How do you start to get organized?
That's a great question and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to us by MyCleaningConnection.com,
and on there, there are a bunch of resources for cleaning your own house.
There's a whole section on there, on do it yourself cleaning, so that you, as a homeowner,
can clean your own house.
And, there's a section on organizing, so if organizing your home is the priority, check
it out at MyCleaningConnection.com
There are also a bunch of books on organizing that you may want to check out, that are also
on MyCleaningConnection.com
Okay, today's question comes from a homeowner who is a slob.
She's a self-confessed slob, and she's going to clean her house.
She's going to get organized, and she wants to know, where do I start to get organized?
So, the answer is you have to start somewhere.
Now, I don't care where it is, it's going to be a place that you choose, and it doesn't
matter, there's no right or wrong way to start.
So, it doesn't matter if you start in the bedroom, or the kitchen, or the bathroom,
it does not matter.
Okay.
But, just pick one area.
It might be that you just stop one day at 10:15 in the morning, wherever you are in
your house at 10:15 that is the area you are going to start to organize.
So, it can be a game for you, and every day wherever you are at 10:15 that's the area
that you organize.
You can make it fun for yourself so it's not a chore.
Now, if you are organized, and you are starting this from scratch, and I'm assuming by the
question you are starting from scratch.
We don't want to do the whole entire house at once, because that's going to be overwhelming,
and it's not going to be sustainable, because you have not trained yourself to follow the
habits of organization.
So, we're going to start right now, start where you are, and like I say, there is no
right or wrong place to start, but we're going to start right now.
So, let's say that you got up this morning, and you took a shower, and you put your makeup on.
Let's put the makeup in a little container.
It can be a bowl, it can be a bucket, it can be a little toiletry kit.
It doesn't matter what it is, but every day when you do your makeup, when you are done
with your makeup you're going to put it back in the same container.
And, that might be the task of the day.
And so, from here through the rest of your life, whenever you put the makeup on, then
you're going to put all the stuff, the makeup brushes, the blush, the eyeshadow, the mascara,
whatever it is that you use, you're going to put it back in the same little container.
Maybe it goes in a drawer in your bathroom, maybe it goes in a cabinet that you have in
your bathroom.
I don't know where it goes, you will find a place for it, but every single time you
use it put everything back in the bin and put it away.
Now, the rest of your bathroom might look like a tornado hit it, okay, but you're going
to do this one small task.
By doing this one small task what you're doing is you are training yourself in a new habit,
and so the rest of your bathroom may be atrocious, but this one habit will start the process.
I have a little toothbrush holder on my mirror, and so every day when I'm done brushing my
teeth I hang up the toothbrush, and I put the toothpaste back.
So, just a simple task like that could be a new habit.
And then, it might be that when you are done with the bathroom, and this is maybe on day
three, day four, day five, I don't know when it happens but it's going to happen over a
period of time.
Then, you will wipe the counter down in the vanity after you're done putting your makeup
on and brushing your teeth.
Every day you add one small task to the process, so it gets to the point where maybe the whole
area around your bathroom sink is tidy.
And then, every day you go in, and you brush your teeth, and you put your makeup on, and
you hurry, and you put your makeup away.
You put your toothpaste and your toothbrush away, you wipe down the vanity, and now the
bathroom is starting to take shape.
The rest might look atrocious, but this one space is neatly, tidy, organized, and clean.
And then, as you start expanding, it happens that then, your area is clean.
So, from here on out, through here through infinity, this is how this space looks.
And you start reprogramming your mind, that this is how this space looks, not the old
way, this new way.
And so, you get in the habit of just starting in one small area.
If you a hoarder, for example, I'd say that you have lots of clutter in your house.
Another way that you can do this instead of just working on one area and expanding, is
you can work on one item and expand.
For example, I know when we were kids we would buy butter.
It would come in these big plastic tubs with a lid on it.
You can't see through the plastic bin, but they were plastic with a snap on lid, airtight
containers.
And so, my mother would save these containers, and she would put rice, and beans, and other
things like that in them to reuse these plastic containers,
because they were good storage tubs.
But, as the years went on we ended up having too many of these kinds of tubs, and so we
stacked them, and we had big stacks of them that we were going to reuse for rice, and
beans, and other things.
Well, the reality is after a while you end up having too many of these things that you
are not actually using.
What you may want to do is go through your house and pick one thing.
It might be all the extra butter containers in your house, and just get rid of them.
Everything else can stay, but we're going to get rid of just the butter containers.
And then, you go through and you pick a different item.
One of the items that we're encouraging everybody to get rid of right now are DVDs and CDs,
because lots of people have these extensive collections of videos and movies, but now,
we all know that you can stream any video and any movie.
So, to have gobs of bookshelves, and racks, and DVD storage cases, and bins, and entertainment
centers full of movies, is really a moot point.
It's not necessary anymore to keep storing all of those things, because once you've seen
a movie, you've kind of seen it.
Unless you're going to watch it over and over again, at which point save that one movie,
but then get rid of all the rest of them.
Donate them, give them away, sell them on eBay.
I don't care what you do with them but get rid of them.
So, once at a time you're going to go through your house and you're going to pick items.
I know, for me, one of the biggest challenges for me was evacuating my book collection.
I'm an avid reader, and I love books.
I had a collection of about 10,000 books, and they were all books that to me were important.
They were all self-help books, and books on marketing, and motivation, and education,
and all these different things.
And so for me, it was just a wealth of information.
When I moved to the house that I live in right now I had a custom climate controlled closet
built that would house my books, because you don't want your books to fall apart because
the weather is too humid, or they're not in a space where it's conducive to storing books.
So, I had this ginormous closet built, there was climate control for my books.
I know, it's crazy, right.
And I woke up one day, and I was like, "The world has moved to kindle, what on earth am
I doing with all of these books, because I can only two or three books at a time."
Anywhere I go I can only carry two or three books because my hands are full of other things,
and I'm not going to read more than two or three at a time.
But, I can carry hundreds of books on my kindle device, on my smartphone.
So why, if I can carry hundreds of books, am I going to tote around
two or three at a time.
So, I narrowed them down to the few that I wanted to keep as reference books, and I do
have a whole wall of books, and they're all reference books on different topics.
So, they're still important to me, and there are still a few books that I keep.
And then, in my office, with the team that I have that come and help me out, we have
a book swap, so anybody is welcome to borrow books, and we swap back and forth.
But, what I did was, I started, everywhere I went I would take books with me.
And so, if I was going to the gym, they had a book collection that people could donate
books, and I would donate books there.
The church has a collection where you can donate books to their church collection, and
people can check them out.
I donated them to the public library, I donated them to different organizations that were
specialized in a particular topic.
And so, I'd say, "Hey, I've got 200 books on your topic.
Do you want them?"
And they're like, "Yes, we do, awesome, cool."
So, I was able to get rid of, and clean out a lot of my book collection, just so that
I wasn't housing them.
And so, there are things that you can do.
Even if you're very tidy and organized, there will always be ways for improvement.
I just went through a closet of mine, and the clothes that I have in there are good
clothes, right.
They are good clothes, but I've had some of them for 14 to 20 years.
Now, here's the sad reality.
I wear this every day, so this is my go to outfit, so all the other clothes that I have,
why on earth am I storing those?
Because the few times that I go out, and I get dressed up, I'm going to wear something
different, but I don't need hundreds of outfits, I really don't.
So, I went through, and I got rid of all of the clothes that I had a good life with.
I have worn these clothes for 14 years.
So, let's get rid of those clothes now, let's send them on their way.
Let's be done with that part of our life, right.
So, as you organize your space, you're going to find things that you no longer need or
want, or things that you're just done with, or there are things like the butter containers
that my mother collected, that were very useful.
She was very resourceful about making use of those tubs, and she could store anything
from crayons to cotton balls.
I mean, you name it, whatever it was, she could make good use of these butter tubs,
but there comes a time when you have too many.
And so, too many, they came to us free, they weren't free you had to pay for the butter,
but they came to us free.
Let go of them for free.
Let go of them for free, right, get rid of them, throw them away, recycle them, I don't
care what.
But as you get organized your mind will open up, and as you start releasing things from
your life your mind will open up, and you will say, "Aha!
There's something else I can get rid of," just get rid of that one item.
Whether clothing, or, and it might even be more specific.
Just jeans.
You might just get rid of all the old jeans that no longer fit you, they're old, they
have holes in them.
Or, they're not the right style, or whatever.
Just get rid of one thing, and then, as you do that you'll also say, "Well, I also have
neckties, or I have belts."
Or whatever.
And then go through and get rid of the next thing.
And so, you could do item by item, or you can do spaces like we did in the bathroom.
So, it's entirely up to you, but the secret is this.
Just get started.
Because, like I said, there is no right or no wrong way to do it, the goal is to declutter
your house, to get organized, and to have a system for everything, so that when you
shop up in that space you've realigned yourself with this clean, orderly, harmonic space that
you get to live in.
And so, that's my two cents for today.
Just get started.
Alrighty, until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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