People who are able to organize their homes and keep them organized usually have something very important in common.

Secret #1: HAVE LESS STUFF.

You could be thinking “duh” or you could be thinking “I thought organized people just had pretty containers and clever ways of storing all the junk”. Whatever you think, I am here to tell you it is true: The less stuff you have, the easier it is to get and stay organized! 

Clutter causes what is really important to get lost in the sea of unimportant. If you have a stack of papers and most of those papers are unnecessary or trash, and then inside of that stack of papers are super important documents like birth certificates and social security cards. All of the unimportant stuff makes the whole pile seem unimportant and it is hard to find the good stuff. What can also happen is that the few valuable items gives the entire pile of trash a false sense of importance. You may find it difficult to get rid of the pile, because you know there are a few important things inside.

Remember: There is an actual cost associated with everything you keep — monetarily, physically, and mentally. Consider that you are paying ‘rent’ for the valuable space all of your belongings take up. These belongings also rob you of the peace you could feel with a clutter-free life.

The truth about too much stuff:

• Clutter slows down productivity and causes stress. It is hard to focus with so much competing for our attention!
• Clutter causes sickness. When your home has too much stuff, none of it gets the cleaning it really needs, which leaves dust and germs around to wreak havoc.
• Belongings become confused with relationships, which then diminishes our relationships.

Be honest with yourself.

“Maybe in an alternate universe you’ll finally go camping with the tent in the basement, whip up a scrapbook with your stash of 10-year-old craft supplies and reread every book on the over-stocked shelf. But what about right here, right now? ‘Holding on to things ‘just in case’ provides comfort and a sense of security, especially when so many have lost so much in these uncertain economic times … But think about what you’re sacrificing—kitchen counter space, room in the garage for the car, a ready-for-company living room. You’re swapping your quality of life for some imagined future.’ Instead of worrying that you might miss an item, think how relaxed you and your family will be amid all the free space and order that you’re creating in your home.” (Meredith Janson from Family Circle Magazine)

One last thing. Why does getting this secret right helps with so much else? —-

Less stuff means less housework! The clutter and mess you need to clean up is limited to the quantity of what you own!

What do you think? Did you already know about this secret? I can’t wait to share more with you!

Spilling Secrets,

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I have a series coming up where I am going to share the Five Secrets of Organized People. If you haven’t already subscribed to receive my blog posts in your email, subscribe now on the sidebar. Also, you do not want to miss my follow-up to last year’s Garage Organization post coming soon, because I’ve done some more organizing in my garage.

Today I want to show you my Donation Station. Purging (and donating) is a very important part of your organizing! More to come later on all the reasons purging is so important, today I just want to show you how easy it is to donate and get a ton in tax write-offs next year. You can consider it getting paid to de-clutter without the hassle of selling. Oh, and it feels pretty good to donate to the good cause of your choice! Don’t tell anyone, but the best part for me is not having the clutter stick around my house.

I have a plastic bin in my garage. Normally I organize with clear bins, but not here! You don’t want to remind yourself or your family of what you’re donating! No take-backs! I keep this bin next to our garbage cans, maybe symbolically … all things leaving my house!

On top of the bin, I have a clipboard with a donation tracker sheet and a convenient pencil.

• When I find things in the house that need to go, I take it to the bin and right then, I write down what item I’m putting inside.
• When the bin is full, I take the bin and the sheet to the nearest non-profit re-sale shop that will give a tax receipt.
• I staple the receipt to the paper and immediately file in my tax file folder.

I’ve been doing this for years, but I used to use a blank sheet of paper (as shown). This year while we were doing our taxes, I realized that this info organized in this handy printable would make it soooo much easier next year during taxes.

Do you want this easy-peasy Donation Tracker to download and print as often as you need?! Be sure to pin this post so that you will have this printout handy whenever you need to print a new one.

Download the FREE Printable here: DONATION TRACKER

Also, if you missed my post about organizing your home office files, you should read that now. I talk about an easy way to keep your tax documents all in one place throughout the year. How awesome is that?! Actually, it is pretty awesome and you will want to kiss yourself next tax season when you already have all of your important documents in one place.

Setting up a donation station in your home or garage will make purging as you go about your normal routine, an importance maintenance step for all of us, a breeze. You don’t need to wait to do a big overhaul on any space to start to make wise choices about what clutter you can cut from your life!

Happy donating and tax writing-off!

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When I went grocery shopping this week, my 3-month-old was happy a long time while I filled my cart. Then I got to the checkout and that is when he decided he was tired and done shopping. So the wailing began and I tried to comfort him and unload the cart at the same time, and was doing a terrible job at both. That is when a very kind lady stepped up to me and offered to hold my baby while I checked out. She calmed my baby and blessed me. I will count her act of kindness as one of my gifts to be thankful for this Mother’s Day.

I’ve studied, written about, and thought endlessly about motherhood this week. There are two things that really stuck out to me as important for me to remember during this season of my life.

2 Things Moms Should Know:

• The little things we do day-in and day-out matter. The meals, the cleaning, the cuddles, the taxi-ing to activities, the games, the laundry, and the everything else. It is not all fun and a lot of it can be quite monotonous, but it matters.
• It is okay to take time to ourselves. It is okay to delegate. We need to take care of ourselves to be able to take care of everyone else.

Other things you might enjoy —-

Last Mothers Day I wrote about The Magic Hamper, which was one of the “little things” my mom did for me that has left a lasting impression. It may be something different and we might have to wait thirty years to find out, but there is some little thing we are doing now that our kids will always remember.

This week I shared over on The Simply Domestic Blog about some more things I learned from my mother, including her *dieting trick*. I also share the gifts I’m giving this Mother’s Day.

Earlier this week, I talked about how balance as a mom is not found in any of the extremes: Thoughts On Motherhood Sometimes Make Me Gag

This video about Motherhood is profound.

One of my very favorite mom-tricks is Our Good Behavior Quarter Jar.

I hope all of my friends, clients, and readers are surrounded by people they love today.

A blessed Mothers Day to you!

Love,

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During this week before Mother’s Day, we are starting to see messages about Motherhood pop up all around us. My mom is my best friend and despite our distance, we interact daily with phone calls and blessed smart phone picture-sharing. So, it has nothing to do with my relationship with my mom that most of these thoughts about Motherhood MAKE ME GAG. I think there is a fine line between inspiring improvement and inspiring guilt. So much of the constant rhetoric about motherhood makes a lot of us feel like we will never measure up. When people describe the qualities of a *perfect* mom, I can’t help but look at the list and see a list of my weaknesses. All this made me want to write a different kind of article about Motherhood to remove some of the contradicting expectations we’ve carried around for years.

“Good moms have messy floors and sticky kitchens” or something like that. You’ve seen it out there floating around or maybe you’ve seen “Excuse the mess, we are making memories”?  These quotes are meant to make moms feel good about letting our homes go in honor of quality time with the family. These quotes don’t feel so good to the moms that manage to keep the kitchen clean, but worry they are failing somewhere else.

Then there are the magazines and blogs full of pictures of beautifully and *perfectly* kept homes, TV shows depicting “real” family homes with everything in its place and stylish decor. As much as we hear the feel-good quotes floating around out there about embracing the mess, we only seem to SEE evidence that the opposite is true everywhere around us.

Let’s not forget the women we see (or think we see) who raise *perfect* kids with *perfect* homes and manage to be rock stars too. These women run marathons, head up the PTO, run successful businesses, advance at work, and write amazing blogs about organizing and homemaking. (I have to laugh at the last one. I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t have it all together all the time.)

So, we look to these fictitious examples and try our best to do it all, and we mask what we think are failures. When we are expecting people over to our homes, what do we do? We clean up first. “Oh, you just happened to stop by right after I did the dishes and vacuumed, what a coincidence.” This type of cover-up just piles on to what we are already thinking: we are not good enough.

We compare our normal with other people’s best, so we never measure up.

When it comes to balancing family life, housework, and personal fulfillment, most of us float around somewhere in the middle, which is actually a great place. The problem is that we aren’t happy there. We want it all. We expect ourselves to give the kids endless attention AND create a perfect house AND climb every mountain: but these crazy expectations are IMPOSSIBLE and we need to stop perpetuating the madness and projecting these expectations onto ourselves and the other women in our lives.

We are too busy worrying about what we are not, to realize that this BALANCE everyone speaks of and strives for does NOT exist in any of the extremes. Balance IS accepting our imperfections.

We need to improve ourselves without beating ourselves up.

Sometimes our feeling of guilt is a tool for improvement, but guilt is often misplaced. When we feel guilt for just being ourselves or not doing something perfectly, the guilt stops us from moving forward, continuing the vicious cycle of feeling like our best is not enough. Any other recovering perfectionists out there know exactly what I mean.

My wish this Mother’s Day for all the mothers I know is to give yourself a break. I think most of us KNOW that there is not one correct mold for motherhood.

Now is the time to feel okay with our particular mold.

What do you think?

The one trying to help you get organized and make your life less stressful,

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For my family, our kitchen isn’t just where we make food three times a day, it is where we live. Someone is always doing something in our kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of our home, and when we moved into our home, it was the first room I organized and decorated. How a kitchen functions and feels really matters.

Recently I created this Dream Kitchen board on Pinterest. I’m excited to have a place where I can start to collect ideas for my Dream Kitchen.

Of course, calling it a Dream Kitchen might make it feel far away in the future. That doesn’t have to be the case! We can use the ideas found in these Dream Kitchens to baby step our own kitchens towards being our Dream Kitchen! We don’t have to wait until we move or build our dream home, we can make changes today.

Here are a few ideas to build your dream kitchen right where you are!

• Give your cabinets a fresh coat of paint.
• Give your old tile floors the scrubbing of their lives to make them look new again. (I like to hire my favorite Carpet Cleaners to do this for me.)
• Update your style: Paint the walls a new color, and change out the wall art and table centerpiece.
• Replace your appliances with an Electrolux Dream Suite of appliances. The Suite includes refrigerators, induction cooktops, and dishwashers that are sleek and stylish. Selecting from a suite of coordinating appliances makes it so easy to choose beautiful appliances that complement one another.

What I really love about these kitchens:

• The dishwasher next to that amazing farmhouse sink. Electrolux Dishwashers feature adjustable, customizable racks that can fit more than 180 items in a single load! That would be amazing for my family of six. I feel like I’m always trying to fit something in my dishwasher like a platter or vase that just barely doesn’t fit.
• The short beverage refrigerators. With all of the kids running around these parts (my own + half the neighborhood some days), it would be great to have that loaded with kid-friendly drinks and snacks, right at their level too. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about them eating the dinner ingredients!
• The way the appliances fit right into the cabinetry to make it all look so sleek and stream-lined. And do yourself a favor, if you are buying a refrigerator, splurge on the counter-depth one, it makes a big difference in appearance!
• Visit Electrolux’s website and check out the beautiful Dream Suite.

Do all of these kitchens have you dreaming? What are you going to do to get your dream kitchen?

Visit Electrolux’s Facebook Page RIGHT NOW and tell them I sent you!

Happy Kitchen Dreams to you,

ps) My mom used an Electrolux vacuum my entire time living at home and that vacuum is now being used by my brother. The vacuum is still going strong. Electrolux is quality!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Organizing your space is a 3-step process. Just how simple it is depends on the size of the space, the amount of stuff you’re trying to keep, and your commitment to the process. Go ahead and give it a try!

Step 1 – Purge

To start, remove the excess. Narrow things down to what belongs in the space.

Divide into three categories: Trash, Donate, & Relocate.

Questions to ask yourself during a purge: Would this be of use to anyone? (trash) Do I use this anymore? (donate/sell) Does this belong somewhere else in my house? (re-locate) Do I still love this or have my tastes changed? (decorative or whimsical items) How and when will I use this? (could be keepers)

Step 2 – Sort

Keep like items together

Organized people organize because they are too lazy to search for stuff. Okay, that may not be the only reason. Always know where things are by grouping similar items together. Make a plan that includes where groups of things should be stored throughout your entire household, not just one isolated room. Then go room by room, following these steps, to make it happen.

Step 3 – Place

Give everything a place

A place for everything and everything in its place. Want to know how to clean up your home really fast? Already know where things go, so you don’t have to decide where something goes every time you clean up.

When deciding where things go, think about how you flow through your house. Keep things near where you use them if possible.

I know that organizing a space can feeeeeel way more intense, but usually it is because we are over-complicating the process. Get three brown grocery sacks, put on three labels (trash/donate/re-locate), and then walk over to that closet that is so chaotic you don’t know what to do. Just practice step 1, purging, again and again, then the other steps will come. You can do it! 

Helping you get and stay organized,

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So, you’ve made the wise decision to hire a professional organizer. You’ve set up your first appointment. Now what?

• When you hire someone to mow your lawn, do you cut the grass before they come?
• When you hire someone to clean your house, do you clean the toilets before they come?
• When you hire someone to paint a room, do you paint before they come?

Your organizer wants to help you get organized. If you try to organize before they come, they aren’t going to see the real situation. And the only way your organizer can help you truly solve your organization problems is to know what is really happening.

The best way to prepare for your professional organizer is to take a deep breath, drink a warm cup of cocoa, and visualize what your home will feel like organized.

• What would it be like for everything to have a place? 
• How will it feel when you can open that closet without stuff falling on you?
• How much better will it feel when you can find your missing things?

Also, think through your day-to-day and brainstorm what is stressing you out the most. Be ready to share your organizational stresses with your professional organizer.

My first appointment with clients is always an assessment and consultation. I walk through the trouble areas with my clients and listen to your needs. I take lots of notes. I take those notes back to my office and develop a strategy of where to start. My preparation will make the rest of my work for you be more efficient and take less time overall. There is a chance I might give “homework” to my clients to complete before I come again, because that saves my clients money when it is something they feel comfortable doing themselves. If the homework is ever too much, my clients always can wait for my help. After all, I’m here to serve you and make the process easier for you!

Most of my clients choose the “Best Package”, which means they work with me while I organize. The benefit of this system is that you help make decisions about what stays and what goes. Also, I use the time together to teach my clients about how to keep up their newly organized space in the long-term.

One of the most frequent comments I get before I come to my clients home is: Please don’t judge my mess.

Professional Organizers are not coming to your home to judge your mess, you will actually find us more compassionate than most people. We study a lot of the mental and emotional triggers that are causing your disorganization. We help lots of people organize these problem areas that are stressing you out! I got into this business to help you, not judge you!

I am so happy for you that you’ve decided to hire a professional organizer. Getting your home and life organized is one of the best investments you can make.

Helping you get and stay organized,

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