that's also what
KelleyJo has to say. She says, "Ask yourself what kind of use
are these containers going to get? Frequent handling? Rarely
touched? If it needs to be sturdy, spend the extra money instead of
dollar store. Don't overspend, but don't underspend either. Take care
of the stuff that you are keeping." And I love this, because we'll talk
about decluttering in a little bit, but as we've simplified our stuff,
we have a lot less to store. And so then I feel that it's okay to
spend a little bit extra on some of the containers, like KelleyJo said,
that we use all of the time. And especially for those of us who
haven't had a lot of confidence in organizing, we don't want to
spend a lot of money right away. So we'll use the cheap containers, get an idea for how it works and then
upgrade them. Alright, I know I'm saying, every one is my favorite, this was
so good. But this I really love too. Tiffany says, "I read something
just yesterday that struck me. It said being organized (to this
person) meant 'having immediate access to everything I need.' That's
bold and big and hard to get to, but I keep thinking about it. I think it'll help me make
some of those harder decisions, like where to store certain things,
or keeping more than I need, which makes it harder to access the
things I actually need immediately." I love this. "Being organized meant having immediate
access to everything I need." This really makes me think about our
closets and our clothes. You know, when you open your dresser drawer and
it's kind of too full and you kind of have to dig through to see the
stuff that you actually use, how much easier is it once we declutter
and simplify and can really just get to the things we use day in and day out.
I love this. I think this is so good. Okay, let's talk about a
container for homeless items, cause this might be controversial,
but I think it's so good. Helen says, "Have a home for items." And I think
we've all heard this before, right? A place for everything and everything
in its place. And so Helen says, "I feel the disorganization starts
when an item doesn't have a home. Even if the home is going to be
a container of homeless items. Once the container becomes too full, then it's time to go through and
make homes for items." Or declutter. I think this is so good. And this is kind of where the idea
of my Time Will Tell basket came for, is recognizing that there's always random paper stuff. And so instead of shuffling it around
and moving it around from space to space and trying to figure out
where we could file or put it, let's just make a bin for the random
stuff. We don't put to-do stuff in there, but just the truly random, I don't
know, am I going to use that coupon? Am I going to order something from
that catalog? I really don't know. And actually Debra went on to
reiterate the same thing. She said, "I have to have a 'things to keep but
I don't know where YET' container." That's a lot of words to put
on a label, right? "Not big. Not to be used in place of carrying
something to its actual home. But for the 'I don't know where I would
look for this' things." And again, I think that's so wise, like
let's just give it a home, instead of racking our mind and driving
ourselves crazy trying to figure out where this thing should go. And
this is true wisdom from Patricia. "Some things to remember too. Most jobs
don't take as long as you think it will. I put off certain things for
a long time and dread them. But when I finally do it, it
never takes as long as I thought." Isn't that so good? It's so
true. Isn't it? So jump in. Even if you're just going to
work on it for a few minutes, you'll be so glad that
you did. Helen says, "Have an awesome playlist!!" Oh yeah. Don't underestimate the power of some
upbeat and motivational music either. Louise says, "Atomic Habits...the power of 5 minutes."
You could listen to that book or listen to a podcast on
YouTube while you're going. I find that book really
inspirational as well. Tracy says, "It really happens in layers. You have to work out your decluttering
muscles until you're strong enough to do it easily. Also your questions of 'do I want to
manage this?' has absolutely changed my point of view. The 'does it bring me
joy?' question never worked for me. Do these party supplies
bring me joy? Sure! But do I want to manage leftover dollar
store party supplies for another five years?" I think this is good. And I think the "Does it spark joy?"
question is great, but for some of us, there's a lot of things that spark joy. And so to take it another
step further to ask ourselves, do I want to continue to
manage this? Is this inventory, is it important enough to me to take
up my time, my mental energy? Because, like Tracy said, some
things might spark joy, but we don't wish to spend any
more of my energy maintaining them. And then Patricia also added
to what Tracy said and said, "This is an important point. Layers. You may organize only to find you'll let
more go and then organize again later. But eventually you'll hit a sweet
spot. Or your clutter threshold." I think that's so good. And having that grace for ourselves to
understand that it really doesn't have to be perfect right away. That's easier
for some of us to accept than others, but just kind of expecting, yeah, I'm probably going to make changes
or adjustments to this as I go, but that's okay. And so now I'm going to share with you
just my three quick steps anytime I go to organize a space in our
house. So like I said, of course step one is to declutter. We
have to declutter. You've heard it said, we can't organize clutter. But
truly we can't organize clutter. And most of us have to declutter even
more than we think to really get our organizational systems to work and
to be something that we can maintain. Number two, I really think you should
find out your Clutterbug style. I put this off for so long. Everyone had mentioned,
"Hey, what's your Clutterbug? Have you seen Cas from Clutterbug?"
And I'm like, I don't organize. Leave me alone. I don't want to hear about your
organizing expert and these bug styles. Oh my goodness. If you do not
know your Clutterbug style, you should find that out because
it has made the hugest difference. Both knowing my type, a Ladybug,
and Tom's, a Cricket, we make so much sense now. And now I can explain to him
why I organize like I do. Why do I use bins with big broad
categories? I'm a Ladybug, it's okay. And so it has been so helpful and
things I wouldn't have even thought were organizing in the past, like our toy
bins or things like that, now I realize, oh, I was organizing. It was just not the traditional type of
what you think of organizing and that it actually is organizing and it is
a style and it is totally okay. And then number three
is to use labels. Again, I did not want anything to do with labels
in the past because it was basically just marketing the fact that
I had failed again. I mean, if I label a shelf that's supposed to be
for DVDs and a week later it has Legos on it, I mean, it's just announcing
to the world that I failed. And so I had never been able to
stick with any kind of organizing, let alone adding labels to things. But what I realize now
is once I decluttered, once I knew my organizing
style and organized that way, then what putting labels did was
made it so that I didn't have to reorganize again in the future. So basically by putting a label and
assigning things a really specific home, the next time that I went to
declutter or tidy that space, all I was doing was moving
stuff into its home. And it was very clear to see
what goes here and what doesn't. And so by labeling, I didn't,
the next time I went through, I didn't have to be like, oh
yeah, what was that basket for? What goes in this bin?
What goes down here? No, that's where we ended up reorganizing
again and we don't want to do that. We might make adjustments, but we don't want to completely
start from scratch again. You've seen me using these
chalk labels all the time. Now I like that you can erase
the chalk. They're removable. If you want to adjust your system,
you can. You're not totally locked in. So that probably appeals to me a
lot. But they just, they work well, they're easy to read. And
so I really liked those. But labeling really is an important
part of the organizing process, now I realize, no matter what
your organizing style is. So that's been really helpful
to us. So like I said, I hope you can check out the
playlist with the other videos. I'll put my link down below, if
you want to sign up to join us, again for that free conference that
Get Organized HQ virtual online, super awesome conference.
There's over 70 guests. You can watch it in real time or you
can go back and watch it again later. But lots of great wisdom, super great
advice when it comes to organizing. And if you're able and you
can join us on Monday night, that would be really fun too.
So that'll be down below, but I hope you have a great day. I would love to know any decluttering
tips or advice that has resonated with you, if you want to share that down below. But otherwise I hope you
have a great day. I love you, and I'll see you again soon.
