Tidying Up

I featured this book (or its cover, anyway) on one of my earlier blogs. Last weekend, I found a fun write-up of the book on the BookBub blog.

Though I'd never write review after just a quick flip, I am guilty of sharing my initial reaction to just that -- a quick flip -- after I came across the book at my local Barnes and Noble.

After reading the BookBub blog, what's your initial reaction? Would you buy the book? Do you think it would fit your styles?

What does STYLE stand for?

photos-public-domain.com

When I write about organizing with STYLE, I'm talking about personal and organizational styles (lower case), along with the plan that underlies them: STYLE in all caps. 

Last week, I talked more about successes (the first letter in the acronym), and small steps (the second letter). Before going any further, I wanted to share the rest of the STYLE acronym:

Start with successes

Take small steps   

Yes, it has a home!

Let it go

Easy upkeep

Before we're through, we'll tackle all of these steps -- mostly in order -- but since organization is a process, sometimes we move forward and sometimes, we revisit the early parts of the process because they really are the foundation for everything else. Small steps and successes of any size build confidence and help us to remember that by selecting tools and processes that match our "default settings," we can build a system that works. Each small step is one step closer to that eventual goal of a sustainable organizational plan.

Tomorrow, I'll connect one of our strategies from last week (Don't put it down, put it away!) to a key organizational concept -- the one embodied by the letter Y in STYLE -- Yes, it has a home.

Organization Extra: One Blogger's Challenge

http://www.wikihow.com/Declutter

Part of the purpose of many of these Organization Extra posts is to bring in the experts, so to speak. But as I went in search of resources that complemented the things I was writing about, I started finding things that were both fun and challenging -- like today's post.

Part of getting organized is separating things that are worth keeping from things that aren't. Toward that end, blogger Jacqueline Damian took on the 30-Day Declutter Challenge, a progressive decluttering campaign that the "I love stuff" Damian admits started easy and became more, well, challenging. Like 40 Bags in 40 Days, the goal here is to reduce the amount of stuff -- always a worthwhile goal, since the less stuff we have, the less we have to organize.

I think this may be worth a shot at my house. Who else is in?

Paths to Success

https://www.facebook.com/pageawards?fref=photo

So, how are those successes coming? Last Friday, I shared the first concept behind the STYLE acronym: Start with Successes. Today, I’d like to talk about some strategies to help create those successes, all of which revolve around the next letter in the STYLE acronym: Take Small Steps. 

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Because getting organized and staying that way is a challenge for me, I love it when I find baby steps that contribute to the process. I've already shared one of my favorites -- Give it Five! -- which is just what it sounds like. To Give it Five! choose one area, and allocate five uninterrupted minutes to making progress in that space. If you get on a roll, and time permits, Give it Five! is easily expanded into a longer chunk of time, but even if all you have is five minutes, that can be enough. Five minutes of clutter busting can provide a small success that inspires you to repeat the process in an hour, a day or a week. Give it Five! won't get major clutter under immediate control, but it can create a small feeling of accomplishment, which makes the whole process less intimidating.

I found another one of my favorites in an article I shared this time last month. In "10 Organizing Tips That'll Change Your Life," Cass Colin suggests this simple strategy: put small clean-up tasks into practice. This is one of those things naturally organized people (the ones I like to call Type A Organizers) do automatically, and it's an easy one to adopt. Instead of waiting for things to pile up, take care of them one at a time, which brings me to another one of my favorites....

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Don't put it down, put it away! As a recovering drop and run organizer, I sometimes have difficulty with this strategy, but when I remember to follow it, I create a lot less clutter in the first place. The pairing of this strategy with Give it Five! can be particularly useful for many of us whose default styles make spotless surfaces simultaneously desirable and difficult.

Finally, when all else fails and I'm feeling overwhelmed by stuff, I resort to playing little games with myself. One of my favorites is "pick up one thing," a twist on put small clean-up tasks into practice. It's simple -- each time I walk past a particular cluttered surface (usually my dining room table), I have to pick up one thing and put it where it belongs. In another version of this little mind game, which I often "play" before I sit down to watch TV or check Facebook, I assign myself a number (say, 15) and I have to pick up and put away that many things (from any location in my house) before I can move on to the fun thing that was next on my list.

While I'm sure that all of my Type A Organizer friends are shaking their heads at how complicated I'm making this, I'm equally sure that all of my overwhelmed wanna be organized friends "get" it. None of these tricks will solve major organizational issues, but they will allow us to take baby steps toward creating the organized world we want to live in. In addition, putting a dent in an overwhelming task leads to not only progress, but a sense of power over the very stuff that threatens to win the battle. And confidence is an important weapon in the clutter wars.

And that, my friends, is how we defeat clutter -- or at least call it a draw.

Styles...Part 2

Still with me on this journey? If you're like me, this process is one step forward, two steps back. I'm an I need to see it/drop and run girl, which means my house ranges from visually stimulating to a visual eyesore. The photo below is not just a Thirty-One pile-up; it's also testimony to where I'd been the week the photo was taken -- one place that needed a brown purse, one place that needed a black purse and a Starbucks work session with the gray bag -- and where I was going (the  brightly colored thermal below it all -- a donation to a preschool fund-raiser). 

I'm happy to report that after I took the photo, I emptied the bags and put them where they belonged (as well as getting the thermal to its destination), dramatically improving that one small space. In addition, some fun new visual organizers I'd ordered arrived, and over the weekend, I pressed them into service as well (see the photo at the bottom of this post). 

Last week, I elaborated on the personal styles that are at the root of our natural organizational tendencies. But personal styles are only half of the equation. Today, let’s take a peek at the other half, the organizational styles.

• I know I put it somewhere organizers:
• may look organized, but can rarely find what they want when they want it.
• are likely to have a wide variety of unrelated things stashed together.
• organize by putting things in the place that is most convenient at the moment, rather than in a logical place. 
• lack a system and/or fail to establish consistent homes for their belongings.

• Cram and jam organizers:
• cram things into any available open space, and jam things into spaces even when they are already overcrowded.
• lack an understanding of the concept of "full."
• rarely have an organizational system, unless it’s for things that are extremely important to them. 
• may look organized when they have a lot of storage space - until you open up the closets and look inside the drawers.

• Drop and run organizers:
• may have systems, but don't use them consistently.
• are unlikely to utilize systems that require multiple steps.
• typically operate out of piles and stacks.
• often need to retrace their steps to locate misplaced items.

As you read over the styles at this point in the process, you may feel that many -- or even all -- of them describe you. As we work through this organizing process, you're likely to narrow your focus a bit, and one predominant style from each category (personal/organizational) may rise to the top. Or, you may remain a combination of styles. Fortunately, but this can be a benefit.  An overlap can mean more strategies to work with! 

A good fit for an I need to see it/drop and run
girl -- in sight, but neatly corralled.

Up to this point, the styles have most likely been stumbling blocks. Moving forward, the goal will be to learn how to view your natural tendencies as assets rather than liabilities. This outlook will enable you to use your styles as a blueprint for developing a workable, sustainable plan based on what comes naturally. Whether or not you've pinpointed one particular style is less important than finding a system that feels like a good fit.

Have you found your default styles? As you examine the organized and under-organized places in your surroundings, can you see your strengths and stumbling blocks at work? What organizational successes (small or large) have you celebrated lately?

Organization Extra: Backwards To-Do List

pageaday.com

Last Monday, I created a backwards to-do list. I have a Page-a-Day calendar that I use for my daily to-do lists, and when I woke up on Monday, I had several lists with undone to-do list items from previous days. Monday's page, however, was blissfully blank.

So I decided to try something. Rather than copying all of those undone to-do items onto my blissfully blank page, I simply hung on to the old pages, copying the items onto Monday's page after I did them. New items went on the old lists, so at the end of the day, instead of another list comprised of both completed and incomplete items, I had a lovely list on Monday's page -- one where everything was checked off.

Some days, we need this. It's easy to get caught up in the minutiae of daily business and lose track of all we've accomplished, remaining focused only on what we've left undone. When we consolidate bits and pieces of previous lists onto a single page, we often feel defeated before we begin.

Daily to-do lists are meant to be about what we can accomplish that day, but in our zeal to do it all (and remember it all), they often become the Mt. Everest of lists. I'm a big proponent of having both a master list (Mt. Everest) and a daily list (the foothills of life), and some days, when the lists have become a mountain range of their own, I wave the white flag, in the form of a Post-it Note sent to me by professional organizer Cindy Bernstein:

For those of you who, like me, prefer the old-fashioned paper-and-pencil list, here's a great article from Forbes about how not to torture yourself with them. And if you have an "I need to see it" style (as I do), here's a piece of advice: abandon the app and pick up the pencil. You need to see it, remember?

How about you? What do you do to show your to-do lists who's boss?

Organization Extra: 40 Bags in 40 Days

Ready for some serious purging? Then 40 Bags in 40 Days might be for you. 

The idea is simple enough -- to clear the clutter from our lives and divest ourselves of 40 bags of non-essentials over the course of Lent (the 40 days in the name of the challenge). For me, some of it will be as simple as finally getting those clothes to consignment and those books to the library book sale. But to get to 40 bags, I'll need to go through my things and separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak -- a task I always mean to do, but never seem to get to.

Any size bag (or box or bin) will do. When I did this last year, I used a kitchen trash bag (smaller than the one in the photo at left) as my approximate standard. Two shredding sessions will fill the bag 
-- and reduce the paper clutter on my desk (and pretty much any other room in my house). Or, I can fill the bag with clothes I don't wear, but someone else might...or any other items in my home that have overstayed their welcome here but might be very welcome somewhere else.

How about you? What can you fill 40 bags with between now and Easter?