A PATH FOR EVERYTHING

A quick and easy-to-learn technique for staying focused when confronted with a royal--or even just an everyday--mess is to say to yourself, "A path for everything and everything on its path."

Let me show you an example of how this works.

Many of my clients are Type A's:  high energy, high performance, and driven to succeed type people. They reached their level of success in business and in life by many methods, including hard work, tenacity, and (get this) task completion.

So it is fitting that my Type A clients would attempt to complete every task we come across while decluttering their offices, homes, cars, and storage areas.

But immediate task completion is not the most efficient route to take when decluttering.  It wastes time, energy, and fractures the focus needed for decluttering effectively.

One particular client could not stay focused.  A high-powered sales woman, and parent of a hyperactive toddler, she darted here and there during our first visit, taking each item that we found out of place and running it across the house, up the stairs, or out to the garage or her car to its designated home.

I helped her refocus by teaching her to keep all items going to the same place together in "staging" areas, and then to make one trip to the garage, one trip to her car, one trip to the guest bedroom, and one trip to the kitchen to put away all the things we'd discovered out of place while decluttering the living room. 

Michelle Passoff, a professional home organizer and author of Lighten Up!  Free Yourself From Clutter, has the best phrase for this process:  A path for everything and everything on its path*.  I use it as a mantra when helping clients get organized.  It keeps them focused, and saves enormous amounts of time and energy.

You can use it too!  Instead of ignoring the dry cleaning piling up on your closet floor because you don't have time to drop it off at the cleaners today, simply bag it up and put it in your car.  You haven't taken the clothes to the cleaners yet, but they are one step further down the path to the cleaners.  A path for everything and everything on its path.

Or maybe you still have your Easter decorations out. Instead of procrastinating taking them down, packing them up, and hauling them back out to the garage or up to the attic, simply group them all together today, in an area closer to their final destination.  Seeing them there tomorrow may inspire you to go get the boxes they belong in, and put them in the boxes.  Perhaps the day after that, you'll be inspired to carry them to their final storage spot, and voila! Easter decorations put away.  A path for everything, and everything on its path.

You can apply this mantra to many areas of your life, not just cleaning, decluttering, and getting your stuffed Easter rabbits safely packed away in the attic.

Try it and see how much time you save, and how good it feels to move things forward along the path to their ultimate destination.


 * Passoff, Michelle.  Lighten Up!  Free Yourself from Clutter. HarperPerennial. New York, 1998: pg. 57.

THE QUESTION

Today is the day I will pull out my two boxes of fall decor and transition from summer colors to autumn tones around my home. Yes, I know I still have a couple more days until it's officially fall, but I can't wait. It's my favorite season.

While I'm elbow deep in boxes of silk flowers and ceramic pumpkins, I have determined to ask myself the following question, to help me weed out the decorative items I no longer care for:

"Is this what you really want?"

What a great question! We can all apply that question to not only decorative objects, but to anything in our lives, including

clothing
pots and pans
furniture
sports and hobby equipment
electronics
your car
your home itself
your job.

If you determine that what you're holding onto isn't what you want any more (maybe it never was something you wanted to begin with), take some small action today to transform your possessions and your life into something more in line with what you really want.

Throw away the lopsided pumpkin spice pillar candle. Pack a small shopping bag with a couple handbags you don't want anymore and take them into work this week to share with your office mates. Take the softball bats and balls that you never use to the neighbor kids down the street. Browse through employment listings in your local newspaper, or sign up at your local job service to look on-line for a different job.

You don't have to take massive, sweeping action today to make changes in your home and life. Small actions build on each other, and the little things you do today will put you in a place to do a little something more tomorrow, then the next day, and the next. Before you know it, your life will look more like what you really want it to look like!

Happy autumn!

MINI CLOSET PURGE

Let's take a break from paper, and head to our clothes closet(s) and dressers.

Sweltering weather has descended upon the West, and even lil mis "I hate snow" (that's me) is cocooning inside my air conditioned home. It's a perfect day to go through summer clothes! Why not join me for a short and easy clothes purge:

1. Look through your t-shirts and throw away any that are stained, faded, or are wearing along the neckband.

2. Throw away any and all swimsuits that are stretched out, too tight, or ride up on you.

3. How many pairs of flip-flops does one person need? You decide on a number that works for you, then get rid of the rest.

4. Shorts and capris so opaque that your panty color shows through have got to go. So do any that are too tight. Your skin needs to breathe!

IF THERE IS SOMETHING IN YOUR SUMMER WARDROBE THAT

A. YOU WOULDN'T LOAN TO MARTHA STEWART IF SHE CAME TO VISIT, or

B. YOU HATE,

then

GET RID OF IT.

Right now. No worries. That stuff is just STUFF, not a beloved friend or child or pet.

Pitch it.

Happy July!