3 Organizing Lessons from My Family to Yours

Are you familiar with the Gershwin tune, Summertime? As I sat down to share three organizing lessons, that song popped into my head. “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy” is the first line.

That’s how I’m feeling today – the livin’ is easy. We’re up in northern Washington visiting my oldest stepdaughter and her two girls. I love being here with them. And I love being here at this time of year. I’m enjoying pretty drives and bike rides and getting my fill of local strawberries, raspberries, and cherries. Yum.

Anyway, when we arrived, my stepdaughter had a lot of stuff in her garage that she wanted to donate. I checked the DonationTown web site to see if there are any charitable groups in the area that pick up donations. No luck.

Since she works a lot and I had time on my hands, I volunteered to take a carload to the local Goodwill store. What a popular place! I had to wait in a line of cars for about 10 minutes before it was my turn to unload my donations. I guess everyone has decluttering on their summertime to-do list!

Okay, here are the three organizing lessons I promised to share!

Organizing Lesson #1: Let other people clear out your garage for you.

Meanwhile, back in the garage, there were still quite a few things needing new homes. I requested to join the local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. As soon as I was accepted, I started posting photos of stuff, and within a week, almost all of it had been picked up by its new owners! My stepdaughter is thrilled it’s gone. Now she’s finding more things to offer to her neighbors.

If you haven’t heard of the Buy Nothing Project, you can read more about it here and see if there’s an active group in your area. What I love about the Buy Nothing community is that it gives you an easy way to re-home your things with another family who will love them. Not only do people gladly come get that stuff you no longer want, they thank you for it. It feels so good to give my old stuff a new life, it makes me want to see what else I can get rid of!

Organizing Lesson #2: The easier it is to put things away, the more likely you’ll do it.

A few days ago, my youngest granddaughter took me up on my offer to help her organize her room. We started with all the stuff (mostly clothing) scattered all over the floor. We grabbed a laundry basket and re-purposed it as a dirty clothes hamper. Then I discovered that her bedroom and bathroom were also lacking a place to toss trash. So we used a large gift bag that we pulled out of the “to recycle” pile as a temporary wastebasket and then later, found a real one.

In the before photo I neglected to take, this desk was piled high with paper and other stuff.

Now, my granddaughter is lucky to have a big closet. But it had two heavy sliding doors that were difficult to open and close. And do you know what happens when it’s hard to put clean clothes away? It doesn’t happen. So we removed the doors and hung curtains on a tension rod. Now she can easily access her dresser drawers and hanging clothes just by moving a curtain.

Sometimes curtains are a better choice than doors for a bedroom closet.

Her sock drawer was so full that there wasn’t room for another pair of socks. And you know what happens when it’s too hard to put things away, right? Right. We dumped out all the socks on the floor and sorted by color to make it easier to match. Then we tossed the keepers back up into the drawer. As we sorted, we tossed socks that were too small and socks she didn’t like into a donation bag. Turns out she had a lot of socks missing mates. We tossed them, too.

By the time we were done cleaning her room, we had one big bag of clothing, another bag with miscellaneous stuff to give away, and a third bag of paper trash. She really got on a roll toward the end! In fact, I could see that she was actually very good at organizing. What she needed was someone to help her tackle what I’m sure felt like an overwhelming job. The hardest part of getting organized is often just getting started.

Organizing Lesson #3: You need to get good at showing your clutter who’s the boss.

Will my granddaughter be able to keep her room clean now? Time will tell. From what I understand, she’s organized her room many times before only to have go through the whole process of organizing again. (I’m sure that’s never happened to you, my dear reader – wink, wink.) I’m hoping that having a home for dirty clothes and garbage will keep stuff off the floor, which will at least make her room look cleaner.

What we sometimes forget is that decluttering is not a one-and-done kind of project. You do it. And then at some point, you need to do it again. How often depends on your level of comfort with clutter. Personally, I prefer to declutter more often because it’s a lot easier to keep up than it is to catch up.

One thing I do to keep clutter at bay is follow the One-In, One-Out rule. For example, when my stepdaughter cleaned her closets. I became the lucky recipient of three pair of jeans in different colors, plus some tops she no longer wanted. Looking at what I already had in my closet, I decided to replace three older pair of jeans with the three new pair of jeans. Then I pulled out several tops I’d been holding on to for some unknown reason and added them to the donation bag.

Another way to show clutter who’s boss is to pay attention to what you bring into your home, whether it’s a grocery store flyer or something you bought on impulse because it was on sale. Ask yourself: Do I really have a need for this? We need much less than we think we do. And when we have only what we really need, there’s no clutter!

Are you ready to declare your independence from clutter? If you don’t know where to start or you need a plan you can follow, consider signing up for the summer edition of Uncluttered. Registration just opened for this online decluttering course that I’ve dubbed “the best decluttering course I never created!”  I even have a Friends & Family discount for you – enter the code FF25 to save 25% off the already low registration fee.

The sooner you kick clutter to the curb, the sooner you, too, can be singing “Summertime…and the livin’ is easy.”

Do you have any summer organizing lessons to share? Something you’ve learned the hard way or wish you had known way back when? Do tell!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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